DP and LU... Headed to Singapore!! 8/12/14

Week #9.... Singapore Bound!!!

So we leave tomorrow for Singapore but don't get there until Thursday with all the layovers and everything and time zone stuff. It is kinda crazy. We fly from SLC to LAX to Hong Kong to Singapore. My goal is to read the entire BOM on the plane ride. And give it to someone. Should be a challenge. 15 hours sitting next to someone should give me enough time to convince them the gospel is true, I mean where can they go? they have no choice but to listen haha. I have never flown more than 5 hours or so, so this will be a new experience for sure. 

So this week we were teaching on of our "real" investigators and we were trying to get them to pray about God to know if He existed. I shared the example of King Lamoni's father in Alma 22:18. I meant to have her only read the first half of the verse but I forgot because it was in Chinese characters and so I couldn't read it so I just let her read the whole thing. After she read it she started to freak out and started to kick us out of her house. I was really confused and hurried and looked up the verse in English. The beginning talks about the King's prayer and then at the end it says: "And now when the King had said these words, he was struck as if he were dead." I realized the horrible mistake and then we did our best to calm her down. Obviously she thought that if she prayed she would be struck dead. Yeah, in the real field that would have been pretty bad. Might as well get out all the mistakes here at the MTC I guess. 

I also this week played 10 songs on piano for the sacrament meeting and priesthood which was an absurdly high number. Not only did our district want to do like a 4 song combined musical number but I also played a musical number myself. I'm hoping to be able to use piano in the area I am assigned. 

So yeah that is kind of a weird thing to think about. in the next 72 hours I will be somehow over in Malaysia or Singpore with some random guy trying to teach the gospel in a language I barely know. Good luck Dakota. Thanks. 

So we have gotten to be such good friends here with all the administration here. Mostly its because of my companion because he is one of the most outspoken people ever. We honestly sit on the front row of every devotional no matter what time we show up because the people in charge save seats for us. Everyone else is always so confused and always asks "how do you always get front row seat?" Pretty funny. My companion also got the MTC 1st counselor's email address. Stud. 

The food here this week was terrible. I think I have had each of their rotations of meals like 10 times each. But I'm guessing when I get to Singapore I will have to eat some crazy animals brain that will make me wish I had MTC food again. I guess we'll soon see. 

I am so ready to get out of here except for the fact that I know my language is no where near where it needs to be. 

This Sunday I fasted for me to better recognize and feel the spirit. I felt the spirit more that Sunday more than I ever have while I have been at the MTC. I know the power of fasting is real.

I'll end with a quick spiritual thought. I have always thought why do people say that when you bear your testimony, your testimony grows. I think there are two reasons why it does. #1 is that it gives the spirit a chance to testify to you that what your testifying of is true. #2 which I never really thought of before is that is makes you analyze your testimony. You realize where it is weak and maybe even doubt some things you thought you knew were true. This then forces you to study your doubts out in your mind and pray about them and then study the scriptures about it. Then your testimony grows even stronger than it used to be before you began to doubt or recognize your weakness.

Love you all,

See you in Singapore!! (Or Malaysia)

-Ping Zhang Lao

Elders Pierce and Celaya Jaming at MTC!

Mandarin District at MTC

Week #8... Starting to lose Count??

Hey all.

This week was great. Me and austin got to play our piano duets for a bunch of people here. I also got to play my arrangement of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" for the Departure Devotional here for like 300 missionaries. Can't compare to the 4th of July performance but still really cool.

So being district leader is like impossible. Our district can be so all over the place. I'm like study study study and everyone else is like play play play. We tried to set some goals and we are going somewhere but at times it can still be a little frustrating.

It is getting sad. Only one week left. I am so ready to get out of this place but on the other hand I know my chinese is no where near par. I know I will get there and know nothing but still it's time to teach real people. That is if I can understand a single word. We have these lessons with our "investigators" who are really our teachers which go great because I can actually understand them and teach to their needs. And then we have these skype lessons with real Chinese people aka Zhonguren and I have to ask them to repeat themselves every 5 seconds. Totally different language I swear.

The basketball has also gotten a lot worse lately. Not me, just the players here. A bunch left and so now the games are kind of pointless. At least the weights don't get any lighter. Still can hit the gym.

I swear my companion never lifted in his whole life (except hay bells) but now he loves it. All he wants to do is bench press though. He's obsessed with chest and biceps. Pretty common for beginner lifters who want to impress the ladies. 

The Mandarin branch is huge now. We have 4 singapore missionaries in our district and another 6 or so in another Mandarin district. We are the oldest Mandarin district now which is weird because it seems like just yesterday that we were the youngest. 

My companion lost his Journal (we seem to lose a lot of things here) and we were looking for days for it only to realize it was on his desk.  fail. 

Then he lost his journal again later this week and again we looked for it for a couple days (including his desk multiple times) We finally couldn't figure out where it was and finally we just decided to pray and within 5 minutes while he was on the toilet he realized where he had left it. The good ole laundry room. And of course there it was. Pretty crazy. 

I'll end with a spiritual thought. Me and my companion have been thinking a lot about Jesus Christ and his perfect life and Atonement. How can someone really live a perfect life on this crazy place we call earth. This week someone mentioned a thought that really struck me in district meeting. It was that Jesus Christ was the most talented person alive. If you believe he was the Son of God then you must admit he had infinite talent. And what did he do with all that talent? Well, he gave it away. To who? The father. He put his infinite talent and will and aligned to the father's will perfectly. And that is why he perfect. No one else in the world has been able to keep their will perfectly in line with the father's during our lives. We all lose the path a little bit here and there at some times in our lives. 

