Happy B-day EJ!

Dear Family,
   Sounds like it has been a great week! Can't believe Ethan is 12 years old.. that is awesome! So proud of that guy. I'll send you a little present today, EJ!
   This week has been good for us as well. Lily, her son James, andKyle were all baptized yesterday. James flew in to America on Wednesday, we taught him Thursday and Friday, and then baptized him on Sunday. It worked out great! All this time Lily had told us that hewas 8 years old, but Chinese people say their age by the year they'rein not by the actual date, but it worked out PERFECTLY because James' birthday was on Saturday... the day before! We didn't know that when
we set the date... but the Lord did. That was a miracle. Lily's husband came to church and was really touched by the baptism, we'll be working on him to be baptized in June :) He just has Word of Wisdom problems, but the other man that got baptized yesterday, Kyle, after he was baptized he bore his testimony about how the gospel helped him quit smoking and drinking, so it worked out perfectly. We're excited for the things to come.
   My companion is crazy trunky. He still works pretty hard, he justtalks about home A LOT.  I'm pretty sure I know everything about Snowflake, Arizona. This is the 3rd missionary I've sent home though so I'm kinda used to it. We had a trunky experience on Saturday. The English ward in the building we meet at held a "star wars marathon" at the stake center to find more investigators (yes, only in California would they do that) ... all 6 episodes in one day. One of our investigators sons (6 years old) asked if we could go and translate it for him... so we got permission from President. We watched half of episode 4 and we just couldn't take it anymore! haha. Star wars is hard to translate, there is no word for "storm trooper" or "death star". It was a good time though.

   Our zone has done AWESOME this month. We're so happy with all the missionaries in this zone. We set a goal of 12 baptisms for the zone, and we got 12. We set a personal goal of 4, and got 5! So the Lord has really been blessing us. President is happy and pleased, so that feels good.
  I love those pictures of Ty and Kalvin, hahaha. He's growing up so much, can't believe it. I'm excited to have yet another boy in the family! That's all we get, but none of us know anything different so it works out great! How many months is Kelly now?
  Well I love you guys, thanks for everything. I'm sorry if my emails
are boring, haha. Hope everybody is happy!

Mother's Day!

 (Ben skyped from this couples home for Mother's Day just hours after they were baptized!  So amazing!)

Fam,

  Long time no talk! It was so good to see you guys yesterday. Everybody looks so good! Noah looks so darn mature, I can't believe that. Don't let it get to his head! haha. I'm sorry if I didn't sound excited or anything, I was feeling kinda sick yesterday. But nonetheless it was still so good to talk to and see you all. Kalvy is all grown up and Asa is so cute.

  We got a call this morning from President, and we're having to work out an emergency transfer in our zone... so it's been kind of a hectic morning. But hopefully it will wake up some of the missionaries and make them start remembering why they're here. We have been blessed with a lot of really obedient missionaries in this zone, there's just those certain few that throw a rock into the picture :) I'm excited for a new week. We'll be working on turning all those people that came to church yesterday into solid good investigators. 2 families came yesterday, so we're excited about that. Families are a rare sight in the chinese ward. It's difficult sometimes, because chinese wards breed english wards here in america. The kids usually end up switching at some point. So growth is a difficult process in our ward. We just need the miracle of baptizing 100 families. Then all would be well :)

  Well. I pretty much told you guys everything about everything yesterday, so I don't really know what to say! Except that I love you guys like crazy. I'm grateful that I have such a good support base as a family. In todays world we see so many broken families, but it's good to know that ours never will be. love you guys!

Ben.

Great week

Family,

   It's sure great to be hearing about what goes on around at home, I'm grateful for that. Thank you for always keeping me updated. And that's cool about the Priesthood Training sessions you guys have, dad. It's amazing how much training and preparation the church does behind the scenes. It's definitely one of the most amazing aspects of the church. Information and knowledge is always being taught, trained, and passed down from the prophet and the apostles. I think thats why they structure missions like they do. Revelation is given to the president, taught to the assistants, trained to the zone leaders, trained to the district leaders, and then given to everyone else. They're training us to be future leaders in the church. So cool! Speaking of which, transfers calls were this weekend. Elder Fish and I will be going one more as Zone Leaders here in Rowland Heights. He goes home this transfer, so be expecting some changes in six weeks. My DREAM is that Elder Tryon will come and be a zone leader with me. We would do so well together. We'll see!

