Dear family and friends,
So this is the first transfer that nothing about my companionship
or area has changed. Elder Stone and I are still companions. Elder Stone
is now the new district leader! Elder Fiala left and Elder Bardsley has
come in. I'm not sure if that's spelled right. He's really cool. He's
one above me, so I knew him in the MTC. I'm way excited. This is his
first time as senior, so he's all excited and whatnot. So Elder Stone is
on his 8th transfer, Elder Bardsley is on his 7th, and I'm on my 6th.
And then Elder Hanset is on his 3rd... Haha.
So last Tuesday we did district leader exchanges and Elder Fiala
came with me in my area. It was pretty fun. We ate at my favorite bread
place for dinner. There is no other bread like it here. Then that night
we had a new member lesson with Zhu Zhang Qi. It was pretty good. They
also fed us curry and rice. So I was about to explode by the end. But
then the rest of the night kind of fell apart. So Zhou Heng (member that
comes around with us often) took us to a former that he knew about and
we were able to sit with him, but no luck in getting him interested
again.
Wednesday we went looking for some less actives only to find out
that a few of their addresses don't exist. So that was fun. Following
that, we ate at Feed Me. It has a supersize burger. I got the supersize
spicy chicken and Elder Fiala got the supersize hamburger. It was so
intensely painful to eat. It was big. We then headed over to the church
because our investigator Liu dixiong said he was outside the gate. He
sounded pretty worked up. So when we got there, we found him and an 11
year old ward member sitting on the curb. Liu was pretty worked up and
the boy was comforting him. Turns out that he was just on his way home
from school and stopped to help. I just thought that that was such a
great example of Christlike character. The boy didn't know what he was
getting himself into, and was actually pretty nervous and scared in the
end, but stayed all the way through until we got there. Liu dixiong has
had some problems come up, so we gotta keep working with him. We then
went to thank the boy afterwards. Then we hopped on a train and headed
to Tianzhong to find a recent convert that has gone less active. I've
never met him, and we were so close, but his dad said he was out with
friends. So we found and sat with another less active. He's planning on
coming to our two ward Christmas party. After that we returned home
and headed to English class party. A cool ward member beat me in bobbing
for apples and still hasn't stopped letting me know. Then we went
caroling. While caroling, we got turned down a ton. But there was this
one older lonely man that had this huge smile on his face as we sang to
him. That was just what he needed. I'm so glad we got to touch his
heart. That was a really cool experience.
Thursday and Friday have morphed together in my head. We went to
find a former that was really close to getting baptized. He willingly
welcomed us in and talked to us for a while. But he says that he doesn't
have interest in church anymore. The whole experience felt weird.
There's something that is stopping him, we want to know how we can help
him. But he wouldn't let us know. We also biked out to one of our more
far away areas of Beidou and ate lunch at the really nice 3 week old
McDonald's. Then we were able to sit with a former family that has a lot
of potential. The dad just has a very shifty work schedule, so it's
hard for them to come to church. But they were very nice. Then we found a
secret less active. He's not on the ward list because he went less
active and then moved without anyone knowing. He still believes it's all
true, but his work schedule doesn't allow him to come to church. We've
thought of a few ways to help him, so we're going to keep working with
him through the ward. He knows a member family that lives near him
already. So that's really convenient!
Saturday we had a mission wide service day. Our zone went to a
hospital and caroled and shared the Christmas story with all the
patients. We also got to act it out for the retirement center. It was a
lot of fun. They shared some of their talents as well. It was fun. Then
we had a lesson with Zhang dixiong. His wife is a member and helped
peike. They brought pizza to us for dinner. We were talking about
promptings of the Holy Ghost. His wife is the Friday night gospel class
teacher. She helped out a lot. We still need to keep working with him
though.
Sunday was all over the place for church. We have been meeting with
this long term investigator. Missionaries have been meeting with him
for a long time. He's an older guy that's loud and loves to joke around.
We finally got him to come to church. We walked with him there. Once we
got there, we were surprised to find out that he's actually a less
active! Some of the older members knew him. Turns out he was baptized a
long time ago, went less active 7-10 years ago, his address on the ward
list was wrong and has been marked as not real, and somewhere in the
switch of many missionaries and poor record keeping became an
investigator to the missionaries. Whenever we bring up baptism, he says
he doesn't understand. So that might have caused the confusion. It was
way weird though. Hong dixiong also came and had to leave early. He's so
good, but can never stay for the full time! And he's busy during the
week, so we only see him on Sunday mornings. We had a contacted referral
come as well. He was contacted by the other Yuanlin Elders. Turns out
he's actually in their area. So next week he'll meet in their ward. What
luck... It was quite a weird day. It gets weirder, but to know about
that, you have to write me an ask about it first... Haha!
I love you all! Christmas is next week! Keep spreading the holiday
cheer. Remember the origin of the holiday cheer: Christ, our Savior
being born into the world. Through all the pains and turmoil of the
world, always remember that a Savior is born to save all mankind.
Love, Elder Anthony Buckwalter
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