China at Temple Square

Me, Sister Garcia and my companion, Sister Fogg

Hi Everyone! There have been some exciting things going on this week. Earlier this week we had about 60 Chinese business and government leaders come to Temple Square for a VIP tour. A VIP tour means that (typically Zone Leaders) take "important" people around Temple Square to places that Church Hosting thinks they should take them and they only explain about the history--no inviting. So there were about six Mandarin-speaking companionships assigned to take these Chinese VIPs around. While they were on the Square Sister Fogg and I got a glimpse of these people. One Sister took her group into the Tabernacle and a man--who appeared to be very important, and also aware of that fact--had a photographer and a camera man following him around documenting his trip to Temple Square. It looked like an awkward tour to give, but I hope that Temple Square uplifted the image of the Church in China. The outreach that Temple Square has amazes me.

We had a Zone Conference this morning in the Church office Building auditorium. President Holmes told us that that is the place that the Prophet and Apostles have leadership meetings in April and October and lots of other meetings. Our Zone Conference was focused on 1) The Savior, and 2) how to be better missionaries and share His message. So they trained us on how we can plan, study, and teach better. Planning for Temple Square is probably different than other missions because we don't always teach the same way and with as much foreknowledge about exactly what we're going to be teaching. So one of the things that they told us to do was to plan for a concern such as "what is the purpose of my life?". Then we can study for and be better prepared to teach to that concern the next day. Another thing that I liked was the challenge they gave us to read the Book of Mormon and highlight all of the answers we find to "questions of the soul", such as "Is there a God?", "What does Jesus Christ expect of me?" and so forth. I hope that by the end I'll be able to use the Book of Mormon better in answering peoples' concerns.

We saw Elder Perry on the Square this week. He was here with his grandchildren.

We didn't have very much RC time this week but I got an inbound call (someone called in), from a man in Texas. His fiance--who I gathered lived a distance from him--is a member of the church and he was trying to find a church for her to go to when they got married and she moved there. So I told him how to get to the information on www.mormon.org about what to expect when you go to church. Then we got talking about what was important to him with religion. He is Christian and he was saying that the most important thing to him is knowing that Jesus Christ is his Savior and all of the little details that we can get into with different Christian denominations just aren't that important. I told him that we also believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior and the only way that we can return to live with our Heavenly Father again. I told him a little bit about our belief in eternal families and he said that he knew a little bit about that belief and was really interest to learn more. So I invited him to have missionaries and he agreed. I'm excited for him to learn more about how he can strengthen his relationship with his fiance and hopefully someday be married for eternity in the Temple. The knowledge that we have about the Plan of Salvation is incredible. Before my mission I didn't know how amazing it was until I realized how little of that knowledge other people have. The Plan of Salvation lets us know why we are here on earth, that we had a personal relationship with our Heavenly Father before we were born, and that there is a way to live with Him and our families again. I definitely have a better appreciation of the knowledge that I have now.