Sorry about the lack of email's the past couple weeks, so we
totally set aside time for emails last week, but we get to the library, and I
get all settled in and ready to share my personal small plates of Alex Burr and
we get a call from our Ward Mission Leader and the Branch President all wanting
to move around our investigators baptismal date, it was an intense hour and a
half but it all worked out good. So last week, I guess you could say I was too busy
to email because I was baptizing, which seems like a pretty good deal!!!
So this Saturday, Lisa got baptized!! If you don’t know
Lisa, she is Betal Liu's wife. If you don’t know Betal Liu, let me refer you
back to my November emails. So about a month after I came to Los Angeles, Betal
was baptized. He was taught by Elder Bergeson and Elder Bowman. A week after he
was baptized, Elder Bergeson’s time was up and he went home, so Elder Bowman
and I started to teach him the New Convert Lessons. And His wife started to sit
in on the lessons! So as we taught the lessons to Betal and Lisa learned them
for the first time because before she didn’t have an interest, but after seeing
the change in her husband, she wanted to learn more and at the beginning of
like our 2nd lesson she just comes up to us and said "I want to be
baptized, I want to be sealed in the temple". It was so awesome. It was such a miracle from
the Lord that she turned towards the Gospel, because when I first met her, she
had no interest at all. But she started praying with her husband, she came to
church to see him get confirmed, she was touched by the spirit and she knew it
was true. That was what turned her heart around, the spirit of Christ which is
in all of us, that helps us realize our divine heritage!! It was also so awesome seeing Betal baptized
her! A complete family, that’s pretty cool to think about.
Sunday came, and it was Fast Sunday, Samson and Tiffany and
Betal all shared their testimonies. Samson is so funny, he shared a story that
they were up in Chinatown shopping on the day of Lisa’s baptism, and Tiffany
wanted to go to this one shop or something and when they finally made it there,
it was time to turn around and come to the baptism, and she did. Samson said
something like, “changing a girl is hard,
changing a girl that loves to shop is impossible, but the gospel can do
anything." haha it was way funny, everyone in the Branch loves them.
So Darren and Wenqi are getting baptized this Saturday, they
are also a hilarious young couple that I love and care for with all my heart.
So they were being taught back in like September and were all ready to be baptized
but they had to go back to China and get married, so they left for China and
when they came back in January, they were a little different. They had not been
reading or praying and they really had lost their faith and didn’t want to be
baptized anymore, but it was such a
miracle, we had Samson and Tiffany go with us to a lesson, and them sharing
their own experience and their own testimonies of faith and enduring to the
end, really changed them, and Darren and Wenqi started to coming to Church
again and reading and they found their faith. It was such a miracle that Samson
and Tiffany got baptized when they did, they are so similar to Darren and Wenqi
and were the perfect match for them!
Well, transfers also came, Elder Bowman is going to UCLA and
I am staying in the Branch down in Palos Verdes/ Torrance. BUT they are
splitting our area so 2 Chinese elders will have PV and 2 will have Torrance.
So I am moving apartments, which I am pretty happy for because I am sick of
having to massacre the ants that invade our apartment every night at like 4 in
the morning. My new companion is Elder Chun from Hong Kong, so his dirty Cantonese
will corrupt my dirty Mandarin!! He came in a couple months after me, which
means I am going Senior....whatever that means. JK I know what that means, ya
li duo yi dian!! MORE PRESSURE!! But hey, if we never had trials or stresses in
our life, we would never become the person God wants us to be. So many times we
see people who are comfortable in their life. Whether you are on the mission or
at home, the rule still applies, you are either moving forward or you are
moving backwards. I am so grateful I have a loving perfect Heavenly Father who
gave me the opportunity to have ETERNAL progression, and who gave me this time
on Earth to prepare for that life. I am so grateful that he loves me enough to
hurt me, so that when I return to live with Him, I am ready, and I become the
person He knew I could be.
I love you all so much, I know I am forgetting something,
but it will have to wait.
-Elder Burr
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| Betal and Lisa Liu |
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