Well HELLO everyone!!
Spiritual experience first: Elder Goates and I reached out to a former investigator this past week because we felt prompted to as we were looking through our area book. Former missionaries dropped him because he had been investigating for years and wasn't progressing. He didn't want to make commitments and was kind of in a bad stage of life and was pretty sour. We gave him a call on Wednesday and the first thing he said when he answered was, "Who are you? I just had my leg amputated and am in therapy right now!" Somewhat surprised and concerned we let him know we were missionaries and we wanted to visit with him and he said, "Call me back tonight." 20 minutes later he called us back and asked if we were affiliated with the Mormon church. We said we were and he asked how soon we could come see him. We were available that night so we made plans to visit him in the care center he's staying at in Chandler. We went out to see him that evening and boy was he glad to see us! He said that he had thought that we had forgotten about him (which is kind of true!) and was very grateful to see us. He seemed very lonely and probably doesn't receive many (if any) visitors. He had had his leg amputated just a week or two before we called due to an injury from years before that had become infected. After the surgery he was actually a lot happier and optimistic about life because the infection had caused him to have a lot of negativity. He Is a good man and wants to progress in learning about the gospel again. We shared a Mormon Message about having hope in good things to come by Elder Holland and he felt like God was really reaching out to him.
Funny story: We were teaching our Chinese investigator who speaks broken English in one of the small classrooms at our church building the Plan of Salvation. At the end of the lesson I gave him the Plan of Salvation pamphlet in Chinese and pointed out on the last page where it talked about the 3 degrees of glory and what their names were. He looked at me in amazement and said, "Unbelievable! You read Chinese?!" I explained that I was just very familiar with the English pamphlet and knew where it would talk about the kingdoms and absolutely didn't know how to read Chinese at all! It was very funny and we had a good laugh.
Earlier this week in the morning we were teaching another lesson to our Chinese investigator! We were on Facetime with two fluent Chinese speakers and had other members with us teaching. The lesson was going really well!! (And that's because the Chinese speakers were doing most of the talking ;)) At one point our investigator was talking back and forth in Chinese with the members on Facetime and he was getting very excited! He turned to me and started talking in rapid Chinese without missing a beat! I looked at him very confused and told him, "Bruce, I don't speak Chinese!" He had gotten so excited about the lesson and being able to speak in Chinese he forgot that I couldn't speak it!
I crashed into the back of Elder Goates on Friday night! It was dark and rainy and I was looking down to keep the rain out of my eyes and looked up just in time to process that Elder Goates was at a stop at the red light 6 inches away from me. At nearly full speed I slammed into him. We both miraculously stayed on our bikes with absolutely no incident! In fact on my end it was a comfortable crash because he had a jacket in his backpack which during the collision was a pillow for my face :)
Thought for the week: Everyone has goals and desires. What is the key to achieving our goals? Here's the key to success: Willpower. Christ taught, "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." To walk the strait and narrow path to our goals (keep in mind a straight line is the quickest path to any destination) we have to be willing to limit, restrict, overcome, and do without things that are tempting. We have to set an undeviating course to achieve our goals if we ever want to achieve them.
I love you all, have a great week!!!
Love Elder Janis
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