Asian Invasion Part 3

Everyone...ALOOOHA!

So transfer calls are in and Sis. Ikegami and I are staying together for one last transfer! Haha! Exciting things are happening in Saratoga and we will be together to be a part of it! It's going to be great!

I am so excited to see the new sisters that come to our zone! I know they're all going to be great! I'm super excited for General Conference this weekend! It's like Christmas except twice a year and for a whole weekend. So... actually I guess it's not really like Christmas at all. But it's still really great and I'm excited to go to the Oakland Temple next week! It's going to be great. So many wonderful things to be excited for! 

This week...our wonderful golden investigator is still doing well! She is just on a roll! She's like a sponge just soaking up everything there is to know! It is so exciting! I am so grateful to be a part of this process! We had a great week this week! We were able to get to the second page of our progress record in one of our wards this week! Which may not seem like a big accomplishment but it is to me!  Just a little FYI, a progress record is just for us to share with the ward council, or the ward leadership,  to so they can be aware of those we are teaching. It's great for both parties because then they can know our investigators and we can report on people they may have asked us to visit! Anyways, with three wards to cover, I've gotten close to getting to two pages but this was the first week it actually happened. Usually with three different progress records it looks like we've only visited a handful of people that entire week because we spilt our work within the different wards. So hopefully at one point we can get to all three wards with two sided progress records. That'd be so great!

Other than that, everything's been going well! Looking forward to another wonderful week of missionary work! I hope everyone has a great week! I love you all! 

Love,

Sis. Ellis-Lui-Kwan

Another Amazing Week!

Aloha! :)

This week has been another amazing one! Sis. Ikegami and I did back to back exchanges with sisters this week. So much fun! All the sisters in our zone are basically more on top of it than we are so it's pretty great! I learn so much every exchange. It makes my job really easy because then I get to just tell the sisters how wonderful they are! Pretty great gig, if you ask me!

Hmm. This week went by in a whirlwind! We were able to teach a bunch of people and our golden investigator is still doing wonderfully! She is preparing for baptism in October and nothing can stop her! There's been a few roadblocks but she just trail blazes right over anything Satan tries to send her. It's inspiring. She's telling everyone about what she is learning and sharing the gospel with everyone! Pretty much she should just take my missionary tag! 

Well, lately I think I've really been gaining a stronger testimony of our missionary manual, Preach My Gospel. It is great! Every single word and scripture and everything. I've begun to read it from the very beginning all the way through and I'm learning new things as I go. It's kind of like the scriptures in that way, a new meaning every time. I've been noticing how much of a habit I've gotten into in regards to the way I teach. Don't get me wrong...I'm glad I have a rhythm but there are so many scriptures and references and perspectives that I have used or thought of using in a really long time! I'm really excited to start shaking things up a little bit! Hopefully we can get more people to progress.

On to Week 6 already. I don't know how this dreaded week keeps creeping up on me. Time is definitely moving too fast. I feel like Sis. Ikegami and I just became companions last week!

I love you all! I hope you have a wonderful week!

Love,

Sis. Ellis-Lui-Kwan

At dinner on exchanges...Isn't this little girl precious? : )

Asian Invasion Part 2

Alooooooooooooha! :)

This week was another amazing one! Except that it was even better than normal! We got a baptismal date from our new wonderful like golden of all golden investigators! She is so great. We've been talking with her about baptism and we invited her with a date and she had already been thinking of one! Isn't that wonderful? She is just the greatest!

Now I'm just worried about her because I know how wonderful she is and Heavenly Father knows how wonderful she is, so Satan probably knows the same thing. I'm praying that Heavenly Father will help her through all the obstacles to come. 

Hmm other than that, Sis. Ikegami and I have been having lots of fun! Especially contacting! Haha. We get all kinds of Asian comments it's hilarious. I contacted a lady the other day and begun telling her we were missionaries for our church. And she, who was also Asian, asked if it was an Oriental church! Haha! I kindly had to let her down easy and tell her, "No it isn't, it's a worldwide church!" Haha! I thought I was pretty clever. But she wasn't as interested anymore. Haha! 

Another contacting story, we met a guy the other day outside of the mall from Ethiopia and he's only been in America for about 5 years. It was super cool to talk to him about his beliefs and he started off not wanting to listen to us at all and then as we continued to talk he agreed with us on so much that we taught him the whole Restoration of the Gospel. Sis. Ikegami is just a contacting ninja master. Mostly because she's Japanese but also because she's just really good at contacting! Haha nah... I'm just kidding. But she is really great at contacting. 

So we've just continued to see the amazing miracles that Heavenly Father has in store for His children here and I could've wished for anything better. He really knows best! I hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Sis. Ellis-Lui-Kwan

The California Gold Rush!

Aloha everyone! :)

I hope everyone's week was great this week. This week has yet again just flown by. I don't know how that seems to happen...but it does. This week has been another amazing one! Sis. Ikegami and I are doing great and our area has just been exploding! All of these wonderful people to teach...I just don't know what to do with myself! 

We got a new investigator this week who I am so excited about! We have been trying to meet with her for the past little while now and we haven't been having any success. She is the caregiver of one of our ward members and everyone has been telling her how wonderful she is so I was so excited to meet her! Anyway, ward members had been randomly stopping by and catching her there taking care of our ward member and yet every time we tried to go..she had either just left or something had happened and she wasn't there. It was a little discouraging. But then.... (drum roll please...) WE MET HER! 

And you know what...she's just as amazing as everyone said she was! Whoo! I was so excited because honestly, I was starting to get a little skeptical about this "amazing" elusive person everyone was meeting, but she is just great! We taught her about the Restoration of the gospel and she even thanked us for teaching her! She's been reading the Book of Mormon and came to church this Sunday and wants to be baptized! 

It's a miracle if I ever saw one! 

Seriously. I've never met someone so prepared and so receptive to the Spirit. It's amazing. She can feel the Holy Ghost and she's starting to recognize it. She told us how every time she meets people from our church and talking to them about the gospel and all of her anxiety starts to calm and she gets goosebumps! She kept pointing it out while we were teaching her. It was so cute to teach her about the Holy Ghost as the comforter.  I am so excited to teach her again and all of our investigators. We're not in Gold country...but we may as well be. The Lord has been pouring out blessings like I don't know what. 

I can't wait to teach her about the plan that Heavenly Father has for all of His children this week. It's seriously my favorite thing because I get to tell people Heavenly Father loves them in just about every point we teach! It's a wonderful thing to know and to be able to help others know! :) Ahh. Being a missionary is just the greatest.

Well, until next week... I'll update you all on the miracles that come this week. It's going to be great. I just know it. I don't know how it happens every week but it seems like the week to come is going to be even better then the week I just had. I have no idea how that's possible. 

I love you all! I hope you all have an amazing week! Keep up the great work! 

Love,

Sis. Ellis-Lui-Kwan

Since When Is It September?!

Aloooha! :)

Time is seriously flying by. (And I realize I've been saying that for a while now. But man... I feel like I blink and here I am sitting at a computer again to email.) This week was another amazing one! Sis. Ikegami is great and we have been having a lot of fun here in Saratoga! So many miracles.

This week we picked up four new investigators! How amazing! I don't know how I got to lucky to see so much success lately but the Lord has been so good to me! One of our new investigators speaks Farsi and so now... Sis. Ikegami and I can count to ten, conjugate "eat", and describe our face (down to the eyelashes)! It's pretty amazing. On a better note, we contacted this man, our new investigator, in the park and we told him who we were and then he starts expressing to us that he wanted to know more about our church. So of course we're both really excited! Then, he stops and asks us what missionaries do! The whole time we were talking to him. He was telling us all this stuff he knew and so I just assumed he knew what we did as missionaries..turns out, he had no idea. Haha! Lesson learned..

Our other investigators came from contacting all over the place and we are both particularly excited for one of our new investigators. He met us and was so impressed with what we do that he wants to know how he and his daughters can get involved so they can go on missions like us! How amazing is that? 

There have been so many things happening lately and so many miracles and blessings just pouring out from everywhere. This area is just taking off and I am so glad to be here!

I hope you all have a wonderful week and had a great Labor Day yesterday!

Love,

Sis. Ellis-Lui-Kwan

P.S. New skill of this week...KNITTING. A recent convert in one of our wards is a young single mother who also happens to be a master knitter. Like really though... she's an actual master knitter. One of nine. And she taught us how to knit. I feel super talented now. Just call me Sister Knifty Knitter Ellis-Lui-Kwan from now on....or you could probably just use my name..because that's long enough already. Haha!