On Saturday, May 9, we attended Bret's Doctoral Commencement. On Sunday, he gave us a brief presentation regarding his "doctoral document" (dissertation), which is about ethnic flutes. The clips are him playing penny whistle, bamboo flute, pvc flute, dizi (Chinese), and Native American flute.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Saturday, May 9, 2009
From Jon 5/9
Subject: Vajtswv foom koob hmoov rau wb heev
Nyob zoo!
Thanks for the info about school, Dad.
Remember the experience we had with Zoua and Ia? This week we employed the "Holy Ghost-restoration-baptismal commitment maneuver" on Fwm (...um, I guess the closest way to pronounce that in English is "Foo", so I'll call him "Fu" from now on). Previously he had mostly been stuck on his own ideas and only regarding our visits as informative. During the lesson, he felt the spirit, and knew it. He committed to be baptized, and we set a date, but he has two or three things to get in order first, one being that he will have to marry his girlfriend, with whom he has lived for 3 years and has two children.
We were tracting a few days ago and as we were locking up our bikes, a young man came out of his house and asked us if we had any mini-bibles that we were giving out. He was a 19 -years-old African American attired in gangster garb, and half of his hair was braided, while the other half was a fluffy 'fro. We told him we didn't have any bibles at the time, but we had another book that we highly recommended. We told him a little about it and he seemed rather interested. He asked if he could have one, and we said we would like to come over the next day (when his rowdy cousins weren't over) and give him one, and explain a little more about it. We arrived at the appointed time the next day, and he invited us in. We followed the new pattern (the one we used for Fu), and when we got to the first vision, he was smiling big. "Wait, wait," he said, suddenly excited, "does the Holy Ghost---is it kind of like a-a...huuhaahuuh feeling---like light in your chest?" We were pretty sure we knew what he was talking about, so we said yes. "'Cuz that's what I'm feelin' right now, and it feels great!" We continued with the painting out the blessings and the baptismal commitment. We asked him how soon he wanted these blessings, and he said, "When can I have them?!" We set a date for the 30th. We said a closing prayer, and as we began to speak afterwards, he stopped us suddenly and said,
"Wait, wait...can the Holy Ghost also feel like...like kinda hot, like a fire inside your chest---but it feels good? 'Cuz that's what I feel like! This is the best I've ever felt in my life! I mean---I've felt the spirit a little bit before when my grandma read to me from the bible, but never like this! Excuse me---I gotta go outside!" He did so, and we followed. We found him breathing deeply and fanning his face, smiling, and laughing a little. We are going to have another lesson with the English speaking Elders, then they will take over from there. I hope we can attend his baptism. His name is Derek.
We are not positive when we will be able to call tomorrow. Anytime from 5-8 pm Minnesota time.
We are having a Mothars' Dee activity with the branch today, which the missionaries planned. The primary is going to sing a song as part of it, and the Elders will help. I think someone is going to record it; maybe I can get the clip to you.
I love you all, and I am sending a clap-hug 'cross the plains to ye. *clap*
-Elder Moua Ying
Nyob zoo!
Thanks for the info about school, Dad.
Remember the experience we had with Zoua and Ia? This week we employed the "Holy Ghost-restoration-baptismal commitment maneuver" on Fwm (...um, I guess the closest way to pronounce that in English is "Foo", so I'll call him "Fu" from now on). Previously he had mostly been stuck on his own ideas and only regarding our visits as informative. During the lesson, he felt the spirit, and knew it. He committed to be baptized, and we set a date, but he has two or three things to get in order first, one being that he will have to marry his girlfriend, with whom he has lived for 3 years and has two children.
We were tracting a few days ago and as we were locking up our bikes, a young man came out of his house and asked us if we had any mini-bibles that we were giving out. He was a 19 -years-old African American attired in gangster garb, and half of his hair was braided, while the other half was a fluffy 'fro. We told him we didn't have any bibles at the time, but we had another book that we highly recommended. We told him a little about it and he seemed rather interested. He asked if he could have one, and we said we would like to come over the next day (when his rowdy cousins weren't over) and give him one, and explain a little more about it. We arrived at the appointed time the next day, and he invited us in. We followed the new pattern (the one we used for Fu), and when we got to the first vision, he was smiling big. "Wait, wait," he said, suddenly excited, "does the Holy Ghost---is it kind of like a-a...huuhaahuuh feeling---like light in your chest?" We were pretty sure we knew what he was talking about, so we said yes. "'Cuz that's what I'm feelin' right now, and it feels great!" We continued with the painting out the blessings and the baptismal commitment. We asked him how soon he wanted these blessings, and he said, "When can I have them?!" We set a date for the 30th. We said a closing prayer, and as we began to speak afterwards, he stopped us suddenly and said,
"Wait, wait...can the Holy Ghost also feel like...like kinda hot, like a fire inside your chest---but it feels good? 'Cuz that's what I feel like! This is the best I've ever felt in my life! I mean---I've felt the spirit a little bit before when my grandma read to me from the bible, but never like this! Excuse me---I gotta go outside!" He did so, and we followed. We found him breathing deeply and fanning his face, smiling, and laughing a little. We are going to have another lesson with the English speaking Elders, then they will take over from there. I hope we can attend his baptism. His name is Derek.
We are not positive when we will be able to call tomorrow. Anytime from 5-8 pm Minnesota time.
We are having a Mothars' Dee activity with the branch today, which the missionaries planned. The primary is going to sing a song as part of it, and the Elders will help. I think someone is going to record it; maybe I can get the clip to you.
I love you all, and I am sending a clap-hug 'cross the plains to ye. *clap*
-Elder Moua Ying
Friday, May 8, 2009
Notes from Sam -- 4 May 2009
Dear family,
Hey! Elder McIntosh and I found an Internet cafe that is open on bank holidays. So I can email you today after all!
On Friday we dated Sharon for baptism! In our last lesson with her where we'd talked about the Questions of the Soul she'd told us the question "How do I avoid sin?" was important to her. So we'd planned to teach the Plan of Salvation and focus on sin and how Christ's Atonement allows us to be free of it. When we started the lesson we asked her about that question, and she explained that in the past she'd done things that had set a bad example for her children that she now regretted, and that she wanted to put those things behind her. The Spirit really came into the lesson at that point and we ended up abandoning our plans and teaching about the gospel of Jesus Christ. As we taught about faith in Jesus Christ I realized that Sharon really has a lot of faith in Christ, and that it was her faith that was leading her to study the scriptures and come to church every week. When we invited her to be baptized, she thought about it for a minute and then said something like, "I want to be a better person, and maybe being baptized is the only way I can do that." We testified of that and she accepted a baptismal date of July 11th! Right when she agreed to it her boyfriend Richard (who is a member, now semi-active) joined in and testified of just how much Sharon has changed for the better since she started investigating the gospel. It was a great moment. After we finished the closing prayer, Sharon said, "Thanks guys, I've really felt good today." It was a wonderful moment.
We've also been richly blessed in other ways this week, in particular as we've sacrificed for our zone. On Saturday we spent most of our day driving out to one of our most remote areas, working with the missionaries there, and driving home. We put 160 miles on our car in one day! As we left in the morning Elder McIntosh and I were both doubting whether it was worth the trip (I was worried also because we hadn't hit all our goals and had only one new investigator for the week), but we prayed about it and felt a confirmation that we should go. As things worked out one of the missionaries in the outlying area was sick, so I stayed in the flat with him, and Elder McIntosh and the other missionary had a lot of things fall through and weren't able to accomplish much. As we drove home, though, we felt good about what we'd done. And the Lord blessed us so much!
The next day, Sunday, we taught a first lesson to a great lady named Deanne (sp?) who has really been prepared to receive the gospel. Her manager at work recently became a born-again Christian and Deanne has seen a major change for good in her; she's also been feeling like she and her nine-year-old son should start coming to church, and towards the end of the lesson she actually asked us, "When can we start attending your church?" After that lesson, we tracted a street in her neighborhood, and we got in a door and taught three young people. It was kind of a crazy lesson with lots of distractions, but they all became new investigators and we're going back to see them next Sunday! Then, right at the end of the evening, we decided to try by a referral. At about 8:50 PM we knocked on the door, and the couple let us in to teach! One of them was someone Elder Garcia and I had taught back in December (he had just stopped investigating at the time), and the other one became a new investigator. So altogether we had 5 new investigators in one day! Kind of amazing how much the Lord can bless you at once.
