So Thinking back on my emails, I feel like i overload you all with information of what is going on here in Troy, that my emails must get rather boring to read. I just write a travel log of cool experiences and leave all my personality out of emailing... so i apologize for the boring emails. I will do my best to liven them up a bit :)
so first things first: We have some great news!
Everynight we have a call in report to the elders and if we have a BCD (baptism and confirmation date) set, we usually begin by saying "our day was great, and guess what... we have some great news!" their reply is somewhat less than enthusiastic and they say "...who's getting baptized" I think they are really excited for us, but they just dont get to set as many BCDs as we do. Luckily this week we got to have that conversation twice!! The first one is a chinese student named Gray. He showed up for our ESL class last friday and we invited him to a movie night we were having where we watch Joesph smith, Prophet of the Restoration. We asked him what he thought after it was over and he said he was impressed because of how joseph smith fought for his faith. We taught him the first lesson and then he came to ESL again and said "sisters! I have a questions!" "what is your question?" "I dont know how to pray!" haha that was music to our ears. So taught him how to pray and met with him the next day to teach him the plan of salvation. He LOVED It! at the end of it we asked him to set a date and he is going to be baptized on December 3rd with Mei Mei. YAY! The second guy is named Paris. We ran into him at the park and he is a funny guy. We joked and laughed and then he started asking questions about being missionaries. Why we would give up a year and a half of our lives to go do something like this. We talked alot about it and he said he would give us 18 minutes the next day to tell him about what we believed. So we took that and told him about the restoration. at the end he said he needed help and thought this could help. Then we lost touch with him for like 3 weeks. We called and called and texted and looked for him and couldnt find him. Then a couple days ago we were walking down the street waving to people and he passed us. We were on our way to a lesson so we kept walking and a little down the road and there he was waiting for us. He said that he was sorry but his phone wasnt working that he wasnt trying to ditch us or anything and that he still wanted to talk. again he said "I need to just change my life, Y'all can help me with that right"... Yes we can! :) So we met with him this morning and told him how he needs to change his life and what he needs to do to get there, and when he changes he will have a desire to be baptized, that baptism is an important part of the change. He agreed and we set a date with him too. We are so blessed here in troy. There are so many prepared people that we are meeting, I just wish I could tell you about them all. Im sure there will be more BCD's in the next couple weeks and I cant wait! There is nothing better than watching someone change their life and come to christ and rely on him and gain a testimony and build their faith. I love being a part of it.
I know that you all were plannin on me coming back with a Southern accent, saying y'all and fixin' and never pronouncing my 'g's at the end of an -ing word. But if I stay in troy much longer I think I will come back with a chenglish (chinese english) accent. haha we have all had our chenglish moments this week where we forget to say 'a' or 'the' or we forget how to correctly pronounce words and certain letters. Its always really entertaining when it happens. the other day sister Horan was writing in her journal and started laughing because she wrote "i thinking problem lately" instead of "i have thought of what my problem is lately"... and We were reading with meimei and she read the word satisfaction but pronounced it like Satisfication. and when she said it like that I said, good satisfication... a couple moments later sister horan laughed and said... uh, nope, that word is actually satisfaction. its great. I have never had so much love in my heart as I do for the chinese students we are teaching. They are incredible. I love seeing their personalities show through as they learn the language enough to use it with their own personalities.
We also had Zone Conference this week. My favorite part was sister Jensen talking to us about service. She made us all go into the other room, take off our shoes, and then go back into the chapel to listen to the Zone Leaders. after they were done she had us go back to get our shoes and she had shined every pair for us. She has done this at every zone conference. There are 140 missionaries in our mission. Two shoes each, You do the math. she shined some 300 shoes over the last couple weeks! We then read about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and the meaning behind that act of service. It was an incredible lesson and something that we are all capable of if we just look around and try to help someone everyday. As we do this we will forget ourselves and become more like the savior, in turn our problems will be melted away.
I love you all dearly and hope all is well! Sorry again for the dry emails :) please forgive me.
Sister Webb
Sister Webb
