Greetings and Salutations!
Pretty fun preparation day Monday. We met up with some other elders and went to the zoo! It was way hot and we were sweating buckets but it was all worth it when I saw a panda. Yes my favorite animal ever, I saw it in the flesh... behind some glass too. It was awesome! We saw some other cool animals too and as we kept on walking through we found more and more missionaries! There were so many at the zoo we had no idea. It was loads of fun and made for a good day. We got back to work and had dinner with a less active and then contacted some English class referrals we received recently.
Tuesday was a tiring day! We had lots of biking. Reminded me of the good old 鳳林 days of course. We biked to District Council and had a great talk about desire and achieving what we want this new transfer starting this week. It was good and with the other companionship switching to sisters it was the last time all my cowboys will be on the ranch together. Sad to see them leave but such will happen with the passage of time. We enjoyed a nice lesson tonight with a man expressing great interest in the church and he set a baptismal goal for August. I am very confident he will hit his goal. That was the heaviest hitting part of the day, the rest of the day was just studies and meals. Elder Yang and I had great time bonding sharing MTC memories! We both agreed it would be fun to go back now.
Wednesday was a good day! The morning we spent inside because Elder Yang took his Book A test, and he passed!! I was able to give him all of my flashcards and it was quite a weight off for me. I'm so proud of my companion and the work he puts into his English. We also had a lesson at a place for mentally disabled people and the man we met with was actually pretty sound and he seems to have enough interest so we will come back and continue teaching him! I will be interested to see where that leads us. We also had English Class and it was good. Talked about history and then our spiritual share was about family history and I invited a member to come and share. He knocked it out of the park and I definitely felt the spirit testify of family history to me. It is such a great thing!
Thursday was a good day. We had 2 different member visits and we originally had an investigator set up but that didn't quite work out so we had to reschedule him. The two members were cool. One was a young man getting ready to go on a mission and we had lunch with him and invited him to start practicing sharing the gospel with his friends so it'll be cool to hear his experiences. The other member visit was interesting. She's less active, but has strong faith. She just doesn't feel like she can come to church. Meeting with her is interesting because she asks us these deeper level gospel questions and tries to get answers to those but yet she doesn't even address her simpler problem of not going to church! I think it's pretty interesting how she prioritizes it. We are working on getting her back to church. We also started a new transfer and even though things didn't change for Elder Yang and me, we got 2 new district members and they seem really fun and we will have a party this transfer for sure.
Friday was pretty great. Elder Yang and I had a nice day and we decided to walk around. It wasn't too hot and we got to talk a lot more than we do when we bike everywhere. We also had our weekly planning session and Elder Yang and I had a constructive discussion about our goals for this transfer and how we want to work this transfer to be more unified. I felt very lifted up walking away and my companion is seriously so awesome. We set some great goals and we are going to have a great transfer together. Sadly, we ended the day getting stood up by the same person that stood us up last week. Pretty big bummer but the world still spins and we are doing what we can. Can't ask for more.
Saturday was a pretty good day. We had a good morning doing some studies and whatnot and then we got stood up by a member which was pretty surprising since we also got stood up by our investigator it made for a great day of fulfilling prophecy. We tried to find some formers and turns out the address didn't exist. We are slowly cleaning up the Area Book and getting it all nice and clean for future missionaries. I had an interesting thought though. In language study, I started translating a talk for Elder Yang and during this process (still in progress) I thought about Joseph Smith and the translation of the Book of Mormon. Considering my Chinese knowledge is fairly decent and I'm still taking such a long time to do it. I absolutely know Joseph Smith had the power of God with him to translate the Book of Mormon! Considering he wasn't learned in any ancient languages and his English skills were poor as well only the hand of God could have done that! It's truly miraculous!
Sunday was insane. We had a normal morning biking to church, but right when we got the church my back tire exploded and I got a double rip in both the outer tire and inner tube. During church we had an investigator come and that was great! And after church, we got to meet the new sisters in our district and they are super cool. Lots of good ideas coming from them and they proposed an idea for English Class that is causing quite the stir. It got me way overwhelmed but I'm not even English Unit Leader so I just delegated the responsibility of it to her and that helped me feel a lot more relaxed. We had a lesson and the rest of the time was spent fixing my bike. I went out and bought a new tire and inner tube and then we took a bus to the chapel and I made dad proud by completely swapping the tire out and fixing my bike without help from a bike store. Then I rode home on what felt like a new bike and that was basically the end of the day. Crazy day and lots of emotions all around but we are back stable again and things are good!
