Ni Ha!! (Hello in Chinese sounded out in English :D)
This week was really great and we kept sharing the awesome Easter videos with everyone we could. Those videos really open the doors. I wish we could use those all year long. Free speech alley is starting to die down for the semester since everyone is in the process of last minute cramming for their finals in two weeks. Apparently this coming week is dead week here on campus, so we are really trying to buckle down before people start moving away for the summer!
As y'all can see with the Chinese header, we had to put our Chinese interpretation skills to the test this week. The other night we met a small family in one of the apartment's in our same complex outside "enjoying" the humidity. The grandma speaks literally 0 English, and the wife speaks a small amount. The husband is a grad student here at LSU and so luckily he speaks English pretty well! They have two little boys and became Christian about a year ago after moving here to Baton Rouge. Anyways they were so kind and invited us in to talk with them more about Jesus Christ. We ended up teaching them most of the Restoration lesson and the husband C-long was able to help translate. It was neat too, because they had this massive Bible that had the verses in English and the Chinese translation right next to them. So, We were able to use scriptures and pictures to better explain the lesson since even the wife Fungyan (there is no way I spelled that right haha) couldn't read English at all just speak a small amount. It was really cool and we were able to go back later in the week and bring them a Book of Mormon in Mandarin Chinese that we conveniently had in our apartment :) hmm. It was such a cool spiritual experience, because though I couldn't perfectly communicate with them the spirit was able to guide us to certain scriptures that I know touched their hearts. As they would read out loud in Chinese we would follow along in English and the spirit was still the same :) They are in the process of moving so we are going to refer them to other missionaries in BR.
One fun experience this week was as we were out tracting at an apartment complex we saw a bunch of guys playing B-ball at an outside court. It had been a bit of a long day, so we decided to take 30 minutes and befriend a few ball players. It turned out to be too much fun as a little pick-up game started up haha. Out in our white shirts, ties, dockers, and amidst the heat and humidity it was pretty intense :D If I may say so myself, I think we made a good impression that these white boys from out west can ball a little bit. It was so funny, because one of the guys was like, "man, those Mormons are ballers" haha. Anyhow one of the guys gave us a ride to our next place and we were able to talk with him quite a bit! The rest of the day we were soaking wet though you just don't ever get dry at that point hehe.
On Saturday we were able to teach our good buddy George again! We went over to his house across the lake and we were able to talk with his brother Bentley more as well. George asked us about the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ and we were able to share with him the visitation of Christ to the people in the Americas in 3rd Nephi 11. What was really awesome was that later in the chapter it talks about how the people were baptized by the proper authority once they knew of Christ. It was amazing because George was able to answer his own questions and without us even saying much mentioned that he wants to continue thinking about being baptized by full immersion! That family is getting baptized I just know it! It might not be while I am here, but it will happen :) The whole family was planning to make it to church, but they texted us Sunday morning that they were having a rough morning... Well, even in remembering the story of Joseph Smith's first vision Satan will always make his attempt. They are planning for next week though!
And Easa has just been so busy lately, but we had such a great lesson with him about experimenting on the word and diving in! He said he would make it a priority to truly know if it is true!
Last funny story of the week: So last Sunday a massive group of like 30 RM's from BYU-Idaho down here for Summer Sales came to Church and literally doubled our YSA ward haha. This Sunday two of them Brady and John came out tracting with us :D Just picture this: Two RM sales man driving this white ghetto van that they drove across the country with over over 250,000 miles on it with two elders in the back and they are giving out restoration pamphlets to the "potential investigators" a.k.a good looking females in the other cars at the stop lights. Of course I couldn't tell since I am on my mission :) Hahaha you can imagine though... It was pretty funny! Anyways, we went on splits and talked to so many people! I went with Brady who served his mission in Mexico and we had a blast. We really had a ton of success sharing the peaceful message of the gospel with those preparing for coming tests. We were able to teach two people how to do personal prayers and prayed with them. Many of them as we asked them about prophets truly seemed to wonder if there was a prophet on the Earth today. So Josh if you go do summer sales this summer you better go out there with the missionaries on Sundays :) It was a great time! "Oh you aren't religious at all, well may we interest you in a security system ;) jk!
Well, it was a great week. I love y'all and hope all is well! I know that the gospel is so true and sometimes wonder why people aren't so quick to jump on it. I have been blessed to realize that true happiness often requires us to sacrifice. As difficult as it can be to ask these college students to change, it is the most fulfilling thing I have ever done. I love being a missionary, and how great is my joy.
Love,
Elder Wilson
