WEEK 46 - Prostate Enlargment

Howdy everyone I hope y'all are having a fantastic summer break! Someone go swim in a dang pool for me that sounds wondrous. My first decree for when I come home is that everyone is invited to my house for a swim party with plenty of friends, plenty of booze, and a guaranteed great time (no booze though). I am feeling spiritual right now so let's see what I can whip up with this spiritual thought: Something that I have really noticed on my mission is that everything is tied back to love. A good missionary cares, a great missionary loves. I think that the Beatles put it best when they say "all you need is love." If all I had left was love, I would have everything in my life that I needed because everything in my life that actually matters is centered around love. If I had everything taken away from me except love I would still have my family, my friends, possibly a super hot spouse, and this gospel which is centered on love. I was listening to this talk earlier this week by Joseph B Wirthlin (one of my favorites) called "The Great Commandment" and my heavens it is so good. In the talk he starts shaking and losing control. I am sure he felt pretty embarrassed doing that in front of millions of people but he kept going. Eventually Russell M Nelson stands up and supports him from behind and he is able to stop shaking as much. Because of this small act of love he was able to finish one of the best talks I have ever heard. In my life I have felt like I am just losing control and all it takes is one small act of love from wonderful family members, great friends, amazing missionaries, a super cool bishop, and so many more people that have helped me stop shaking and complete something incredible. I am so grateful. All sadness in this world stems from an absence of love. Every struggling missionary struggles because of an absence of love. The three main reasons I choose to get up and be a missionary are: 1. I love my Savior and his sacrifice for me. 2. There is such a lack of love in this world, and there is nothing I'd rather do then help people feel something so necessary. 3. I like to teach people and myself how to feel love all the time no matter what, and there is only one way and that is through our Savior. Those three things are pretty much why I am willing to do what I am doing and I am grateful to do it. I want to be better and bring more love into this world by loving everyone in the best way I possibly can. If you are religious or not, talkative or shy, skinny or fat, black or white, happy or sad, I have been all of those things before (except black haha) and I now know that literally regardless of your circumstance you can bring love to people and I challenge you to do so. - Ok this week was interesting because I got Covid and then I literally had the worst experience of my entire life getting an ultrasound, then we had to be evacuated to a hotel for 2 days and I would seriously love to tell you the whole story (except about the ultrasound that was 20 minutes of pure misery) but it frankly is not very gripping. - I was quarantined for like this whole week and being sick on your mission sucks. Back home being sick was lit. My Mom is so extremely loving and she would buy me fruit punch Gatorade and I would drink that jawn until the outer ring of my face was chemically indifferent from the liquid inside that bottle. I would watch the office and just have a jolly old time sitting at home. Sickness out here is brutal and it messes with your mind, so I am super incredibly grateful to not be sick anymore. Church was pretty fantastic this week we had lots of friends come and an intense EQ lesson so I guess I will tell you about that: - Luckily like 80% of our friends who came were female, because that was probably the least spiritual Elders Quorum I have ever attended. I have talked about Elders Quorum here before and you probably think I am just exaggerating. I am not. In order to enlighten you on what an Elders Quorum here is like in the Chinese branch, I took vigorous notes throughout the lesson and I am just gonna lay them all out and hopefully give you an immersive experience here: - I walk to the classroom and bring our dope friends Kan and Billy. Class starts and Ed Yung welcomes everyone and then we say a prayer. After the prayer he says "and our teacher today will be Peter Chen." Peter has given great lessons before believe it or not, but only if you can get him in a spiritual mood. That was not the case today. He goes up and says "for today's class we will be in the April 2024 session of conference." Everyone pulls out their gospel library and the next words that come out of his mouth are "Jason Huang." Jason Huang is the CEO of NVIDIA and as soon as I heard those words I trembled, cause I knew what was coming. Peter started pointing and slowly moseying his way over to me talking about how I was very smart and prepared to buy this stock from this amazing Taiwanese business owner. I was hoping Peter would tie this into preparing for the second coming or something, but he dove right into the fall of Adam and Eve. He said "can you imagine creating a world? That would be so difficult! We have a smart God." That might be the only gospel related point of this whole lesson by the way. He then started comparing creating a world to starting a business and then said some positive things about dictators and why they are effective. Then he talked about how he is less of a "grandpa" and more of a parent figure for his grandchildren. Then he looked at Elder Schneider, and then me, and took some steps towards me and said "I could raise you good boy." Then he started talking about the nobel prize hall in Switzerland. After a few words about the hall, he started talking about how horrible it was to change his home internet from Spectrum to a new carrier. After a few words regarding that he pulled out this cool ceramic goose that he had designed and passed it around and it was honestly quite impressive. - After about 25 minutes of this I looked around at this one hardcore member we have in our Elders Quorum who is super experienced in the church. He had a confused look on his face and a phone still opened to the 2024 April session of general conference waiting for Peter to tell us what talk we were going over. I saw that and it was sad but very funny. It is actually wonderful to see how much interest and participation there is during these lessons. It may not be about the gospel but it sure is a community in our Elders Quorum. Anyways back to the lesson: - Ok the comment that was said next I sadly have to filter out but it was quite the intense comment and I was struck with fear when it was said. Then he said that when his wife died all the support he had was female. He then said he also had some support from American men and then he pointed at everyone in the room and stated that they gave him no support. Everyone laughed about it including Peter and they just accepted that that is how Chinese people are. One guy comments "my wife always asks if I love her!" The group got a good chuckle out of that and then we continued on. Peter claimed "the greatest gift God has given us is women." He said women start off beautiful but old age causes them problems and we need to be nice and respect them. He said men have no problems, then he corrected himself and said "wait prostate enlargement" and started talking about that. Some of the men had some comments about prostate enlargement and they told me to eat more vegetables so I can avoid that. An older man named John tried to pipe in about drinking water and they all barked at him saying "John we have no time for that" and I was just in awe because that was the theme of our entire lesson haha. Then Ed ended the lesson about 20 minutes early. I eventually found out the talk we were supposed to read and I was sad because I really like that talk. Billy thanked Peter at the end and said he really enjoyed his lesson. I was walking with Kan to the sacrament meeting, and he said that he loved the lesson. I must've missed something, but hey I love this ward, and then in sacrament meeting we had some really good talks which resulted in some tears and further conversion in our friends. - I get really worried sometimes when church is so unhinged but everything always seems to have a way of working itself out, and I am so grateful for that, and for Peter, and this whole branch they are awesome. - I am also grateful for all of you each individually! I really hope you have an amazing week and that you have some great things happen this summer. If you want to I'd love to hear from you, I miss you! Have an amazing week! Pictures: