6 MONTH MARK

Today December 22, 2011, I have officially been out on my mission for exactly 6 months, ALREADY

it flew by so fast. and in 3 days  it is Christmas, and I sometimes wonder if the past six months has been acceptable to the Lord. I feel like I am never good enough of a missionary, but then I realize that is because of our fallen nature; None of us are perfect, everyone has weaknesses for God gave them to us, but they are given to us to keep us humble not to beat ourselves up. I love the story in the talk from the last general conference about Teaching by the Power of the Holy Spirit, I think was called, where everytime the father and the daughter paused to take a breath while climbing the mountain, they didn't focus exclusively on how far they still had to go but they also took a moment to see how far they have come, and immediately started climbing again, one step at a time. I think that is a perfect example of our journey to become perfect even as our Savior and our Heavenly Father.

So I have some incredible storie to share, on thursday, last Pday we didn't have much time to go finding, so we decided to try to find someone on our way home from our meetings. On our way home we said hello to a man who greeted back and started to speak to us in English. While we were engaging in a conversation about his interest in the church and former involvement, a college age boy approached us to ask if we have seen his soccor ball and being fascinated how we foreign missionaries spoke Cantonese, lingered to join our conversation, his English was also amazing as he has been preparing to attend a university in Scottland. At the end of what was about 30min to an hour conversation they said they would think about attending our English class or the Christmas card making Activity after the class on Friday, and we went home. The next day on the train there were these really hyper teenage girls going home from school that I laughed at and told them they were cute, and we ended up talking to them and also invited them to the english class and the activity, they seemed excited but we also were aware that the school uniform they wore was a school that we have heard to be anti-ing their students. It's the same school we have lost 5 of our investigators so far who all of a sudden stopped answering our calls and didn't show up to their scheduled appointments and just disappeared (one of them even had a baptismal commitment). But that night, Wing (the college aged boy) and the two girls both came! and had great time with the members and felt the Spirit! The two girls, Yami and Jasmine Have been anti-ed by their teachers before, but apparently it motivated Yami who seems a bit rebellious in a sense to want to find out what it is about this church and the Book of Mormon that the teachers hate so much and be warning the students about and telling all these crazy stories about. So by the next night she had already read the Book of Mormon upto 2nd Nephi Chapter 4! and the young woman in TaiWo (Bing Bing) that befriended her that night and had conversation with her outside the church by themselves told us that the two girls are ready for the gospel and will be baptized! Wing also had a good experience and although he had doubts about the church before (he himself also having had attended that same school before, and heard many bad things about the church) gradually developed interest from getting to know members, the elders, and attending the Christmas devotional and TaiPo FHE Christmas Party, the Elders now have him scheduled to teach the lessons and we are very excited!!

Also our less-active member Sister Mahn, she has been coming to church everyweek for 4 weeks now and having been reading theBook of Mormon everyday and is just being healed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, and is hungering for more! Last time we committed her to prepare herself to be able to attend the temple, and we are very excited for her!

 

pictures real quick

for mission christmas activity/meal today we had a real whole cooked pig that was chopped in front of us,,,,,!!!didn't have time to take picture of it before it was chopped so,,,,sorry for a bit graphic photo,,,,

this is Sister/Mrs. Wong, she was our former investigator who we discontinued teaching because her age prevented her from remembering anything we taught, but we invited her to our christmas party and she came :)

 

Merry Christmas everyone, and remember as we heard in the Christmas Devotional, the true meaning of CHRISTmas!! and give Him your heart! Bring souls unto Him! :) :)

 

Lots of love, always,

Sister Burningham

in Hong Kong