Love you all,

Elder Pierce (Ping Zhang Lao)

P.S. I forgot to mention but the food here is getting pretty bad. Just the same thing over and over. Can't wait to taste some real asian food. Although i might bite my tongue on that one. I have heard that the food can actually be pretty weird. We'll see, 8 days!!!

Elders Pierce and Celaya

WEEK #7......

Dear all,

I have a bunch of funny things to say and then I will end with a spiritual thought.

So we had a skype lesson this week and have another one later tonight but it is with a member in Taiwan and I thought I was good at Mandarin but no. I couldn't understand anything that he was saying hardly. It was pretty bad. The real world Mandarin is a lot faster than the MTC mandarin. That's for sure.

Yesterday, I got assigned district leader which should be interesting. I get to hold the position for the rest of the time we are at the MTC.

Oh there was this buddy of mine who forgot his tennis shoes and so he made his own out of duct tape and wears them to play basketball with us. They look exactly like Sawyer's football cleats with the nike sign and everything. I thought it was hilarious but he wears them relentlessly every day. The traction is so bad though it's ridiculous. I have a picture of them I will send. I really want sawyer to see them.

The MTC is getting kind of old to be honest. Like I am super excited to get out into the field. But on the other hand I know that my Mandarin is really not at all ready to go out into the new world. We don't hardly speak any English the entire day. At first it was hard not to speak any english but now it is getting easier.

So on Wednesday we got to host again and I got to host Austin. I kind of worked the hosting system to be able to do it but I was able to. It is our third week hosting so we kind of had the system down pact. I was also able to sit with him at last night's devotional and afterward was able to play our duets with him in a side chapel. Super awesome to see him.

Funny story about our investigator. So Elder Lundahl-Wolford and I are late to everything which is something that we are working on. Anyways when we went to teach our investigator who is our teacher (10 minutes late) she kicked us out. First rejection ever. Many more to come.

Our teacher got sick this week with a bad sore throat and cold and then every person in our district got sick including me. All sore throats. I gave two of the elders some of Mom's echinea (natural herb) and they said it was the worst thing they had ever tasted. I thought it was hilarious. But they did get better. We are all good now.

So there are a lot of funny language things that happen at the MTC and there were a couple this week. As me and my companion were leaving a particular lesson we were walking away and he yelled Xienzhi which is prophet instead of zaigian which is goodbye. Our investigator who is also our teacher thought it was hilarious. It was.

Another one is we were in class this week and one of our elders was talking about how much he liked the MTC teachers life. And instead of saying Wo xihuan ni de shenghuo, he said Wo xihaun ni de shenti. Instead of saying I like your lifestyle, He said I like your body. Our district just about died laughing.

Also in the cafeteria this week I couldn't find my companion and so I decided to give it a Heeeeeeeh. He does this all the time and when I did everyone looked at me like I was crazy but of course my companion right away found me. The Heeeeeh is really hard to explain without showing you in person but maybe you can imagine a southern farmer Heeeeeeeh.

So instead of getting sisters phone numbers here you get their LDS emails. My companion is to say the least quite good at this.

So I wanted to share one spiritual thing that I learned this week. I finished reading the Book of Mormon last week but I didn't really get my answer until this week. It was when I turned myself towards others that I received my answer. We started teaching our first gold tag (the other two bailed) in English. SO great to teach in English by the way. Anyways she asked a really good question that sent me on a hunt.

She asked well how do I know which church is true if my father felt the spirit in the Buddhist temple? Yet I feel the spirit in lots of different churches? And why do all these churches have such faithful members that know that their church is true? Like they can't all be right?

Well they kind of all are right and wrong. They all have such faithful members because they feel the spirit telling them that a specific part of their religion is true and it is. If we read Moroni 10: 5 it says that by the power of the holy ghost ye may know the truth of all things. The spirit has no choice but to testify of truth. And many many churches have truth. And many many churches do good in this world. And the same goes for our church. The spirit testifies of the truthfulness of this church as it does other churches. So what makes it different? Well, the claims it makes does.

Joseph Smith claims to have seen God the father and the son. He claims to have had many many more visions. He claims to have written the Book of Mormon. He claims to have restored Christ's original church by command from him. If we read Moroni 7 we know that all good things come from God. Also it tells us that only good fruit can come from good roots. Therefore if we look at the Mormon church the fruit is good. But other churches also have good fruit. The difference is the roots are different. No other church claims to have visions like Joseph and his prodecessors did. The fruit is wonderful and thus the roots also cannot be evil but must be good. There is no way that from one of the biggest lies of mankind has a emerged a church that has changed so many millions of lives and brought forth such great fruit. This goes against the principle.

If you want more evidence of this true. Read the Book of Mormon. And pray about it sincerely. This takes humility.

This same principle of the good fruit and good roots can be applied to Jesus Christ. He claimed to be the son of God. He worked mighty miracles. He raised the dead and healed the sick. Either he was the Son of God or something much much worse. There is no way that it could of been a lie. The biggest lie of all mankind. Look at his fruit. Look at how many people he helped and his words continue to help. No man could of claimed he was the Son of God and yet down so much good and many miracles and been one of the worst liars/hypocrites of all time. This again goes against the principle.

I hope some of that made some sense.

I love you all.

-Ping Zhang Lao

"If you haven't chosen the Kingdom of God, it won't matter what you have chosen." - C.S. Lewis