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YES! Memorizing the baptismal prayer in the MTC finally paid off. This weekend I got to baptize our investigator Bo Yang. It may have taken 14 months to use those white pants we got at Sea Gull Books, but they were nice and crisp when I put them on, so all is good!

It was just a super funny and happy baptism. I will be honest, I was not sure if Bo Yang was ready to be baptized, he was just a little....off at times. But in the last 2 weeks leading up to the baptism, I have just seen him so happy and just a better person that by the time Sunday rolled around, I knew it would be fine. (I am still praying it will be fine though) He is just a little bipolar, BUT his family is a SUPER powerful family back in Beijing and his mom will check out the Church. Next Stop, the Forbidden City Temple 2024!! 

Oh man, giving a baptism interview was wild. I was super happy that the guy I was interviewing was super prepared. I had taught him 1 or 2 times before, but I really didn’t get to know him until the interview. The Chinese District is slowing down a little bit, so hopefully Elder Zhang and I can pump some fire into it and get it going again so we can have some more baptisms!

MOM! I met someone from Tuen Mun but I didn’t know where your house was, where is your house?? 

So I gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting (English- no worries) and the subject was "What was your favorite conference talk" and the one that I picked was "Lord, is it I" by President Uchtdorf in the Priesthood Session. So I picked that one because it is something I have had to apply a lot on my mission and it is something that I hope to apply after and that I can help the members here apply in their own live. For those of you who don’t wear suit pants and didn’t go to Priesthood Session, it’s about humbling ourselves and giving ourselves, not our neighbors, an examination. Too many times in my life have I felt that something pertaining to the Gospel was good for other people, but I was the exception. This was just the pride of the natural man talking. I also really liked that talk because it talked about the promised blessing of humble, sincere, self-evaluation is enduring and deep conversion. I especially like that part, because that is what it is all about, our individual conversion and our personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Sometimes, it is hard to know what success is. Is it the baptisms, the number of lesson, the contacts? My mission President stated that "the success of a missionary is defined, not by numbers, but how deeply he is converted to the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. Then in the talk, Pres. Uchtdorf talks about a ward that had a high percentage of church attendance and home/visiting teaching, but after a while, 11 marriages had ended in divorce. He talked about on the outside they were all successful church goers and members, but on the inside, they had distanced themselves from the gospel. We can’t let these outward things gauge and define our testimonies and conversion, because then we will just be fooled into thinking we are strong and when the storms rage, we will fall. Now, I don’t have a perfect solution for conversion, but I know that repenting helps ALOT!! Humbling yourself, moving forward, changing, and most importantly partaking of Christ’s Atonement leads to deeper conversion. And then striving to have the spirit with us.

I am so happy that I can be our here, thanks for the package this week, it really does make me feel so happy. I hope everything is going well!! If you have time, send some pictures of whats going on. I will also start taking more pics!