We had another great finding experience this week. During our weekly planning session Elder McIntosh and I prayed about a focus area (a place for us to go to do finding during the wekk) and we felt good about a certain neighborhood. That evening we went there and went tracting. That's when we first met Deanne, and Elder McIntosh also street contacted a man named James. He was in a really big rush but offered to give Elder McIntosh his address right away (quite unusual) and actually invited us to come visit him the next day! When we came back and met him the next day, we all sat down on the couch and he said something like "I feel like I've gone astray in my life. I've done a lot of things wrong and I want to get back on the right track. What should I do?" That took us aback a little bit. : ) We taught about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he accepted everything! When we gave him the Book of Mormon, he committed himself to read it and also to come to church before we had a chance to invite him to do those things. Now I think I know how Aaron must have felt while teaching King Lamoni's father when the king said he would believe all his words. It was great to teach a lesson like that, and I really felt the Spirit as Elder McIntosh testified of the Atonement. James seemed to really appreciate our visit. He comes from a Catholic background and kept on calling us "Fathers" instead of elders. : )
As you can probably tell, I am very happy. Things are going really well in our area and our zone, and I love the missionaries that I am working with. I had the chance to go on exchange with a few of our missionaries this week, including Elder Farley, who is from England and is one of the few people I have met who knows of the verb form "to proselytize," and Elder Bills, one of our district leaders. They are both great. Elder Bills has an amazing story - his family has not been active in the church for most of his life, although they came back to church for a short period when he was a child, during which he got baptized. During the first few days when he graduated from high school and moved out on his own, he was sitting in his apartment in downtown San Diego thinking about his life and what he wanted to do with it, and he felt prompted to read his scriptures. He had never really read his scripures in his life before, but he started reading them and praying. He also got on the Internet, found the nearest singles ward, and went there on Sunday. He told the bishop he wanted to be on a mission within a year, and now here he is. I'm really grateful for all the amazing people I get to meet as a missionary.
I'm excited to hear that Eric Davey will be a freshman at Stanford next year. I'm looking forward to meeting him. One of the other LDS freshmen who will be returning from his mission to Stanford this fall, Logan Ensign, is also from Santa Rosa. Maybe he and Eric know each other.
I'll try and send you some photos. Looking forward to talking to you all a week on Sunday (the 17th).
Love,
Elder Pimentel
Hey! Elder McIntosh and I found an Internet cafe that is open on bank holidays. So I can email you today after all!
On Friday we dated Sharon for baptism! In our last lesson with her where we'd talked about the Questions of the Soul she'd told us the question "How do I avoid sin?" was important to her. So we'd planned to teach the Plan of Salvation and focus on sin and how Christ's Atonement allows us to be free of it. When we started the lesson we asked her about that question, and she explained that in the past she'd done things that had set a bad example for her children that she now regretted, and that she wanted to put those things behind her. The Spirit really came into the lesson at that point and we ended up abandoning our plans and teaching about the gospel of Jesus Christ. As we taught about faith in Jesus Christ I realized that Sharon really has a lot of faith in Christ, and that it was her faith that was leading her to study the scriptures and come to church every week. When we invited her to be baptized, she thought about it for a minute and then said something like, "I want to be a better person, and maybe being baptized is the only way I can do that." We testified of that and she accepted a baptismal date of July 11th! Right when she agreed to it her boyfriend Richard (who is a member, now semi-active) joined in and testified of just how much Sharon has changed for the better since she started investigating the gospel. It was a great moment. After we finished the closing prayer, Sharon said, "Thanks guys, I've really felt good today." It was a wonderful moment.
We've also been richly blessed in other ways this week, in particular as we've sacrificed for our zone. On Saturday we spent most of our day driving out to one of our most remote areas, working with the missionaries there, and driving home. We put 160 miles on our car in one day! As we left in the morning Elder McIntosh and I were both doubting whether it was worth the trip (I was worried also because we hadn't hit all our goals and had only one new investigator for the week), but we prayed about it and felt a confirmation that we should go. As things worked out one of the missionaries in the outlying area was sick, so I stayed in the flat with him, and Elder McIntosh and the other missionary had a lot of things fall through and weren't able to accomplish much. As we drove home, though, we felt good about what we'd done. And the Lord blessed us so much!
