Tuesday, July 1, 2014

10 March 2014

A couple got married this weekend in our ward, and a common tradition the Chinese have is to share "wedding cake" with their friends. There are many different kinds of filling in the cakes, but my favorite one is the candied pineapple cake. So good! Another couple is getting married next week, so we get more cake! Yeah!

I had mentioned a little bit in my last letter how hard the week previous was. This week went a little better. I was especially grateful to get a phone call from President Blickenstaff this week, expressing empathy for my situation and just having a good talk with me. He said, "My friend, I want to give you a hug, man!" He's a fantastic leader, and he's like a father to me. I'm going to miss working with him when I leave.

Our investigators are kind of all over the place, the ones that were progressing are wavering and the new ones are just flying without any troubles. We have one investigator who is homosexual, and he understands that God requires no homosexual behavior. He felt like he couldn't keep up a commitment like that, and so dropped his goal to be baptized. Today I found a terrific church resource, mormonsandgays.org, and it looks like it will help him a lot. Thank goodness he reads English! The site has not been translated yet.

Elder Baker, my god-brother (Elder Chia has adopted both of us as his god-sons), is teaching Children's English Class with me. I'm so grateful to be working with him because he has a really good handle on small children. He can really take control, which is what we needed because lately we've been having more rowdy kids coming. I'm too much of a softie, and they take advantage of that. Elder Baker is terrific and helping children focus their energies into productive activities.

Elder Claflin and I, back in the day, found this guy named Nick on the road. We invited him to meet with us, and he did. He was a fantastic investigator, and he said he's been looking for something like this for a long time. It turned out he lived in Elder Baker's area, so we had to ask Nick to meet with him instead. Nick continued to progress rapidly, and made really good friends with the ward members. I got to see him get baptized a couple days ago. He was very grateful to us Elders for coming out here and helping people find the gospel, and he shared his testimony of the divinity of the Church and of the reality of his Savior. I experienced true joy that night. I was glad I could play a small part in his conversion, and see how the hand of the Lord had shaped his life.

Hope you have a wonderful week!

-Elder Jorgensen

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