  This week has been so great. We are teaching so many people right now, it's hard to keep track of. We have a goal for 6 baptisms this month, and it's definitely feasible. Jonah and Autumn are getting baptized this Sunday, mothers day. :) They are so excited. Autumn is 8 months pregnant and HUGE, so that'll be interesting. We're praying she doesn't pop before she can be confirmed. Kyle will be baptized the week after. Jonah and Autumn introduced to two of their friends that should also be baptized soon. Lily introduced to her friend Sylvia, and they should both be baptized at the end of the month. Lots of miracles are happening. We're working hard, and could always be working harder. I'm excited for the things to come.

  I've been studying a lot this week about tender mercies from the Lord. I wanna copy an entry from my study journal this week.

   May 5th, 2012, "I'm thinking, mostly pondering about the Lord's tender mercies. I don't have a very clear question or goal in mind, other than I know I should be studying this. In D&C 46:15 it says about the Lord that he "[suits] his mercies according to the conditions of the children of men." This tells us and bears testimony that the Lord lives. He is not just some great unmeasurable power that is intangible and incomprehensible, but he is a living being that watches closely and cares deeply for each one of us. He gives us according to our needs. How do we continually receive and notice that we receive these tender mercies? Alma 34:38 puts it into great perspective... "Contend no more againts the Holy ghost, but that ye receive it, and take upon you the name of Christ; that ye humble yourselves even to the dust, and worship God, in whatsoever place ye may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that ye live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you." This scripture lists out some great things we are to do to show our gratefulness for receiving tender mercies, which I believe is also the way we continue receiving more of them. When we are grateful, the Lord is more willing to send more, because we notice more. I love the line "live in thanksgiving daily"... the word 'live' has an obvious conotation to words like 'continuously' or 'without stopping'. In other words, giving thanks is not an action we perform, but a state of being that we live in, in which if we live in that state, his grace and mercies are abundantly upon us. No matter who you are, or what skills or talents you have or don't have, this principle and promise are the same. Truly the Lord is more concerned with our availability, not our capability, because he knows our possibility."

  

  I'm so grateful for morning studies. I don't know what I'd do without them.

  Well. I love you guys. By the way I'll be using skype next week to talk to you guys... :) Can't wait! See you guys Sunday!

love, Ben.

Extending for Life!

HELLOOOO.

  I love this week. The Lord is just pouring out blessings on this area right now, and all I can pray for is that my weaknesses won't get in the way of the work. Everybody we're finding is prepared, and it's just a miracle. Alice brought her daughter to church yesterday, and we're meeting with her this week. That family will soon be completed! President Becerra came to our ward yesterday and dominated Alice and her daughter with the spirit, so she pretty much has no choice now. :) We're also working with another incredible couple, Jonah and Autumn (we named them). They're from Beijing and came here to have their first baby, they're going back in July. They found us through english class. They came to church yesterday, and the gospel principles teacher (GENIUS) got them to come up in front of the class and share their feelings on prayer. Autumn sounded like a prophet! She was so profound. The crazy thing is, she has grown up a qiancheng (you'll have to look up the translation, I can't remember) buddhist her whole life, and over the course of a week and a half, her and her husband can't go a day without reading the scriptures and praying together. I LOVE THE SPIRIT. Also, Lily is doing great as well. She has been SO involved in every church activity so far, and we are hardly even doing anything. She came to our stake's Mormon Helping Hands service project. She has made so many friends and the ward loves her. She has a goal to be baptized with her husband and son on June 17th (they don't come to America until May 23rd). Alice referred one of her friends from work to us, Kyle, and he has a goal to be baptized on may 20th. He gave up smoking last Tuesday, and gave up drinking yesterday! The spirit has just been working on him like crazy. ANOTHER miracle is, we were filling up gas the other day, and Elder Fish felt prompted to talk to the guy next to us, his name's Jack. Turns out he had met with missionaries 4 years ago, before he joined the navy. We met with him 2 days later, and he told us about his struggle to have the spirit with him at all times. The last time he was baptized, he wasn't required to make any changes in his life and he felt like he was still living an unclean worldly life, and he wants to change that. He has a goal to be baptized on May 27th. We met with him and our Stake President last night (his english is pretty good), and set up a plan to reach his baptismal date with him.  We have a goal to baptize every week of next transfer... and I really believe we can accomplish that goal.

