Teaching through a Chinese Translator

Hello,

Sorry this came in so late...This week was pretty usual. I feel like a broken record sometimes talking about my weeks. We are still in a "finding phase". Which isn't that great, because I feel like that's been my whole mission. There's some good progress being made with some people we found and started teaching in a few of my other areas though, and hearing about those makes me feel pretty good! Hopefully I can find some good, solid investigators by the time I'm done here.

The head of the department of proselyting and another very distinguished person from Salt Lake City came and spoke to us as missionary leadership on Friday. They really put online proselyting into a better perspective for most of us, I think. Just how to use it more effectively. They also talked about finding and planning- made a big push for both of those. Some of things they talked about have been ideas we've had for the zone, so that felt good to know we were on the right track! Anyways, it was a long meeting, but it was insightful. A lot of information though, and I have to figure out how to share it with the district.

Oh, something absolutely crazy.. We found out somebody I'd taught that moved out of the state hung himself last week. Police found him and let his friends/family know. It's crazy, not more than two weeks ago we were talking to him on Facebook and now he's gone. It was crazy- life situations like that really puts God's plan into perspective though. I'm grateful we have the knowledge of it all knowing where we go after this life. Roadmaps are nice, especially with things like that..!

A few days before Sunday (on like Thursday I think) we got a call from some elders in the zone. They told us that a new investigator they had would be coming to our ward for church on Sunday because the member they've been taking with them lives in our ward. Well, this brother in the ward is one of the few people in the stake that can speak Cantonese (Chinese). This guy and his family are Chinese and speak very little English, but the husband has become very interested in learning about Jesus Christ. Well, he and his wife came to church but because of their language barrier we ended up teaching our own lesson for second and third hour with Bro. Fei translating most of it. I will tell you, it was very difficult to try explaining things simply— especially since this man's wife spoke absolutely no English! He was alright, but gospel conversations were hard for him to follow. But, they enjoyed church and felt very friendly and welcome and I think our lesson went fairly alright.

But, that's probably the highlights of our week.

Love you, talk to you soon.

Elder Samuel A. Burge