I'm gonna find out if this book is from Heaven or Hell!

Quote of the week explanation

(Translated from Mandarin)

We had a very eventful week, and one of the big happenings was a lesson with a Chinese woman we found tracting a few weeks ago. I'll just explain the whole thing right at the start here, so that we can avoid any confusion later on. Her name is Mrs. Liang (although her main language is Cantonese, so she introduced herself as Mrs. Leung... It may seem like a minor difference but the second one is much more difficult to pronounce). This was our second meeting with her; the first one we just talked for a few minutes and taught her briefly because she had forgotten that she had invited us back, and was in the middle of making dinner. But, this Friday when we went over, she let us have a full-on lesson. We brought along one of our members who speaks Cantonese, which helped both us and her feel more comfortable. We read Alma 32 with her and talked about the importance of faith. It was a great discussion, and we saw Mrs. Liang turn from someone who was just too nice to turn us away into someone who actually wants to continue meeting with us. At the end, as we were inviting her to keep reading the Book of Mormon, she said that she was going to read it to find out if it was "from Heaven or Hell." So that's some good progress from the beginning, when we thought she wasn't even that interested at all.

‘Allo

As I mentioned at the beginning, this week was a busy one. We had a bunch of lessons and stuff that were pretty good. 

Allow me to elaborate.

So first off, Joan. We had a lesson scheduled for Wednesday, but she texted us a half hour before to cancel. At first, we were disappointed, but then we thought... Why not just go over anyway? We always meet her at her place of work, so we just showed up and she told us that she actually did have time to meet with us (imagine that)! We just talked for a little bit because she still didn't have a ton of time, but we had to change her baptismal date to the 26th because we still do have quite a bit to discuss (not the least of which are the commandments). She is still super awesome though, and wants to be baptized. We will be teaching her again tonight, and our ward mission leader is coming along as a member present, so that will be good.

We also met with Iris. It has been a little difficult to maintain contact with her over the last few weeks, mainly because she is retiring and has a few more things going on as well, so she doesn't have a whole lot of time. On Thursday we decided just to knock on her door at around the same time in the evening as when we first found her. She opened her door. She started, at first, to pull the classic "I'm busy" card, but she stopped herself halfway through and invited us to come in. We sat down and taught an impromptu plan of salvation lesson. It was pretty good. She told us that she would always listen to what we had to say, and the whole plan of salvation made sense to her, even the parts that may not completely agree with her traditional Christian background. She agreed with it all as well, and was making comments about, to give just one example, how it is completely logical that the fall of Adam was a positive step, even though that's not what she was brought up believing. We have another appointment with her today as well, so that will be exciting.

And last but not least... Anthony. We had a crazy lesson with him, quite possibly the most intense of my mission. It started Saturday morning, really. Our lesson wasn't until that afternoon, but we called him in the morning to confirm... No answer. We went over at our scheduled time anyway, hoping that he'd be home. He was, in fact, he was sitting outside on the steps up to his door. He was smoking. He told us that he didn't know if he'd be able to have a lesson with us today because of some excuse that I'm pretty sure he made up on the spot, but after a minute of talking to him outside he consented and let us in. We sat down on the chairs we always sit on, and right at the get-go Anthony told us that it was "too late" for him, meaning that, in his mind, he could never change religions and was only meeting with us to help us practice our teaching and fill our schedule. As you can imagine, that is not exactly what we wanted to hear coning into a lesson with someone who we thought was really solid. We went with our planned lesson, which was reading from the Book of Mormon with him and discussing it. We read Alma 34, and as we went through, we saw Anthony begin to change. We had a good discussion as we were reading the chapter, and after reading the last verse Anthony stopped and looked at it for a moment. There was a pause in the conversation as he looked from his Book of Mormon up to us, and told us that he felt like the Book of Mormon was speaking directly to him. We held a brief discussion about the importance of the scriptures in providing council in our life, and he completely flipped from what he was saying at the beginning. We invited him to read the next several chapters of Alma, and he eagerly accepted. So that was pretty crazy.

Those were the main events of the week, really. The rest was a lot of finding and other activities like unto it. We have a few return appointments from those efforts, although we're not sure how solid any of them are. We'll just have to wait and see.

Until we find out, however, I will just leave you with this.

See you

-Bennnnnnnnnnn

P.S. There's this dead raccoon that's been decomposing on the side of the freeway near our apartment for a few weeks now. Every time we pass we check on it's progress , and this week it was looking really pretty dismal. We saw it yesterday and it was more of a furry puddle than a former animal. As we passed, my companion uttered perhaps the most valid description of the beast: "It's a flat boy..."

P.P.S. In case you were wondering, I have met someone named Paul since I've been on my mission. I know you were worried about that.

P.P.P.S. The Kirtland temple