Hey all,
I think I must have been taught to have a bad attitude about the work on the Island when I served in Aberdeen. It's really amazing to me to see the difference that it makes when your faith is strong and your mind is centered on the work. Maybe it was the Hung Shui Kiu interlude, maybe it's maturity, maybe it's better Cantonese, maybe it's having a native companion, maybe it's a stronger testimony of the truthfulness of what I share, and probably a mixture of all of it, but I'm back on the Island and I don't want to leave again. There's work to get done, and it's fun.
Last week, as a new additional companionship, we naturally had nobody to work with. But we had an Area Book, and I have a fiery little Elder Woo who's half my size, yet walks twice as fast as I'm capable. I feel like I'm going 500 miles per hour a day, and ironically, it kind of keeps my spirits up. I'm grateful for the desire and the strength of my companion; I couldn't do it without him. But we ended up meeting or succeeding most of our goals for the week, ending with a total of 7 new investigators -- several of them found on the street. That was a miracle in and of itself, besides the finding that God decided to do for us.
One man, who we called and scheduled from the potentials list left behind from previous missionaries, listened to a lesson and then rescheduled to attend English Class and he brought his two daughters, which gave us a total of three new people to teach. Another came to English Class because of word of mouth and via the internet, was taught a lesson afterwards and became a new investigator, and then yesterday at church, a young man in his mid-20's showed up to church saying that he had studied at Snow College in Ephraim, Utah and wanted to know more about the church. He was taught after Sacrament meeting, and I had the feeling that he was someone who was prepared to receive the Gospel, and he walked away with a baptismal date for next month. Of course I can't say what has happened with any of these people, because I have all of this week to follow through with them! We don't know what will happen, but I know for a fact that if we had not been diligent to the minute of every moment we hit the streets this week, and poured over the area book, there's no way that we would have seen the success that we did. I know that the outcome of an area or the manifestation of any miracle starts within the mind of the missionary.
Not much time left for today. I suppose it's safe to say that coming to Chai Wan didn't come with the biggest heap of encouragement on part of missionaries who have served here, nor is it what people might call a white field already to harvest when they hear the name. But you might say that I don't believe that. The Chai Wan companionships have a lot of work to do, and we all have a lot of faith out here. I know that God answers our prayers of faith according to our willingness to work for their outcome, even if it means a lot of difficulty or seeming failure at the outset. May we all have the faith to endure, for God is a God of miracles.
Elder Hazen
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