Elder Zach Blankenbiller

  大家好! We had a lesson with our friend Vicky where we went in planning to teach about the Godhead and instead ended up teaching him about baptism! It was so fire, he was super interested in the gift of the Holy Ghost, and when we asked him if he would want that in his life he said "of course, who wouldn't?!" So we invited him to be baptized and he accepted the invitation! We had invited one of the Elder's Quorum Presidency members named Anson to join for the lesson and right after we invited him to be baptized Anson goes "The more you learn about our church the more you will hear some negative things, just remember not to pay attention to them and to ask us your questions." Okay super chill, great thought. Then he goes "For example you will hear that Joseph Smith had lots of wives and you will probably be like "What the heck?" I don't know why he did that but I'm sure he had a reason." Elder Shields just looked at each other and w...

  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...