Week 47: Mindcrap and Roadblocks

 大家好！


We had a member meal with the Santos family this week, they're from the Philippines and made us some AMAZING food. It was so good. At one point Robloks got mentioned and he goes "hah, more like roadblocks. Cause it's a roadblock to your future. And don't even get me started on MindCrap." Then he told us not to play video games when we get home from our missions. I was just impressed that he came up with those, that's pretty good

Highlights:
- We taught our friend Noumonvi this week who is from West Africa, and it was such a cool lesson! He had started reading the Book of Mormon and had some questions about where it comes from and why there is more than just the Bible. But we answered his questions and invited him to pray to know if it's true, and he accepted it so well!! We had our member Nana from Ghana there too, and he served his mission French speaking, which is Noumonvi's native language. Noumonvi gave the closing prayer in French since that's what he's most comfortable with, and the Spirit was so strong. After the prayer Nana goes "wow, he prays just like a member." He's so cool
- We went to go visit two of our less active recent converts who live in the far away land of Lantau Island. We traveled 1.5 hours by MTR and then 30 minutes by bus to get there. And one of them didn't answer us and the other one wasn't very happy to see us. But one the ride there and back we had some amazing conversations, met lots of cool people, and got some contacts! So even though we didn't achieve our goal, the Lord used us to find those prepared people, which was cool
- This week the STLs, Elder Smith, and I planned our training for Zone Conference, and it went so well! We were all so guided by the Spirit, and it was a really cool experience. We all came together and brought in our individual ideas and it worked perfectly. We'll see how it goes tomorrow!
- This morning I called our friend Isaac to see if he was awake to come to church, and he told me he was in the middle of watching the 76ers VS Celtics game, and then spent the next 6 minutes narrating the last bit of the game, with random bouts of swearing at the referees and crashing out. He didn't even come to church either 😢 

Spiritual Thought:
This week Elder Smith and I had a conversation about faith. We talked about how having faith is so easy on paper: we've seen the Lord's hand in our lives so many times, seen so many miracles. It should be easy to believe in more miracles right? But for some reason it can be so hard sometimes to believe in the miracle we need now. We talked about how Nephi surely experienced doubts when building the boat. But that he CHOSE not to listen to those doubts. Even if he felt them, he chose faith over fear. We talked about how faith really is a choice that we make every single time. Every day we have to wake up and choose faith. Faith that the Lord will give us the miracles and support we need, and faith to trust in His timetable for when those happen. Faith is hard sometimes. But if we do choose faith, the miracles do come

Love you all!
Elder Blankenbiller


Google Photos

Pictures
1. Our friend Noumonvi and also a member named Stanley who likes to show up randomly and take pictures with us
2. Institute
3. Some fancy hot cocoa
4. Our friend Isaac took us to a Shanghainese food place
5. Cow






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