I hardly know where to start – I feel like I was just here yesterday, writing up another report!
This week was great & went by very quickly. As you may have read – last week I met amazingly well behaved children. This week….I met some less-than-fantastic-or-obedient children. From the children this week I came to the conclusion of “I would do it differently” as Meg would say sometimes :)
We had a neat experience Wednesday night with a man whose name I can’t remember for the life of me. He asked, “Do you have any questions for me?” which is most unusual for guests because typically they get unnerved at the very fact that we acknowledge their presence. That morning as I was running a question kept coming to mind, he presented an opportunity for an answer – so I took it! “Where do you say the authority for your church comes from?” He thought about it & worked his way around to initially saying, “The Bible…” and in the end replied, “You know…I think you may have some insight into the trouble with many churches today. I’m not sure why you asked that…but it’s a good question…good question.” He didn’t refer (I know right – how not, he clearly sees there’s an issue with authority) but his insufficient answer was the best answer for me. One thing that I have come to love about asking questions is answers that tell you more about a person than they mean to share.
Sis Chen (Taiwan) fell in the Seagull Monument during her Mandarin motorcoach Thursday morning :) No; I most definitely have not been making remarks about swimming, looking dry or the need to demonstrate what “full immersion” means – every time I see her. Love her to death.
You will have noticed my lack of updates on investigators. Because of the busy summer season our Motors time has been decreased and a greater emphasis placed on RC than teaching. So we haven’t had much time to teach, which seriously bums me out. Way out! But it’s okay – all in good time, we’ll have our investigators back.
Sunday night we took a Cambodian tour! Yes, surprise – in the one year I’ve been out, I’ve learned Cambodian! Jokes. We had a translator :) And we also had Elder Warczak!!! He was with the Nepali program in the SLC mission when I was with Sister Khadgi – so we had tours with him all the time. It was a great surprise and so much fun to help out with his investigators again. Their investigator was a wonderful person, in her 20’s – living in SLC with her grandparents who are members. She is on date for baptism & we could tell she felt the Spirit as we had the translator explain more about Jesus Christ.
I went on exchanges with Sister Birati (bee-rahs) from Kiribati (kee-ribahs) Island & Sister Pei from Samoa. They are AMAZING! There is no other way to describe them. They are 100% themselves with the guests. There’s something about Poly culture that I love – they can say whatever they want to whomever and no one is going to doubt them! You can’t help but fall in love with them!
I love being on a mission. I love being District Leader. I love the insanity of 55 cultures within 35 acres. I love that every day is different and I love that I wake up every morning – knowing that someone out there needs to talk to me. I love this gospel. These restored truths change lives.
Love,
Sister Despain