The next day, Sunday, we taught a first lesson to a great lady named Deanne (sp?) who has really been prepared to receive the gospel. Her manager at work recently became a born-again Christian and Deanne has seen a major change for good in her; she's also been feeling like she and her nine-year-old son should start coming to church, and towards the end of the lesson she actually asked us, "When can we start attending your church?" After that lesson, we tracted a street in her neighborhood, and we got in a door and taught three young people. It was kind of a crazy lesson with lots of distractions, but they all became new investigators and we're going back to see them next Sunday! Then, right at the end of the evening, we decided to try by a referral. At about 8:50 PM we knocked on the door, and the couple let us in to teach! One of them was someone Elder Garcia and I had taught back in December (he had just stopped investigating at the time), and the other one became a new investigator. So altogether we had 5 new investigators in one day! Kind of amazing how much the Lord can bless you at once.
We had another great finding experience this week. During our weekly planning session Elder McIntosh and I prayed about a focus area (a place for us to go to do finding during the wekk) and we felt good about a certain neighborhood. That evening we went there and went tracting. That's when we first met Deanne, and Elder McIntosh also street contacted a man named James. He was in a really big rush but offered to give Elder McIntosh his address right away (quite unusual) and actually invited us to come visit him the next day! When we came back and met him the next day, we all sat down on the couch and he said something like "I feel like I've gone astray in my life. I've done a lot of things wrong and I want to get back on the right track. What should I do?" That took us aback a little bit. : ) We taught about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he accepted everything! When we gave him the Book of Mormon, he committed himself to read it and also to come to church before we had a chance to invite him to do those things. Now I think I know how Aaron must have felt while teaching King Lamoni's father when the king said he would believe all his words. It was great to teach a lesson like that, and I really felt the Spirit as Elder McIntosh testified of the Atonement. James seemed to really appreciate our visit. He comes from a Catholic background and kept on calling us "Fathers" instead of elders. : )
As you can probably tell, I am very happy. Things are going really well in our area and our zone, and I love the missionaries that I am working with. I had the chance to go on exchange with a few of our missionaries this week, including Elder Farley, who is from England and is one of the few people I have met who knows of the verb form "to proselytize," and Elder Bills, one of our district leaders. They are both great. Elder Bills has an amazing story - his family has not been active in the church for most of his life, although they came back to church for a short period when he was a child, during which he got baptized. During the first few days when he graduated from high school and moved out on his own, he was sitting in his apartment in downtown San Diego thinking about his life and what he wanted to do with it, and he felt prompted to read his scriptures. He had never really read his scripures in his life before, but he started reading them and praying. He also got on the Internet, found the nearest singles ward, and went there on Sunday. He told the bishop he wanted to be on a mission within a year, and now here he is. I'm really grateful for all the amazing people I get to meet as a missionary.
I'm excited to hear that Eric Davey will be a freshman at Stanford next year. I'm looking forward to meeting him. One of the other LDS freshmen who will be returning from his mission to Stanford this fall, Logan Ensign, is also from Santa Rosa. Maybe he and Eric know each other.
I'll try and send you some photos. Looking forward to talking to you all a week on Sunday (the 17th).
Love,
Elder Pimentel
Notes from Sam -- 27 April 2009
Dear family,
Sharon is doing really well! A couple of days ago we taught her an amazing lesson where we talked about the Questions of the Soul. We'd been struggling to plan for her because she wasn't being very open in lessons. Although she was reading and coming to church and had even told a member that she was really enjoying it and had felt something good about the church, we hadn't been able to get her to tell us that or identify her concerns.
So we watched the Church's new DVD Finding Happiness with her and had her identify the questions that it raised. The first time she had trouble recognizing them, so we watched it a second time. After the second time, the Spirit came strongly into the lesson and she told us about some questions she had about life after death. I was excited that we'd identified something and was all ready to end the lesson, but Elder McIntosh opened up Preach My Gospel to Chapter 5 and read through the whole list of 15 questions of the soul it has there, asking Sharon to identify ones that were meaningful to her. As he finished the list, she told us that there were several of those questions that she cared about and mentioned one or two specifically, things I never would have imagined she had been thinking about. It was exactly the lesson we needed to help us help her progress! Even better, right at the end of the lesson she told us she had felt the Spirit as we'd read from the Book of Mormon in a previous lesson and also that she'd felt it at Church. She came to church again this week and seems really committed. I love watching people become spiritually committed to their investigation of the gospel.
