Week 21: A member got our friend to skip church

 你哋好!


So to explain the title of this week's email, I'll go back to Saturday: we were teaching our friend Jack who is on baptismal date, and having a member, 李兄弟 help us because Jack and him are super good friends now. We asked Jack if he was going to come to church the next day, and 李兄弟 is like "Oh actually my wife, Jack, and I are all going to an exhibition tomorrow so none of us will be at church." Bruh. Our member actually got our friend to not keep the Sabbath Day holy 😭

Highlights:
- We got to go the temple again this week! Super fire, I always love getting to go. 
- We had five members feed us this week, it was insane! Don't tell Elder Zhao. We had two members who we were just eating with, we were going to pay for our meals, but then at the end they insisted on paying for us, which was so nice of them! One of them took us to this noodle place we'd never been to before and it was so fire! The other one took us to a traditional Chinese cuisine place, where I at cow stomach, meat in meat sauce jello, some unidentifiable plant, shrimp, duck Chinese tacos, and red bean soup. Lowkey a lot of it was fire. Another member randomly bought us pho after a lesson, and then the last one was when we were out finding, a member saw us, and offered to buy us dinner. Actually crazy.
- The traditional Chinese food member meal was with the guy we talked deep doc with last week, so we continued our conversation and talked about the Second Coming, why God created dinosoars, and if aliens are real. It was so fire
- We got transfer news!! I'm staying here in 上水 but Elder Chuy is leaving on Thursday, which is actually so sad! I'll be getting a new companion Elder Adcox, who I've heard a lot about haha. Should be good!
- We had a ward hiking activity on Wednesday that our friend Charles came on with us! It was super fun and Charles got to know a ton of the Ward members better, it was awesome!
- We also found this lady on the street while out finding who is so golden it's insane! We started talking to her and shared a scripture from the Book of Mormon with her, and she was so down to meet after that! We had a pass-off lesson with the Sisters in our area and it was so crazy, when we asked her what kind of person she thought God was, she said "I guess the only way I could describe him is like my father." And I was like aight, get in the font. But seriously though, she's so ready for the Gospel it's amazing!

Spiritual thought:
In Sacrament Meeting yesterday after trying to understand the talks for the first 30min I gave up and read a Conference talk on my phone. I read a talk called "Christlike Poise," which has become one of my new favorite talks! It's about how to stay calm and have poise no matter what circumstances come your way, and the way we do that is by keeping our focus on the Lord. When we do that we can become unshaken because everything that happens to us and everything we do is seen through the lense of eternal life. I know that choosing to make Jesus Christ the focus of our lives can help us to get through any crazy thing that life can throw our way because Jesus Christ is our rock and our foundation. 

Love you all!
Elder Blankenbiller

Google Photos:

Pictures:
1. Ward Hiking activity
2. Julio who bought us noodles
3. Elder Chuy loves buses
4. 周兄弟, notorious deep doctrine enjoyer
5. Last picture with Charles before Elder Chuy leaves







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