Love Our Missionaries: Moving Again

Written by Elder Joshua Avery, serving in the Singapore Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, speaking Mandarin Chinese.

Yes, that is a chicken foot!

Hello Family and Friends!

This week was so awesome! It had a lot of miracles this week and I will be pretty sad if I have to leave. I've gotten cozy here for sure.

This week the only lessons we had were with new investigators. No idea where our other investigators went this week, but whatevs. haha! On Tuesday we met with V**. She is on date for the end of this month, but we are going to have to push it back because she has not been able to come to church and it is hard to teach her because her Chinese is not too good. But this week when we taught her, we were also able to teach one of her friends from work who is local so she speaks Chinese well. That helps. Her name is X** and she has some exposure to Christianity already, but now that is another investigator who has to ask the same boss for Sunday's off of work. haha!

We also met with a woman named Mrs. L** and her son. She has never learned about any religion which made things very difficult. We had to teach very simply and it had been a little while since we had taught the Restoration in Chinese, but she is cool. A member has been coming to English class for a while and loves the elders, I guess that was the only reason why she started learning. He is a smart kid and could explain the concepts to his mom during the lesson. We gave her a Book of Mormon and she said "Oh, I could finish this in a day or two." I don't think she actually did that, but I think she has been reading a lot. We will find out this week :)

We then met with a Philipino named Gi**. He is a Catholic but has not been active in his church. He is here working as a cook. We taught him the Restoration and at the end he said he would be baptized, but I don't think he understands the commitment behind that. He didn't seem too interested until we pulled out a Tagalog Book of Mormon. Then right away he asked, "when is your church service? I'll ask my boss to change my off day." That was a blessing because it is so hard to get people to church .

T** came to church again. It has been really cool to watch him grow. Every lesson he shouts things like "You'll never make a church goer out of me", but then he is always happy and smiley at church on Sunday. Each week he dresses nicer. His first week he came in jeans and a t-shirt, then jeans with nice shoes, then slacks and a t-shirt, and now on this "you will never make a church goer out of me" 5th or 6th week at church he was wearing a dress shirt, slacks, and shoes. I am so happy for him :)

The work is so real! Anyone can change :)

Love you all,
Elder Avery

P.S. Just got transfer calls and I am going to Sitiawan. I will see L** and my recent converts in Ipoh, and my companion will be a kid from the branch when I was in Melaka. So cool!

Where God Wants Us to Be (September 28, 2015)

Sitiawan (October 11, 2015)