WEEK 13 - Peter Chen Was Merciless this week

"I will send out an army to find you in the middle of the darkest night it's true, I will rescue you... I will never stop marching to reach you in the middle of the hardest fight it's true, I will rescue you." (Rescue - Lauren Daigle I challenge you to listen to it, it is my favorite song rn) This lyric by Lauren Daigle slaps and it is so true. It frankly does not matter at all how dark of a night you are in, or how hard the fight you find yourself in. He will rescue you. I've seen some pretty dark nights out here and some pretty hard fights and I have literally seen Jesus Christ rescue each and everyone of these people who are willing to be rescued. It's great. Don't be surprised if me and Lauren Daigle are eternally wedded in the next 8 years. I hope you had a great week because I absolutely did, I would love to hear about your amazing or terrible week because I love you so muchhhhh. I actually think my emails are a nice length usually, but for this week I give you my condolences. This one is quite hefty. But so many funny things happened at it was soooo amazing and miracle filled (if you don't have much time may I suggest going to the last paragraph because it was soooooo funny): - This week started off with a pleasant surprise from Elder Campbell. I was super stressed because we had interviews with our mission president and I forgot to find us a ride. So I was stressing and I was like "oh no Elder Campbell, we need to find a ride to interviews tonight!" and he was like "don't worry I already found somebody on Sunday." Elder Campbell isn't usually the biggest mingler on Sundays or most days, so this was awesome. He found our online vape shop kingpin friend named Samuel, who is a returning member. It was slightly stressful because Samuel was in a horrible crash like the week prior, but I was more pumped by the sheer boldness and initiative I was seeing from Elder Campbell. I guess Samuel wanted to prove to us that he was all in on this religion thing, because we got in the car and he was listening to this podcast that I think he thought might have been doctrine for our church. It was saying some extremely violent and terrible things that are going to happen to sinners. Samuel had no idea what he was listening to, I think he just thought that that would be the thing we were most comfortable listening to because we are missionaries. Bless his heart, it was in the right place haha. - We got to interviews and I was excited because this is where I would learn if I was being emergency transferred or not. Plot twist, I was not, and that made me extremely happy because we have friends that we are teaching that I feel Henry Horsley has literally been sent here to rescue. I had a great interview with president and he gave me one of the greatest compliments I have ever received. A bunch of missionaries were having interviews with him so you had your interview and then you hung out with the mission presidents wife Sister Taylor. The only problem was that since I have been here I have felt like this lady does not like me. I got that same vibe when I arrived to interviews. Apparently the other missionaries had that same vibe because they were sucking up to her unlike I have ever seen people suck up. I will never let myself do that, I will be Henry wherever I go I decided. I was making normal comments every now and then, and other missionaries were like "Sister Taylor let me give you the most descriptive summary of what I have been reading for personal study for the past 14 months of my mission." Not even those comments could crack her. Idk if she was in a bad mood or something because it just seemed like she was not having it. Now it must've been revelation, because I have no idea how I got to this topic, but I mentioned chia seeds. Sister Taylor literally stood up from her chair, came and sat by me and enthusiastically told me different ways she liked to prepare chia seeds for about 15 minutes. We were all in awe. I am so honored that I was the one who cracked her shell. We are now best friends. She brought me candy corn (and no one else) to zone conference on wednesday. I did not know someone could spend more time talking about chia seeds than my dad, but here we are. Wow you learn so much on your mission. 10/10 experience - We had zone conference and I have heard a lot of good things about these things. This was my first one, it kinda sounded like a waste of time to me at first but it was anything but that oh my goodness. We got there and for the first 2 hours people said actually the same thing over and over and over again. I was suffering, it was sooooo boring. I think I heard about how you need to talk to everyone (which I already try to do) probably 60-70 times, I am not even kidding. I was eating lunch and was agreeing with past Henry about how this was a waste of time. Then it was the second half, oh my gosh, it was blessed. He gave us an extremely inspirational talk about how we must have the faith to find, we genuinely have to believe that there are people waiting for us. I was about tearing up by the end of it, it was so good, I can't do it justice through this email. I can confidently say that was the best talk I have ever heard. But that phrase stuck with me "do I have the faith to find someone?" He ended and he PROMISED every single companionship there, that we would find someone by the end of the night. I was like, Judas that is a hefty promise idk about that President Taylor. For background info the average missionary in this mission probably finds about 1-2 people a week (we don't have the most receptive people in our mission ever) and this man stood up there and said that every single companionship there was gonna find someone. I have never been more determined to do something then to find someone that day. Elder Campbell did not share that determination. I was trying to convince him to let us go out finding but he was pretty preoccupied talking to these two sister missionaries about like league of legends or something. After I finally convinced him to let us leave he decided to drive another companionship like two hours away to go fix his bike. I was struggling with Elder Campbell at this point, but I said a prayer to love this man even more and it worked. We got done with everything at about 8 PM that night. When you are a missionary you have to be home by 9. He said that we should probably just head back to the apartment to rest because he wasn't feeling to well. My dreams were literally being crushed in front