We also had a great lesson with Kirk, just yesterday. He has so much insight into the scriptures, it's incredible. He told us about how he has concerns and questions about contradictions in the Bible, and we shared 1 Nephi 13:40 and testified of how the Book of Mormon establishes the truth of the Bible. Then we read 3 Nephi 11 with him. Often it's very difficult to read the Book of Mormon with investigators at first, because even when they understand it you have to work hard to get them to ponder upon what they read and have and express spiritual insights. But after we read a few verses with Kirk and asked him how he would feel if he'd experienced what the Nephites were experiencing, he spent several minutes bearing testimony and explaining just how meaningful it would be to him to hear the voice of the Father and see Christ in person. I actually learned a lot from his comments about what it means to see Christ. Kirk also understood very clearly from our teaching and his Book of Mormon reading that he needs to find out if Joseph Smith is a prophet, and that everything depends on that. He is now quite committed to that. He has so much potential if he has the real intent to find an answer to his prayer!
All-mission conference was fantastic, but in quite a different way than I had expected. There was immense build-up to the conference across the mission - President Bullock talking up the conference in zone leaders' council and zone conference, missionaries serving in the outskirts of the mission (including me!) traveling in closer to Chorley on Monday night and sleeping over with other companionships, etc. - and I figured we would be rewarded by some kind of mind-blowingly eloquent and spiritual 90-120 minute discourse by President Packer. I couldn't have been more wrong. The whole conference lasted barely two hours, and President Packer answered questions for about 20 minutes and spoke for maybe 30 minutes at the end. The Bullocks, Sister Packer and one of President Packer's sons and his wife all spoke as well. President Packer spoke very quietly and simply, without any kind of fanfare or drama. I think his son summed it up best by something he mentioned in his talk, which I'll paraphrase: "The most wonderful thing about my parents is that they consider themselves to be just ordinary people." Listening to President Packer, you could tell he thought of himself as just an ordinary person. That his humility purified his words and made them powerful even though they were delivered undramatically. I could also sense that President Packer trusted the Spirit completely to guide what he said, and that he wasn't nervous at all. I couldn't imagine him being afraid of anything. That's what real faith is, I suppose.
Because of that, the conference was even better than I'd imagined. I think President Packer's unassuming counsel provided me with a clearer witness of his apostleship than the impassioned discourse I'd imagined would have.
This week Elder McIntosh shared with me an important insight he had about being a zone leader. He said that he felt we needed to care more about other missionaries' areas and even view them as our own, sacrificing more time from our area to go and help their investigators progress and to go and help them find new people. I pondered about this afterwards, especially with regards to key indicators, and I felt that there was no reason for our area to be getting really high key indicators if other areas in our zone were struggling - better to get the basic standard here and then spend the rest of our time working with other missionaries.
Then Elder McIntosh and I had a great opportunity to apply this idea yesterday. On Saturday night we had nine lessons set up for Sunday, eight of them with potential investigators. Essentially, our day was booked solid from the end of church to curfew. Lessons with potential investigators are notoriously unreliable, but we decided to exercise our faith, set a goal of 10 new investigators for the day, and (at Elder McIntosh's suggestion) fast throughout the day for success in achieving our goals. I wasn't too keen on the "fast all day" idea at first but decided I better not be a wet blanket and went along with it.
Unfortunately, some of our appointments fell through or turned out to be false as we tried to confirm them by phone on Sunday morning, and as the day progressed the remaining appointments fell through one by one. By about four in the afternoon, we had a lot of free time on our hands, which meant we would be doing some finding! We had already achieved the mission standard for quality gospel conversations, though, and so we decided to go to Crewe, where finding has been a bit tougher in past weeks, and help them for a couple of hours. I knocked one side of a street with Elder Larson and Elder McIntosh knocked the other side with Elder Breisch. It was a pretty normal day of tracting and we didn't get in any doors or set up too many appointments, but for some reason I felt amazing about it! Just really close to the Lord and the Crewe elders. We ended up getting 0 new investigators for our area but somehow I felt really successful and happy about how our fast and our day had gone. Later that night Elder Newson (the Crewe elders' district leader) thanked us for going up there and said it had meant a lot to Elder Breisch and Elder Larson. It meant a lot to me too - I feel a lot more faith in and love for our flock since then. I think that experience taught me what it really means to magnify my calling as a zone leader. Now I'm really excited to go and spend as much time as I can helping out my missionaries in their areas!
