September 26, 2011

Hey family, how is everything going? Well things here are going great. We have had a fun week. There have been a lot of things that have been going on. Well, thanks again for the happy birthday wishes. They were really nice. Well, I had a great birthday. It was not bad at all. It was pretty cool though, we had a rendez-vous with one of our investigators and we found out he does not live in our area so we had to pass him. Sad - but it is ok. We have had to pass about 4 or 5 investigators this transfer. It kinda hurts but they are going good. I talked to one of the other elders we passed them to and he told us that they fixed a baptism date with one of them. So we are excited about that. Besides that, the investigators that we have are going great. Our investigator from Egypt is doing great. We had to give him 2 more weeks. He is so close. He is down to 2-3 cigarettes a day. He is cutting down. It is so good and yesterday at church he had a great interview with our bishop. It was awesome. He gave him great support and helped him out. Our goal is the 8th or 9th of Oct. so keep praying for him and he will make it. Our mother daughter team is going great. We had a rendez-vous with them last Saturday and we taught the Plan of Salvation. It went over well. I love the rendez-vous with them. They are funny. The daughter speaks English, Spanish and Polish. The mom speaks French, Spanish, and Polish. So, we teach the mom in French, ask questions to the daughter in English and then the daughter testifies in Spanish. So, we have all these language things going on. It is still awesome and we have great rendez-vous though. They feel the spirit and love it. Before the lesson the mom said she was scared about death. It is scary, but after we taught the lesson she had a lot more comfort as she realized that there is another life and that we can live together forever with our families. It was awesome to see how she changed and now has a better understanding of the gospel. They are going great. We also invited her to be baptized when she knows that it is true. She said “yes” but she wants to be a 100% sure that it is the true church before. They are awesome though. So those are some of the big things with our investigators. We have a couple that we are just starting to teach and hopefully they will be great. Another cool thing that happened yesterday - we had this great activity after church for the members and the missionaries. It was organized by our sister missionaries. It was an activity where the members and the missionaries could strengthen their faith. We had 3 stations - one was this video with Elder Nelson giving a little talk about member missionary work, the 2nd was a recent convert activity were the members asked questions about their conversion. Then there was a role play area. That is where I was. It is where the members act as themselves and the missionaries are their friend. The friends would ask a question and the members had to find a way to tie it in with the gospel. It was a great activity. After we had our bishop extend an invitation to have a friend ready by some date they pick to give to the missionaries. It was a great activity. Also, yesterday was one of the weirdest Sunday’s I think I have had. It started off ok then it was painful, then stress related, with an awesome activity and a good night. Well, we had to be at a members’ house at 7:30am to help him take some stuff to the church for the activity. We had to be at the church at 8:15am. Anyway, every Sunday I have a meeting with the leaders of the ward and talk about the work and stuff. Towards the end of the meeting my head started to hurt like no other. It started to kill me. I never felt like that before. I had to leave the first hour of church because it was so bad. It started to make me sick and to tell the truth it made me throw up. It was horrible. I never felt that much pain in my head before, but our DMP gave me some Advil and I was feeling great after that. I have no clue what happened but it sucked. It was just for the 1st hour also. Weird - but ok. Then the 2nd hour we were getting the sacrament ready and we ran out of sacrament cups for the water. So we were running around trying to find them. We were lucky and found just enough for the sacrament. After we found out we still needed some more though. We had to prepare 2 sacraments because this was the first week where they tried a sacrament in Chinese. It was so cool. They eventually want to open a Chinese branch here. It will be so cool. That was our 2nd hour. Then we had sacrament. Now that was fun. I am glad I participated in the scripture mastery in seminary. I helped translate and I was the one looking for scriptures. It was hard. You have like 5 seconds to find and read the scripture before the talker moves on. So they will say D&C 121:5 and you are flying through the scriptures. Then after a few you’re thinking I got this - it is all good. But you know what? I think the speaker knows how you feel – that you think you can handle it. They are just thinking ok I went easy on the scriptures, but try this on for size - D&C48:56 then Joshua 5 then after you have Mosiah 2. There! You shouldn’t have been just thinking you could handle it – YEAH - try to find all those in 5 seconds. So, you are flying through the scriptures and you miss them. Then all the English speakers are totally lost and have no clue what is going on and you are just freaking out. The speaker is just laughing thinking yeah, “I got ya.” It was fun though and we had a great time translating. After church and the activity we practiced for our last concert. It will be on the 9th of October. It should be great and hopefully we will have a great time. We have some great songs. Well that is my week. I love you and thanks for all that you do. BYE --
TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER