Elder Zach Blankenbiller

  大家好！ I was asked to give a talk in Sacrament meeting yesterday for church, so I prepared a 10 minute or so talk. Turns out they wanted me to use wayyyy more time, they only had two speakers. So after us there was still like 20 minutes left in the meeting, and both Elder Buckner and Elder Woo from the area presidency were there that day, and so our Branch President just had them come up and give messages. It was a lil embarassing haha, but Elder Buckner was super chill about it, and his message was so fire.  Highlights - This week finally stopped raining, and so now it's been like 37-40 degrees Celsius the whole week, which has been brutal - Our friend Juan Carlos from Peru invited us over for dinner and made Mexican refried beans, chicken, and rice. It was SO FIRE, I miss refried beans so much. It tasted like heaven - We went to eat with the Santos family again this week, and we invited our friend Algier who is from the Philippines to come with us. It was so fire, they click...

  大家好！ Well this week was interesting for a lot of different reasons, but two of which were: one, we had 14 friends confirm for church on Saturday night, and then the Sunday Morning Monster got all our friends and only 4 of them showed up. It was sad, but the friends we did have come were so lit and the members helped so much! Super cool to see the members just take our friends under their wing and help them feel welcome. And then the other thing. We went all the way to Tung Chung and me and Elder Shields met this guy named John who was an African American guy from Texas. He started talking to us and was like "I know you Mormon boys, yous my homies." And then he told us a story about a time he rescued two Elders who got kidnapped by some high gang members who made the Elders read them the Bible while they were high. So that was nuts. Then he said he had a question for us and asked "Where's Judah?" And we were so lost. He then spent the next 30 minutes of our tim...

  大家好！ I got sick this week, and originally I had decided that I should stay inside and rest so that I could recover. But then I remembered that we had friends to Baptize so I dragged myself out for three days to teach friends and we put our friend Charlie on baptismal date! Now to all you Prospective missionaries out there, do not copy my behavior. I was promptly punished by way of typhoon that kept us stuck inside all day on Sunday. I have been sufficiently humbled and will take better care of myself next time Highlights - On Tuesday we had the temple in the morning, and then went straight from there to the Exhibition Center to volunteer at the Book Fair again. We were there for 2.5 hours, and it was a blast! I saw a bunch of members from wards I used to serve in, and we met some chill people! The funny thing was the Jehovah's Witnesses that were right next door to us because of course they were. They kept giving us weird looks the whole time - Thursday we had AP exchanges, and I...

  大家好！ There is a building near our chapel called the Exhibition Center that is a huge convention hall that hosts big events. This last week they have had a book fair going on, and our church sponsored a stall, so they had missionaries volunteering. One of the APs is someone I used to live with, so he hit me up and asked me to perform some hymns on guitar for an hour and a half! I accepted, and then the night before they let me know I would be performing with another Elder, Elder Chan, playing cello. Combined. Cello and guitar. It was a little bit of an odd combo, but we made it work and had a great time! It was so fun and so cool to get to use my talents to do missionary work! Highlights - I was in a trio for three days this week since all three of us had companions go home. It was so fun, and we were so busy we had to run home every night to not be home late haha - I got my new companion, Elder Shields!! It's been so fun being comps with him, he's such an amazing missionary a...

  大家好！ We got our transfer news on Saturday night and I will be staying in English work!! Which I'm very excited about. Elder Smith is going home tomorrow morning, which is a tragedy because he's the best Elder in the misison. So I was a little nervous to see who my new comp would be, but fortunately it's Elder Shields who I'm super good friends with! He will be a brand new ZL, so I'll be helping him learn how to do all that good stuff. Also we lost 14 Elders this transfer who went home, and we got none back. So they closed down the second Elder companionship in our area so now it's just us. And also the Zone leadership is now completely different except for me. Gulp. This is gonna be a wild transfer haha.  Highlights - We did a Zone challenge this week of inviting 194 people to church as a Zone every day and trying to get 66 people to church on Sunday. (our mission baptismal goal is 194 and our zone baptismal goal is 66) We did really well the first few days an...

  大家好！ When I thought about going on a mission, I originally wanted to serve Spanish speaking and teach latinos. I've loved serving in Hong Kong and wouldn't change it for anything, but part of me always wished I could have had that experience. This week we messaged a member from Peru, Brother Rebaza. He and his family had lived in Hong Kong for a year but were moving back to the U.S. When we reached out Brother Rebaza said he would love to meet up with us, that we could meet with him and his brother at his brother's apartment. His brother isn't a member, but as we learned when we showed up, he has been going through some changes in life and wants to learn about the gospel. Our first visit was actually amazing, the Spirit was so strong and he is so ready. I was also so grateful that the Lord gave me this opportunity, even though I'm serving in Hong Kong, I still got to teach someone from South America, the place I originally wanted to serve Highlights - I went on AP...