Monday, January 25, 2016

If I Only Knew Chinese . . .

January 24, 2016

Dear Family,

We asked about someone who speaks Chinese, and there is no one in the mission who does. The best option we have is a member who is Chinese living in a neighboring ward, but it's a good hour drive away from Gimhae, so that's kind of inconvenient. So we didn't actually figure anything out for sure yet, but the guy from last week came to church yesterday, and brought three of his friends. They sat through Sacrament Meeting, and then came with us to Gospel Principles class. They didn't understand anything, and we couldn't understand them. No one really knows anything in Chinese besides "nihao," and they didn't know any Korean or English besides how to say "hi" and "thank you." A few of the youth who are taking Chinese in school tried to communicate with them, but that didn't work. Some of the members tried using an app on their phones to translate the things they said into it, but that didn't work either.  It was basically mass confusion. I think now I can at least partially understand what it must have been like for people at the time of the Brother of Jared, when the language was confounded. Luckily, the sisters had asked for a Chinese Book of Mormon and pamphlets from the mission home last week, so they were able to look at those. Who knows what they thought about it though. All they did after looking at them was give us a thumbs-up, so I'm assuming they liked it. Anyway, hopefully we can get that member to help us soon.

Last week, a lady in our ward gave us the name and address of this guy she knows, so we went to visit him at the restaurant he runs. First of all, we had a really hard time finding it based on the instructions she gave, so we were wandering around and had no idea where to go. But then we turned a corner, and it was just right there, almost like we stumbled upon it on accident. Then when we went in, and there was no one there, but he was in the back washing dishes. We introduced ourselves, and he was really nice, but he said he was busy. He took us to his house next door, and let us in, saying that we can talk to his son, and then he went back to the restaurant. So we gave him a Book of Mormon and told him a little about it. He is going to a different church, but had a ton of questions about the Book of Mormon, and agreed to keep meeting us to learn about it. I haven't seen anyone so accepting of the gospel in a long time, and we were definitely led to him.

We also had a new student come to English class. He has interest in learning English, obviously, but also interested in the gospel. Apparently he was [in another church] for 10 years, but got "kicked out" because he disagreed with their doctrine. I'm pretty sure he did missionary work for them, because he already knows about the Book of Mormon and our church. He was too busy so we couldn't meet him outside of English class, but he came to Sacrament Meeting yesterday. He didn't say much about it, just that it was really different from his old church.

So yeah, lots of cool experiences this past week, Elder Yoon and I saw a ton of miracles with these new investigators.

I hope you have a great week!

Love,
Elder Hines

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