  My favorite thing about being a zone leader is doing baptismal interviews. I interviewed a young lady named Sarah the other day, and it was a sweet experience. She told me of the changes she's had to make in accepting the gospel, and the experience she had when she knew the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. The spirit prompted me to have her write her testimony in a new Book of Mormon, and she committed to give it out within a week of her baptism. It's just amazing. There really is no way this gospel cannot be true, the spirit works on people in ways that are unimaginable and indescribable. It changes people for the better, and only for the better. I know the gospel is true.

 Well I love you guys. CONGRATULATIONS to Noah on getting his eagle. I told you I didn't think you'd get it before I came home, and you proved me wrong. Like usual. Can't wait to see baby Asa. It's sooner than I can even comprehend. I don't wanna go home... I'm extending for life.

 

Ben.

Happy Easter!

 

Hey Family,

  Is it just me or have you guys been getting sick more than usual since I've been gone? I feel like I read that all the time, haha. I really hope everyone is getting better. Easter season is a good time to remember that when we'll resurrect we'll have perfect bodies! What a great blessing. Noah made Encore eh? Man that guy has just too much talent. Congratz, bro. P.S. when is the baby coming? this month right? goodness.

  Our P-day is switched to today this week, because we just had the opportunity to go do a session at the temple. It was incredible. I went into the temple with a question, and came out of the temple with much more. I'm excited to have more things to study. :) I love the temple.

  This week has been quite full of miracles. I had the most spiritual day of my life this last Thursday. I was on exchanges with Elder Lindsay, and I don't know why but the Lord decided to teach us a lot of things that day. It was such a happy day, the spirit was almost tangible. I really don't even know how to explain it in words, it was just super great. Then on Friday we had a mission conference, which was also incredible. At the end, after President had talked for a while and the spirit was really strong, President said, "A man holding the Melchizedek Priesthood has the power to bless..." Then, from the pulpit, he pronounced a blessing on every missionary . Angels were in that building that day, nobody could deny that. It was just amazing.

  Alice will be getting baptized this week, and possibly brother and sister H---. I don't know if I ever talked to you guys about them. They are cousins of a member that came to America to have their 2nd baby. They came to church and loved it, and Brother H--- has been reading conference ensigns and just trying to take in as much knowledge as he can. We haven't been able to meet with them for the past month because she just had her baby, but we finally met on Sunday. We will find out if they want to be baptized later tonight... we're praying for them. They go back to Shanghai next week, so they'd have to be baptized and confirmed this Sunday! Exciting.

  I love it out here... Driving back from the temple today we drove through my first area, Alhambra. It made me think how much I'm going to miss California. The perfect weather, the food, the psychos... haha. For the first time ever I actually feel like I could live here. At least here in Rowland Heights. It's so pretty. Anyways, I hope every one starts feeling better. I love you guys. Have a good week!

 

Love, Ben.

Conference

Helloooo family.

