22 September 2011

at mormon morning! its this ward activity once per month where we go somewhere, do exercise, have a testimony meeting, and then eat food. this time we went to a beach in coloane.


a famous portuguese church


a mooncake. last year when i ate one i threw up. this year, i kind of actually enjoy it a bit.

Hellooooo everyone! I am so glad today is Pday!! We've been working so hard this week. A couple of weeks ago when president asked us to try and focus on the 2nd branch more I started praying to Heavenly Father to let us know which of our investigators is ready now and which aren't going to be progressing now. it was cool because its like black and white- we've been able to see this gap between a lot of them and are now helping several acheive their baptismal goals while letting others go. which means... more time for finding! more street contacting again! Its nice because when we were busy teaching so much and had no time to call/findnewinvestigators/eat/etc it was like we were stuck in this whirlpool. We have an investigator who will be baptized this weekend and another investigator, K, who is amazing. She has a really tricky situation but is moving forward with the faith that Heavenly Father will take care of her. It is so wonderful to see the progress.

A couple of cool experiences/funny ones/sad ones.

1. One investigator is 15 years old and has so much faith. Earlier this week she still hadn't talked to her parents about baptism, but she'd been praying about it and was asking heavenly father for strength. Then she had the thought "read alma 38:2" She hadn't read up to alma, and didnt know what was there. she told us "i thought it'd be like about a war or something cause every time i flip to alma itsa lways about a war" but it said very clearly, and specifically to her "And now my son (daughter? haha), i trust that I shall have great joy in you, because of your steadiness and your faithfulness unto God; for as you have commenced in your youth to look to the Lord your God, even so I hope that you will continue in keeping his commandments; for blessed is he that endureth to the end." yeah. cool huh. then she asked her parents yesterday if she can get baptised and they accepted.

2. We lost an investigator. she just moved here from mainland and after seeing her 2 times she missed her 3rd appointment. when we called her the phone was always off. Anyways we were praying about it and we felt like we should go back to taipa (the island where we met her) and contact on the bridge again where we met her at around the same time. Then we met her again! her phone (and our number) was lost and the day she met us she couldnt leave work yet because they still had people eating at the restaurant. So anyways, we met her again yesterday and she's doing SO good. :) yeah. miracle.

3. We havent had hot water at our aparmtent for almost a month, which isnt a big deal because its been so HOT that we wouldnt want to take a warm shower even if we could. But 2 days ago the weather started to change, and a cold shower wasnt so nice. so yesterday we scheduled the water heater guy to come over, went on splits so we could keep covering our appointments and went back to the apartment. He comes in, walks to the kitchen, maybe 45 seconds later he walks back out and says no charge and its fixed. Well turns out there are batteries in the water heater (who knew?) and they needed to be changed. we paid him for the batteries anyways and felt SO dumb. But now we have hot water. yeaaah.

4. One of our investigators has been meeting with us for a couple of months but her parents are burmese buddhists- pretty hardcore. anyways ive probably mentioned her before. but we found out yesterday if she doesn't get her parents permission we can't keep meeting with her or contacting her. Needless to say i'm pretty sad but hopeful that she'll find a way to talk to them. She's probably one of my favorite investigators i've had on my mission and I know she wants the gospel so bad in her life. but it is really important for her to respect her parents as well... anyways, I'll keep praying.

So yeah this week was good, we had some fun times and the new missionaries are full of fire and working hard. Its a wonderful time to be a missionary in macau and I'm excited for the progress we can make in this area and the help we can give to people. I am so grateful that i'm serving and learning SO MUCH. One last thing- I'm working on memorizing scriptures in chinese and in english- right now I'm working on Ether 12:4. love this one: "Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yeah, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God."

yeah. i believe in that. The only way to really change the world is through the principles of the gospel being applied in individual lives and families.

love you all! thank you so much for your prayers love and support!

sis black