August 6, 2012

This week has been a wonderful week.  

I have been truly blessed to see a baptism in every area in which I've served, and this one is no exception.  I was so happy to be around for Sui's baptism.  He's an amazing young kid from China/Taiwan.  His family is Christian, and he is so in tune with the spirit.  He has such worthy goals, and desires.  He wants to honor his family, and keep the commandments of God.  He strives to be a good man, and wants to be a good father and husband one day.  His family name is riding on him, and he's very anxious to do what is right.  He noticed a few differences in the culture of being a member and from china.  The Chinese drink Tea often, but we had a long talk about following the higher laws of God, and still being a good citizen of the land in which he lives.  He's going to do wonders, and be such a help for the Gospel in that part of the world.  

As for me, I've been a little under the weather this weekend.  Zone leader council was great!  I truly gained a lot from looking at the survey that was taken and the results of the mission.  I could easily see that my perception, as well as the perception of other missionaries of themselves is often incorrect.  We seem to be our worst critics.  It was very good to council with each other during the ride home and talk about the specific needs of our zone.  Very revelatory.  Upon arriving home I felt a fever coming on, and sure enough after we ended our appointments I checked and had a temperature of 100.3, which it was good to be able to go to bed and sleep it off.  I awoke the next morning feeling fine, and we attended our baptism.  The spirit was great there, and we had 2 other investigators come.  They too felt the spirit, and were excited and are looking forward to their dates in September.  That afternoon my headache, and fever returned, and I spent that afternoon resting, after consulting with Elder Beach and Sister Collins.  Sunday was no different, the fever was back, and I ended up resting a lot of that day too, after church.  I was glad that we still were able to work on our upcoming trainings and complete out weekly planning during our down time, it was hard as a missionary to not be able to go go go!  Our bodies do need to be taken care of though.  

Well not much else on my end.  Things are still going great!  I'm very excited for school to start back up here, and we have a huge influx of students to contact.  There are several that left last semester with a baptismal date and we are already beginning to contact them, and to be prepared for their arrival.  

I guess, upcoming this week we have Zone conference, and it's going to be cool, we have Elder Golden of the 70 in town.  He's been in our mission about 2 years ago, and we are excited to hear from him.  The church has also started a new meeting for us Zone leaders.  We now get to conduct a monthly meeting where we get to train on our last Zone Leader Council, and the trainings that we received there.  It's a new thing that the whole church is doing.  Before this we would only be able to train while on exchanges with other areas, and it took us too long to get information and training to each area.  So the church has listened as the mission presidents press this issue.  I'm very excited to be able to participate in these.  It's cool to see that when people ask questions revelation occurs, or in this case, more meetings.  

Love you all!  I hop all is well,