 

  Conference was incredible. I learned so much, and so many prayers were answered! I loved Richard G. Scott's talk about receiving revelation, as well as Elder Holland's. And the last 3 seventies in sunday afternoon. and pretty much everybody's. By the way, I'm calling it right now, Ronald A. Rasband and L. Whitney Clayton are the next apostles. Just letting you guys know. I feel like the resounding theme of the whole conference was love and charity. They talked so much about how we should treat others. I loved it. We watched it at the stake center, and I watched it in english. Watching it in chinese is just not the same, the voices aren't as powerful as the brethren, and the jokes they make don't make sense, haha. English is just the best. Good news! You know how I talked about an investigator named Alice a couple weeks ago? How she was awesome but then moved to San Diego? Yeah, she moved back. Pretty awesome story. Elder Fish and I were on bike, and we had some time just to go talk to people, but we weren't sure if should follow our plan we made the night before or go to someplace new. We decided that if our planning was inspired like it should be, then the Lord would lead us to the people we needed to see that day. We locked our bikes up against a fence, and the moment I looked up I saw Alice on the other side of the street, she had just gotten off the bus. We saw each other at the same time and she was super excited to see us. We ran over to her and set up an appointment. When we met with her the next day she told us that when she saw us the day before, she had gotten off the wrong bus stop. Man, just think if she would have kept going or got off one stop earlier? We wouldn't have found her again. The Lord truly maps out every moment in order to fulfil his commandments. She's getting baptized on the 15th :)

   I'm excited for this next week. I feel like a lot of good will get done. I'm looking forward with an "eye of faith" like it says in Alma 32. I love the Aw (pronounced oh) family that I'm living with. Sister Aw always makes us homemade bread and it's the best. Before I leave them I wanna get them some nice gift. We'll see. Anyways I love you, family. I pray for you guys every day. Especially for EJ and Noah lately. They're growing up in a terrible world! But they're lucky they live in the best family ever.

 

Love, Ben.

New Week!

Good morning everybody.

   I'm glad to hear everyone is feeling better. I think they've passed the sickness over here :) haha, I've been catching a nasty cold these past few days. But I'm all right, the work is moving forward. I'm so excited for the upcoming General Conference. I feel the same way as you, pops, conference seems to come right in time. Some stresses have been piling up, but I think the thing that has been piling up the most lately is my faith. I feel that my faith lately has been almost tangible. I don't really know how to explain it, but explainable and unexplainable things have been happening that are fruits of faith. Faith truly is the essence behind everything we do. This week Elder Fish and I along with President gave a training to all the ward mission leaders in our stake. As I thought contemplating what I would train them on during my part, I read through Preach My Gospel to figure something out that might just click with them, but honestly nothing was clicking with me. After studying more, I decided that we just needed to talk about faith with them. We started the meeting by asking them what makes a golden investigator and a lame investigator (most of them being returned missionaries). They made a long list for both, saying golden investigators "listen, ask questions, keep commitments" and so on. The list for the not-so-golden investigators was just the opposite. They couldn't really catch on where we were going with it for a while until we said "We need you all to be "golden investigators" in this training tonight." We bore testimony of having faith that the spirit would whisper something to them if they were praying for us and for themselves throughout the whole meeting. The spirit was extremely strong, you could see that everyone was so engaged and full of faith, I'd say the meeting was a complete success. Much revelation was received by all of us. I have so much more to say about what I've learned about faith this week, but I just don't know how to put it into words! "To put it simply, faith is power." - Gene R. Cook.

   We've been working a lot with a few less-active members in our ward, and been having good success. Our investigator pool is slowly growing, but growing nonetheless. We're currently teaching 4 pregnant woman, haha. They are all good friends and it's been a good time teaching them. They've asked us to give all their babies english names, but none of them seem to like the name "Benjamin" though, haha. I think it's great. We're praying that the gospel will touch them soon enough that they'll have the desire to be baptized. We haven't baptized all year! It's kinda discouraging, but at the same time I feel like it's just around the corner. We're praying for that miracle family... One of our pregnant investigators, Tracy, has a super awesome 5 year old son named Tiger that loves primary, it's been way cool so be apart of 'cause we hardly ever get to work with children.

  Well. I'm super excited for general conference. We'll be watching it at the chapel, and hopefully we'll get 5-6 investigators there to watch it in chinese. Hope that everything goes well with Noah's singing thingy! And I hope that everyone is happy. Love you guys!

 

Ben.