I'm humbled sometimes by how the Lord blesses us for doing simple things like thinking about our callings and praying and fasting. Late last night I realized that if Elder McIntosh and I hadn't been fasting we might have just gone home for tea in the afternoon and not even thought about going to Crewe. Good thing I listened to him. : ) I feel so blessed and so guided. This is really the Lord's work.
Love,
Elder Pimentel
P.S. Sorry about the mix-up with my email two weeks ago on the Wednesday instead of Monday. Our preparation day is indeed Monday, but In England Easter Monday is a bank holiday, which means all the libraries are closed. The Tuesday in that week was zone conference, so I wasn't able to email until Wednesday. I forgot to let you know about that the week before - my apologies.
In the spirit of repentance, be warned that next Monday (May 4) is also a bank holiday. So expect my email on Wednesday the 6th. : )
Sharon is doing really well! A couple of days ago we taught her an amazing lesson where we talked about the Questions of the Soul. We'd been struggling to plan for her because she wasn't being very open in lessons. Although she was reading and coming to church and had even told a member that she was really enjoying it and had felt something good about the church, we hadn't been able to get her to tell us that or identify her concerns.
So we watched the Church's new DVD Finding Happiness with her and had her identify the questions that it raised. The first time she had trouble recognizing them, so we watched it a second time. After the second time, the Spirit came strongly into the lesson and she told us about some questions she had about life after death. I was excited that we'd identified something and was all ready to end the lesson, but Elder McIntosh opened up Preach My Gospel to Chapter 5 and read through the whole list of 15 questions of the soul it has there, asking Sharon to identify ones that were meaningful to her. As he finished the list, she told us that there were several of those questions that she cared about and mentioned one or two specifically, things I never would have imagined she had been thinking about. It was exactly the lesson we needed to help us help her progress! Even better, right at the end of the lesson she told us she had felt the Spirit as we'd read from the Book of Mormon in a previous lesson and also that she'd felt it at Church. She came to church again this week and seems really committed. I love watching people become spiritually committed to their investigation of the gospel.
We also had a great lesson with Kirk, just yesterday. He has so much insight into the scriptures, it's incredible. He told us about how he has concerns and questions about contradictions in the Bible, and we shared 1 Nephi 13:40 and testified of how the Book of Mormon establishes the truth of the Bible. Then we read 3 Nephi 11 with him. Often it's very difficult to read the Book of Mormon with investigators at first, because even when they understand it you have to work hard to get them to ponder upon what they read and have and express spiritual insights. But after we read a few verses with Kirk and asked him how he would feel if he'd experienced what the Nephites were experiencing, he spent several minutes bearing testimony and explaining just how meaningful it would be to him to hear the voice of the Father and see Christ in person. I actually learned a lot from his comments about what it means to see Christ. Kirk also understood very clearly from our teaching and his Book of Mormon reading that he needs to find out if Joseph Smith is a prophet, and that everything depends on that. He is now quite committed to that. He has so much potential if he has the real intent to find an answer to his prayer!
All-mission conference was fantastic, but in quite a different way than I had expected. There was immense build-up to the conference across the mission - President Bullock talking up the conference in zone leaders' council and zone conference, missionaries serving in the outskirts of the mission (including me!) traveling in closer to Chorley on Monday night and sleeping over with other companionships, etc. - and I figured we would be rewarded by some kind of mind-blowingly eloquent and spiritual 90-120 minute discourse by President Packer. I couldn't have been more wrong. The whole conference lasted barely two hours, and President Packer answered questions for about 20 minutes and spoke for maybe 30 minutes at the end. The Bullocks, Sister Packer and one of President Packer's sons and his wife all spoke as well. President Packer spoke very quietly and simply, without any kind of fanfare or drama. I think his son summed it up best by something he mentioned in his talk, which I'll paraphrase: "The most wonderful thing about my parents is that they consider themselves to be just ordinary people." Listening to President Packer, you could tell he thought of himself as just an ordinary person. That his humility purified his words and made them powerful even though they were delivered undramatically. I could also sense that President Packer trusted the Spirit completely to guide what he said, and that he wasn't nervous at all. I couldn't imagine him being afraid of anything. That's what real faith is, I suppose.
