Week #7 April 23

Ni hao jiating(family),

I hope everything is going well. I hope Colby is feeling better. I'm sure it is a Stake Conference no one will ever forget. (Colby puked right on the bench) So first I'm gonna apologize, the MTC always has this weird "hard to tell what's going on" thing. Everyday is very redundant, and it feels like the same stuff happens every week. Last week's speaker was Elder Richard G. Scott. It was way cool to be in the same room as an apostle. He talked a lot about how our calls are divinely inspired. He talked about how important it is to develop a relationship with God through prayer. It was a great talk (what else can you expect from an Apostle). One interesting thing is he gave an apostolic blessing to all of us who are learning languages, that we will trust in the Savior, that we will be able to learn the language and teach his children in their own tongue. It already was a promise, but it was really cool to actually here an apostle promise us that specifically as an "apostolic blessing". Also, after he talked, we sang the closing hymn, and then as the sister who was going to say the closing prayer got to the pulpit, Elder Scott stopped her and said he still had a few more words to say. It was way cool, he basically said the same things, but it helped me know how important it was that he conveyed those messages to us.

 

Um... it's kinda exciting knowing we only have 2 weeks left.  I should be getting my travel plans this week, and getting my all Chinese inclusive name tag. We as a district are way excited. This week one of our investigators was worried about the word of wisdom, because he knew his family and leaders at work would expect him to drink tea. Yesterday I translated a story that I remembered Sister Gibson telling about President Gibson and comparing his inability to drink wine with his business partner's (whom were Jewish) not being able to eat pork. It was way cool to tell a story in another language, probably something I'm gonna start doing a lot more often.

 

So Sunday, we knew that the Men's Chorus was going to be singing, and after choir we saw a group of them walking towards 19M (the gym/devotional room) As I was getting to the end, guess who I saw. Kenny!!! We talked for like 15 minutes, It was really great to see him. I told him to send a text to you later, but he might have forgot what I told him to say, just in case. (Kenny, I am still waiting on that text, Debbie)

 

Dui, well I think that's everything. To practice my zhongwen I started listening to a few Mormon.org videos. You should definitely watch them, they are in chinese, and they speak really fast, but it has subtitles so you can understand.

 

I love everyone, thanks for writing me, tell Aunt Sherrie thanks so much for the stamps they arrived right on my P-day, so it was perfect, I'm gonna try and thank her personally today, but just in case I run out of time.  I love you all talk to next week.

 

Zaijian

Elder Brandon Bean