Love Our Missionaries: This Is Handsome Boy

Sunday, November 15, 2015

This Is Handsome Boy - Elder Joshua Avery

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

I'm such a sap for puppies!

Dear Family and Friends,

This week we were biking in an area that we had chosen to street contact. Though the feeling was really subtle, we felt guided down a couple streets and to make the story short, we landed ourselves in front of a green house with a large picture of Mary in front of it. We knocked the gate, despite the fact that I try to avoid knocking houses. Out came a very happy Indian man who recognized us. The man introduced himself as D**. Elder Lee, with his impressive talent of recalling of names, dates, phone numbers,etc. remembered a teaching record of a former investigator with nothing but a house number as an address with the name D** Jr. and asked, "are you D** Junior?". The man said "yes!"

One of the young men in our branch decided to come finding with us, so when D** invited us in we were able to have a member present for the lesson. We taught D** the Restoration lesson and at the end he said, "Yes, I have always believed God would send prophets and apostles before Christ comes again/" He is heavily involved in his church and hard to get in touch with, but it was a spiritual lesson, and we made sure to get his full address after the lesson.

That same day we found a Buddhist, I think...or maybe BaiShen....who's husband was baptized Christian. She said we can come to share with her. It was really interesting because the conversation started sour, but improved to a good conversation, and ended with "okay, when you call just tell me 'this is handsome boy' and I will remember"...it's funny because that was the only part of the conversation I didn't understand because it was in English and my brain was still in Chinese mode. She had to repeat that part about 3 times before Elder Lee told me she was speaking English, haha!

We also taught an awesome 15 year old named Y**, which is Chinese for Eternal Life. Cool! He seems pretty prepared and is scheduled for baptism the day after Christmas.

We didn't get to see K** at church this week because he got in a moto accident Saturday, but he was fine. Just one day in the hospital, pain medications, and some cuts and bruises. I'm worried about his smoking. We have fasted every Sunday this month for him...yikes!

That is all for now. I am waiting for transfer news.

Love You All,
Elder Avery

Birds of a Feather (November 8, 2015)

Goodbye, Elder Lee! (November 22, 2015)