Elder Heber Chase Ciminski
謝希伯長老
Pretty fun preparation day Monday. We met up with some other elders and went to the zoo! It was way hot and we were sweating buckets but it was all worth it when I saw a panda. Yes my favorite animal ever, I saw it in the flesh... behind some glass too. It was awesome! We saw some other cool animals too and as we kept on walking through we found more and more missionaries! There were so many at the zoo we had no idea. It was loads of fun and made for a good day. We got back to work and had dinner with a less active and then contacted some English class referrals we received recently.
Tuesday was a tiring day! We had lots of biking. Reminded me of the good old 鳳林 days of course. We biked to District Council and had a great talk about desire and achieving what we want this new transfer starting this week. It was good and with the other companionship switching to sisters it was the last time all my cowboys will be on the ranch together. Sad to see them leave but such will happen with the passage of time. We enjoyed a nice lesson tonight with a man expressing great interest in the church and he set a baptismal goal for August. I am very confident he will hit his goal. That was the heaviest hitting part of the day, the rest of the day was just studies and meals. Elder Yang and I had great time bonding sharing MTC memories! We both agreed it would be fun to go back now.
Wednesday was a good day! The morning we spent inside because Elder Yang took his Book A test, and he passed!! I was able to give him all of my flashcards and it was quite a weight off for me. I'm so proud of my companion and the work he puts into his English. We also had a lesson at a place for mentally disabled people and the man we met with was actually pretty sound and he seems to have enough interest so we will come back and continue teaching him! I will be interested to see where that leads us. We also had English Class and it was good. Talked about history and then our spiritual share was about family history and I invited a member to come and share. He knocked it out of the park and I definitely felt the spirit testify of family history to me. It is such a great thing!
Thursday was a good day. We had 2 different member visits and we originally had an investigator set up but that didn't quite work out so we had to reschedule him. The two members were cool. One was a young man getting ready to go on a mission and we had lunch with him and invited him to start practicing sharing the gospel with his friends so it'll be cool to hear his experiences. The other member visit was interesting. She's less active, but has strong faith. She just doesn't feel like she can come to church. Meeting with her is interesting because she asks us these deeper level gospel questions and tries to get answers to those but yet she doesn't even address her simpler problem of not going to church! I think it's pretty interesting how she prioritizes it. We are working on getting her back to church. We also started a new transfer and even though things didn't change for Elder Yang and me, we got 2 new district members and they seem really fun and we will have a party this transfer for sure.
Friday was pretty great. Elder Yang and I had a nice day and we decided to walk around. It wasn't too hot and we got to talk a lot more than we do when we bike everywhere. We also had our weekly planning session and Elder Yang and I had a constructive discussion about our goals for this transfer and how we want to work this transfer to be more unified. I felt very lifted up walking away and my companion is seriously so awesome. We set some great goals and we are going to have a great transfer together. Sadly, we ended the day getting stood up by the same person that stood us up last week. Pretty big bummer but the world still spins and we are doing what we can. Can't ask for more.
Saturday was a pretty good day. We had a good morning doing some studies and whatnot and then we got stood up by a member which was pretty surprising since we also got stood up by our investigator it made for a great day of fulfilling prophecy. We tried to find some formers and turns out the address didn't exist. We are slowly cleaning up the Area Book and getting it all nice and clean for future missionaries. I had an interesting thought though. In language study, I started translating a talk for Elder Yang and during this process (still in progress) I thought about Joseph Smith and the translation of the Book of Mormon. Considering my Chinese knowledge is fairly decent and I'm still taking such a long time to do it. I absolutely know Joseph Smith had the power of God with him to translate the Book of Mormon! Considering he wasn't learned in any ancient languages and his English skills were poor as well only the hand of God could have done that! It's truly miraculous!
Sunday was insane. We had a normal morning biking to church, but right when we got the church my back tire exploded and I got a double rip in both the outer tire and inner tube. During church we had an investigator come and that was great! And after church, we got to meet the new sisters in our district and they are super cool. Lots of good ideas coming from them and they proposed an idea for English Class that is causing quite the stir. It got me way overwhelmed but I'm not even English Unit Leader so I just delegated the responsibility of it to her and that helped me feel a lot more relaxed. We had a lesson and the rest of the time was spent fixing my bike. I went out and bought a new tire and inner tube and then we took a bus to the chapel and I made dad proud by completely swapping the tire out and fixing my bike without help from a bike store. Then I rode home on what felt like a new bike and that was basically the end of the day. Crazy day and lots of emotions all around but we are back stable again and things are good!
Elder Heber Chase Ciminski
謝希伯長老