Because of that, the conference was even better than I'd imagined. I think President Packer's unassuming counsel provided me with a clearer witness of his apostleship than the impassioned discourse I'd imagined would have.
This week Elder McIntosh shared with me an important insight he had about being a zone leader. He said that he felt we needed to care more about other missionaries' areas and even view them as our own, sacrificing more time from our area to go and help their investigators progress and to go and help them find new people. I pondered about this afterwards, especially with regards to key indicators, and I felt that there was no reason for our area to be getting really high key indicators if other areas in our zone were struggling - better to get the basic standard here and then spend the rest of our time working with other missionaries.
Then Elder McIntosh and I had a great opportunity to apply this idea yesterday. On Saturday night we had nine lessons set up for Sunday, eight of them with potential investigators. Essentially, our day was booked solid from the end of church to curfew. Lessons with potential investigators are notoriously unreliable, but we decided to exercise our faith, set a goal of 10 new investigators for the day, and (at Elder McIntosh's suggestion) fast throughout the day for success in achieving our goals. I wasn't too keen on the "fast all day" idea at first but decided I better not be a wet blanket and went along with it.
Unfortunately, some of our appointments fell through or turned out to be false as we tried to confirm them by phone on Sunday morning, and as the day progressed the remaining appointments fell through one by one. By about four in the afternoon, we had a lot of free time on our hands, which meant we would be doing some finding! We had already achieved the mission standard for quality gospel conversations, though, and so we decided to go to Crewe, where finding has been a bit tougher in past weeks, and help them for a couple of hours. I knocked one side of a street with Elder Larson and Elder McIntosh knocked the other side with Elder Breisch. It was a pretty normal day of tracting and we didn't get in any doors or set up too many appointments, but for some reason I felt amazing about it! Just really close to the Lord and the Crewe elders. We ended up getting 0 new investigators for our area but somehow I felt really successful and happy about how our fast and our day had gone. Later that night Elder Newson (the Crewe elders' district leader) thanked us for going up there and said it had meant a lot to Elder Breisch and Elder Larson. It meant a lot to me too - I feel a lot more faith in and love for our flock since then. I think that experience taught me what it really means to magnify my calling as a zone leader. Now I'm really excited to go and spend as much time as I can helping out my missionaries in their areas!
I'm humbled sometimes by how the Lord blesses us for doing simple things like thinking about our callings and praying and fasting. Late last night I realized that if Elder McIntosh and I hadn't been fasting we might have just gone home for tea in the afternoon and not even thought about going to Crewe. Good thing I listened to him. : ) I feel so blessed and so guided. This is really the Lord's work.
Love,
Elder Pimentel
P.S. Sorry about the mix-up with my email two weeks ago on the Wednesday instead of Monday. Our preparation day is indeed Monday, but In England Easter Monday is a bank holiday, which means all the libraries are closed. The Tuesday in that week was zone conference, so I wasn't able to email until Wednesday. I forgot to let you know about that the week before - my apologies.
In the spirit of repentance, be warned that next Monday (May 4) is also a bank holiday. So expect my email on Wednesday the 6th. : )
Sunday, May 3, 2009
from Jon 5/2
Subject: Kuv txais lub thawv
Nyob zoo!
I got the package! Ua tsaug 'os!
Did I tell you about how we (the Minneapolis and Brooklyn Park Hmong Elders) landed a record deal? One of the counselors to the Branch President liked the musical numbers we have done for a couple of past sacrament meetings so much, that he asked us if he could record us singing some hymns in Hmong so he could make a CD for members of the branch. We assumed he just wanted us to come over to his house and sing into a USB mic on his computer. Turns out he booked a recording studio in St. Paul for an hour. We practiced four or five songs for a week, then went and recorded them last Thursday. None of the Elders has any singing experience but me, and only one other had any musical experience. One of the Elders served four years in Iraq as artillery, and has experienced ear damage. He is virtually tone deaf, but miraculously, he is so flat that most of the time he sings a consistent major third below the melody, creating a lovely alto-like flavor. We ended up recording seven songs, and are waiting for the studio to edit and clean up the CD. The recording room was designed for one or two people only, and the owner was a little overwhelmed with the odd situation of having four tall Americans want to sing at the same time (he mostly get Hmong soloists). He had to do a lot of microphone adjusting. It was also very hot in there.