of me. I did not want presidents promise to not be true so I said a prayer begging to find someone. This is probably the biggest miracle I have seen on the mission. I opened google maps and I looked at a random house out of like 2000 houses I could see on the screen, and I was like "Elder Campbell I have a feeling we need to go to this specific house before we go home" it took some convincing to get him there but we went. And guess what: I found them, these people were found and I was so excited. Idk about everyone at that conference but I know for fact every single person in my zone found someone that night. So that was super awesome, currently trying to have more faith to find. Miracles literally happen all the time. - I always love English class. This Thursday was my favorite one yet. First of all, we have a friend named Zhang Fan who we have been teaching. He went rogue and we have been trying to contact him for two weeks, and he showed up to English class. We also had a super awesome lesson with our friend Danny right before. So I was feeling good. Zhang Fan was a menace the whole time. Idk what happened in those two weeks, but he seems to have forgotten about 80% of the English we have taught him. I was teaching the class the word relax, and I was like what are some things that help you relax. People were saying normal stuff like "music!" "hanging out with friends!" "sleeping!" "alcohol consumption!" I was originally surprised that Zhang Fan knew the words alcohol and consumption in English, but it sucked because he was so down with the word of wisdom like two weeks ago. We were then working on pronunciation which is always a challenge for our class. With a chinese accent it is kinda hard to say a couple of sounds one of which being the "ir" sound. This was especially a challenge for my boy Zhang Fan. With pronunciation I usually say a word and the class repeats it after me. I said shirt, and I swear I heard someone say s**t. So I said shirt again and immediately diagnosed the problem. I was like "Zhang Fan, it is sh-IR-t. My man was intent on getting this word right because he was like "s**t s**t s**t s**t" he was trying so hard haha. We were all dying as we were trying to help him but his body just could not do it. So the rest of class I just heard Zhang Fan going "s**t" over and over again. It took a lot of strength to keep teaching without dying of laughter. I love Zhang Fan. - Most of our friends this week were out of town so I dedicated my fast to find more people and that people would show up at church who were interested. I figured maybe like one person would possibly show up and it would be awesome. No like 8 people did who we found and are now going to teach. This Sunday was one of the best days of my mission for sure. But now the reason you all clicked on this email: Peter Chen. He was menacing this week at church. We pulled up to church and started talking to people, but I guess Peter noticed that one of us was talking to more people than the other. He decided to publicly shame Elder Campbell. Peter likes to share his wisdom he has gained over these last 82 years as often as possible, so he went up to Elder Campbell and was like "TALKKKKK. Why don't you talk more like Elder Horsley, he is fantastic, but you, you just don't talk and I don't understand." (I wish you could hear the Peter Chen voice it is just so beautiful) Ok this may sound extremely mean but once you know Peter you will understand, most things he says comes from a place of extreme chinese culture and love. I felt really bad for Elder Campbell because the chinese people were like giving him basic lessons on how to introduce yourself, which must've been extremely humbling. I did not have time to empathize with Elder Campbell though, because I had scoped out some new people who needed a nice talking to by me. But ya I was basically crowned king by Peter Chen and some of the chinese ladies during sunday school as they brought up my baptism count and talking abilities in front of the whole branch (really not that great, just compared to other missionaries they have met it is better, also its the Spirit doing the work not me). Luckily, Elder Campbell had lost his voice a day before and he decided that that is probably why they brought up his talking abilities. I was in full support of his theory because then we were all happy. But deep inside I do really feel bad, some people like to talk A LOT (me) and some people have other strengths. - Peter Chen decided to bear his testimony in church too. Normally I would be so excited, but I was rightfully worried because of all of the new people who had never been to our church. It actually started off amazing, I even got a shoutout from the man himself. About 2 minutes in he decided to change the theme of his testimony though. He started talking about how moving to a new country can be very hard and stressful. He abandoned the pulpit and started pacing the stand as he was speaking, it was so awesome. Then he said (in english hallelujah) "sometimes stress can be hard and cause us heartache, and things like erectile dysfunction" my soul literally left my body when I heard that over the pulpit. I was so happy when he did not elaborate on that because I was terrified what was coming next. He told a cool story about how after he fell and broke some of his ribs he had to go to the hospital. He was released from the hospital and he came home and there was a knock on his door. It was two bowls of noodles with no note or anything saying who left them. He started crying it was actually a super cool experience and I was feeling the Spirit, and then he decided that now was the time for him to find out who the mysterious donor was. He accused like 3 or 4 suspects he had and then ended his testimony. My heart rate was all over the place during that testimony it was great. Church was great and I loved it. I love Peter he is like genuinely one of my best friends out here. I just wish you all could meet this man, he is the most interesting person I have ever met. I just want to sit and study him all day, but I have missionary work to do. - Sorry for the very long email, but just to many good things happened this week. I love you all so much and would L O V E to hear from you oh my goodness. I hope you all have an amazing week!! Pictures: 1. Zone conference .5 2. Exchange with Elder Jacobs 3. A coat that was literally forced onto me by a member 4. Chicken Feet and Gizzards 5. Some cool fellas I met at zone conference 6. Elder Campbell giddy to go into raising caines