New Haircut

Another week passed in California. This week had a lot of up and downs. I only have two more weeks from today in the States. I am trying to stay focused and work as hard as I can here before I leave. It is sad now when we set a baptismal date for after I leave. 

 Wednesday we were supposed to take our investigator, Jenifer, to the visitor’s center at the L.A. temple. She said everything was solid and we would be able to go. We had to set up two members to drive, one for us and one for her. About 1 hour before we left she called and said a relative had just passed away. We can tell Satan is working hard on her to not go to the visitor’s center. About my 2nd week here, we were supposed to go there with Jenifer and the day before, her lung collapsed and she had to be in the hospital for 2 weeks. So that was kind of rough. Luckily we made back up plans in case something happened, so we had something to do for the 3 hours we would have missed.

With one of our investigators, his sister ran away so he hasn't had time lately and the one lesson we had with him on Friday wasn't very good. He was just distracted and depressed the whole time. Elder Oniki and one of the Tongan Ward Priests got to stop by him last night. They said he was less distracted. His sister is still missing though.

We have a third investigator that is supposed to get baptized this Saturday. He has been taught all the lessons and we have had some really spiritual lessons with him. He seems to have lots of faith in God, and is always quick to except hard commitments. He didn't come to church this week though, so we don't know what’s going on. We stopped by his house and his parents said he went camping. We are not sure what to do about him.

We had a great day yesterday. We had terrible Church attendance, and at night we asked some of the young men if they wanted to come out with us. We were able to go on splits. Elder Oniki recently got his driver’s license so I no longer have to drive in California madness. He took the car and went to the farther away places and the other priest and I were walking around where we have a lot of potentials concentrated. We would have done some biking but the tire on Elder Oniki's bike is flat. That night we were able to teach 6 ‘member present’ lessons and find 2 new investigators! I thought the splits were really good for me to take the lead more and get practice teaching more by myself. When we take priests out with us they can usually talk if you ask them to share something, but they don’t contribute as much throughout the lesson. It is great practice for them, and the more we take them out the more they contribute in each lesson.

We have still been doing a lot of finding. Since that one day we made a goal to find new investigators every day, we have been able to find at least one new person every day. We even found an investigator for the Tongan Ward. It was really cool because it seems really hard to do work for the Tongan Ward. We also have a new Tongan investigator that is friends with one of the Young Women. She is solid and will probably get baptized a few weeks after I leave. The Tongan Ward hasn't had any convert baptisms in 4 years so that will be cool if we can get them one.

The same member that is friends with our investigator also had a Thai friend that I met with for language study. It was funny she thought I barely knew any Thai and so she thought her friend could help. It ended up that I spoke way more Thai than her, she then called her mom up because her mom spoke more Thai. She came and spoke a little more but she would always reply in English, her mom said she understood more than she could speak. So I didn't really get that much Thai practice in. It was funny because I was going in expecting native Thai speakers. I guess it doesn't matter that much. I will get plenty of practice in a few weeks. 

Everything here is coming along well and I am sad that I will be leaving here soon. I have met a lot of really cool people. 

Elder Cheney

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 ่่้เอ็ลเดอร์ เซนื