We had some incredible lessons this week. One was with a girl named Yer who has been very hesitant to come to church, and didn't really see the big importance of taking the gospel very seriously, and was mostly just curious. We took a joint teacher, and she (the joint teacher) did a wonderful job testifying and pouring out her heart with love toward Yer. They made a real connection, and the joint teacher invited her to church and said she can pick her up. The lesson was very spiritually charged.
Another lesson was with Zoua and her sister Ia. This was on the day of Zone Conference, where we just had a training on inviting for baptism on the first lesson. We have been working with Zoua since December, and she still hasn't come to church. Ia had just moved in, and this was our first time talking to her. We watched "The Testaments" because Zoua responded very well to "Finding Faith in Christ", and we really wanted her to feel something. Ia watched it with us, and afterward we talked about the Spirit, and testified of Christ and how we felt the spirit during the film. They felt it too, and we challenged them to be baptized. They accepted! Now we need to help them prepare. They planned to paint their house this Saturday and Sunday, but we are going to talk to their mom and offer to help them finish early so they can make it to church.
We may just baptize Nouchi with Misty as soon as Misty has her license, but we are going to do everything we can to prepare Chor, so he and Mee can join them. We are still trying to figure out what Chor's real concern is. It's a puzzle. We are praying.
I love you all! Kuv hlub nej sawvdaws! I look forward to talking to everyone on Mothars' Dee!
-Elder Moua Ying
Nyob zoo!
I got the package! Ua tsaug 'os!
Did I tell you about how we (the Minneapolis and Brooklyn Park Hmong Elders) landed a record deal? One of the counselors to the Branch President liked the musical numbers we have done for a couple of past sacrament meetings so much, that he asked us if he could record us singing some hymns in Hmong so he could make a CD for members of the branch. We assumed he just wanted us to come over to his house and sing into a USB mic on his computer. Turns out he booked a recording studio in St. Paul for an hour. We practiced four or five songs for a week, then went and recorded them last Thursday. None of the Elders has any singing experience but me, and only one other had any musical experience. One of the Elders served four years in Iraq as artillery, and has experienced ear damage. He is virtually tone deaf, but miraculously, he is so flat that most of the time he sings a consistent major third below the melody, creating a lovely alto-like flavor. We ended up recording seven songs, and are waiting for the studio to edit and clean up the CD. The recording room was designed for one or two people only, and the owner was a little overwhelmed with the odd situation of having four tall Americans want to sing at the same time (he mostly get Hmong soloists). He had to do a lot of microphone adjusting. It was also very hot in there.
We had some incredible lessons this week. One was with a girl named Yer who has been very hesitant to come to church, and didn't really see the big importance of taking the gospel very seriously, and was mostly just curious. We took a joint teacher, and she (the joint teacher) did a wonderful job testifying and pouring out her heart with love toward Yer. They made a real connection, and the joint teacher invited her to church and said she can pick her up. The lesson was very spiritually charged.
Another lesson was with Zoua and her sister Ia. This was on the day of Zone Conference, where we just had a training on inviting for baptism on the first lesson. We have been working with Zoua since December, and she still hasn't come to church. Ia had just moved in, and this was our first time talking to her. We watched "The Testaments" because Zoua responded very well to "Finding Faith in Christ", and we really wanted her to feel something. Ia watched it with us, and afterward we talked about the Spirit, and testified of Christ and how we felt the spirit during the film. They felt it too, and we challenged them to be baptized. They accepted! Now we need to help them prepare. They planned to paint their house this Saturday and Sunday, but we are going to talk to their mom and offer to help them finish early so they can make it to church.
We may just baptize Nouchi with Misty as soon as Misty has her license, but we are going to do everything we can to prepare Chor, so he and Mee can join them. We are still trying to figure out what Chor's real concern is. It's a puzzle. We are praying.
I love you all! Kuv hlub nej sawvdaws! I look forward to talking to everyone on Mothars' Dee!
-Elder Moua Ying
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