Dear Family and Friends,
Happy Mothers Day, Mom!!! :) <3 Mothers Day is one of my favorite holidays ever! It is right up there with Christmas. I felt so much joy as we went around Singapore wishing moms happy Mother's Day and singing them Mother's Day songs. I think it surprised a lot of people at first, but it was so great to see all of those amazing mothers out there smile. Mothers are amazing! A lot of the husbands we talked to said they didn't have any plans for their wives on Mother's Day...I am so grateful for my amazing dad :)
This week I have increased my faith by my study of the Book of Mormon. All of those anti-Mormons, atheists, and haters out there don't understand that the Book of Mormon destroys everything they could ever say. This week I read Alma 30, which is one of my favorite chapters. This is the chapter that Alma takes down Korihor the anti-Christ. I love it because Korihor's arguments are the same as the anti-Christ arguments in the world today. Korihor tried to convince people that they just imagined up the revelations God had given them, that their hopes were vain, and that their beliefs were foolish traditions of their fathers. These are just a few of the many arguments Korihor makes. He leads many away, but there are faithful people, like the people of Ammon, who give him no heed. the Book of Mormon is the best :) I can't think of anything that God has used to enrich my life more than a continuous serious study of the Book of Mormon. People who never taste the fruit will never know.
This week I went on an exchange with Elder Sabin from Johor Bahru. His Chinese has gotten really good. I was super impressed :) He is willing to try everything and works really hard. We have amazing zone leaders. I invited him to start speaking only Chinese with his companion when he is outside the house. I think that will be really good :)
I also went on an exchange with Elder Duckworth from Kuching. He is doing amazing. He is such a young missionary, so it blows my mind how well he has a handle on things. I think he is just as skilled as all the other zone leaders, but because he and Elder Stratton are still so young they are more teachable. It was way fun working with him. All of our plans fell through, so we were able to demonstrate how to work the "goldmine" (less active members) and talk to people on the way. We found a lot of people who showed a lot of interest.
At the end of the week Elder Spurrier and I got to spend some time together. All of our plans fell through and it was pretty frustrating. This was the most potential investigators I have ever found in a week on my mission, but we only had 2 or 3 actually answer their phones. On Saturday we went to visit someone on our back-up plans, only to find that the address was incomplete. We called potential investigators for a little while, when we realized that a less active member we hadn't thought of lived near where we were. We went to the house and found the son of the family home alone. We asked him how his day was and he said, "bad." We asked him why and he told us that his parents were both sick and in the hospital. He invited us in and let us give him a blessing. After the blessing he said that he will talk to his boss about getting work off on Sunday so he can come to church. We called one of the ward members who is friends with this family, and he said that he had already gone to the hospital to give the parents blessings (he is a returned missionary, so he is on top of it). It was cool to see how God put us in that kid's path through what we thought were unfortunate events.
The members are doing well. We had a good amount of potential investigators, less-actives, and investigators at Sacrament Meeting. I think that really helps earn the members' trust. The ward mission leader keeps telling us that he is getting complaints from members that we are pushing them to hard, which makes me happy :) that means we are doing our job. There is little growth in a comfort zone, so to hear that people are uncomfortable is a good sign. The returned missionaries here are all on board, it's just a few members are having a little bit of a hard time. S** (one of our recent converts) just got called as a ward missionary. Things are picking up pace!
Love you,
Elder Avery
Baptism and Travels (May 2, 2016)
Faith in Christ (May 22, 2016)
