Week77

Hello all!

This week was pretty great. There has been quite a lot going on in the Chinese Zone. One of the sister's investigators got baptized this week. He has a strong testimony of the Gospel. We were grateful that the service went well, considering it wasn't really organized. He bore a wonderful testimony about the Book of Mormon and Heavenly Father.  

Elder Zhang and I have been working hard to find new people to teach. We found a mother and daughter named Anna and Lily from China. They had only been here for 2 weeks when we found them. So far, they have only come to English class which is a great start! We also found David from China as well. He works at a restaurant 6.5 days of the week. It's lucky that his only half day off is right when English class starts so we will be seeing him there as well. 

We are teaching a lady named 晓岚 Xiao Lan, we call her Little Blue for fun. She has been meeting the missionaries for two years consistently, but won't get baptized. We got her to read the Book of Mormon everyday and invited her to come to church since both my companion and I were speaking. Xiao Lan brought her Book of Mormon and flipped to all the scriptures that we shared on the pulpit, it really touched both of us. We hope she can continue to strengthen her testimony through prayer and scripture study.

Its always Sunny in the Bank. 阳光银行

Love Elder Westbrook

Sister Ding's Birthday!!

Week76

Hello!

SunnyBank is great! Got to see some old friends and some new investigators. The Elders and Sisters here are great. They are hard working and good teachers.

This week we decided to do no carb diet just for fun. We chose the worst week to do it because members and investigators took us out to eat 4-5 times and all we could eat was meat and veggies. It was all good though, now we know how hard it will be to do it for a longer period. All we ate were meat, veggies, and fruit. 

Our teaching pool is quite small, but we have one or two that have potential to be baptized. In the mean time we will be working closely with them.

Elder Young has just gone home back to Orem. I still remember when he was my district leader when I first came out. 

Also got some pictures of when I was a golden

Week75

Hey, I'm back in Sunny Bank!

So apparently my visa ends some time in November. The office waiting for approval from the visa people. From what I have heard, I might be going home in November instead of February if they don't make a decision before my visa runs out. So we will see what happens.

Sunny Bank has been doing really well. We have a big teaching pool. We are excited to be able to serve here. It has been a year and a half since the last time I've been. Sunny Bank was my first area. Not much has changed.

It was sad to leave all the Gold Coast members. We had a lot going on there, but Elder Cahoon will smash it there. We set 7 dates while we were there.

Many of my good missionary friends are going home. Sad but happy day. Great to see them serve an honorable 2 years.

Love Elder Westbrook

Apologies for the pictures that have a red tinge to it.

Week74

Hello All

What a great week. 

This month in our ward is a missionary month. The ward council is really pushing for missionary work to happen in the ward. Elder Cahoon and I are so excited. The Testimony meeting this week had a common theme of missionary work. Both my companion and I bore our testimonies of missionary work. Our new Ward mission leader is great. He is making a lot of changes to the ward, we hope as the members get excited, the work will hasten.

 We are seeing alot happening in the Gold Coast Zone. We hit our baptism goal for the month as a zone, and as a reward, our mission president, President McSwain had us over at the mission home for a family home evening. It was great fun! We hope to be able to beat our goal next month or September. We are so thankful for the work our missionaries are doing. We have a zone full of Elders and no sisters which is great, we can do everything as a zone.

Love Elder Westbrook

Week73

Gday everyone

This week was pretty great. We definitely saw some miracles. We fasted as a zone to find new investigators. Sadly, we were the only area that actually found some.

The day of the fast, we were so hungry and out of energy, but we worked anyway, and it all payed off.

 

We followed up with one of our potentials named Shea. Her dad answered the door and let us teach her. We taught the restoration and the first vision. She said she felt comforted that there was a living prophet on the earth to teach us the right way. We haven't met with her a second time yet but we will soon. The next day, we were talking to one of our members about what she studied in Uni. Turns out the member knows our investigator Shea. They are taking the same course together. So now we have an instant fellowship and we will invite Shea to an activity.

That night, we were still starving. We had nothing to do so we went to GQ. As we pulled up along the side walk, we decided to take our time in the car and chat for a little while. There was a lady (Tatiana) out side that both of us felt prompted to talk to but we didn't want to leave the car just yet. Just as she was leaving, we decided to talk to her. as we got out, she came to us and started to talk to us. She is Brazilian and doesn't speak English that well. We gave her a restoration pamphlet and everything, she became our new investigator right there. Sadly we have to refer her to the other Elders in the zone because she doesn't live in our area, but it was a miracle that we found her anyway. It will be good for her because the Elders in that area just baptised a Brazilian so he can be her fellowship.

Love Elder Westbrook

Week72

Herro

Pretty good week. Can't really remember what happened. 

We followed up on a potential named Roslyn. She's "Catholic", but doesn't have much background in religion. She wonders why so much bad happens in the world, and if God really is there. We taught about our Heavenly Father and asked her to pray if He is there. She told us she prayed to Mary, it was the first time I had heard this response from an investigator. I've always heard this phrase as a joke. I never realized that people actually prayed to Mary. We invited her to pray to Heavenly Father, and she gave a beautiful prayer. We will continue to teach her and answer her questions.

Sheila came to church on Sunday and came to Sunday School, which she usually doesn't come to. It was good that she received an answer to her question. We have been teaching her a lot about faith and how she can act in faith to give up coffee. She told us on the way to church, she was thinking about what faith actually is. And lo and behold, the lesson today was on faith. It all worked out really well. The Sunday School teachers had planned this lesson weeks in advance but never got to teach it because of other obligations. This Sunday, they had planned to go somewhere else but felt that they should stay and teach the lesson. So everything worked out. Sheila got an answer to her question at church. We hope she feels that Heavenly Father really is watching out for her.

Love Elder Westbrook

Week71

Hello Everyone! 

Not much time today. Just got back from the temple. We tried catching up with some of our potentials this week with little luck. We did get some appointments though, so hopefully they don't fall through. 

Sheila is still doing well. She has been sick so haven't seen her lately.

Love Elder Westbrook

Week70

Hey all

Pretty good week. We got lots done this week, we went and did a lot of door knocking. We will be meeting with Bishop soon to talk about missionary work. Sheila is doing great, we gave her a 4 week plan to cut down on her coffee drinking. So far she's doing great. She is going from 3 cups a day to 0 cups with in the 4 weeks, so we will see how it goes.

Interesting story: Elder Cahoon and I were craving some dominoes pizza one day. We drove to 3 different addresses on the GPS and there were no shops there. So we were pretty frustrated. We decided to call a member to ask for an address. 

On the other side, Jo - the person we called - was having a real estate agent come to her place to check out her house. The Agents name is Dave. Dave's sister used to be Jo's agent, but he replaced her. Going back a while, Jo had an impression to give Dave's sister a Book of Mormon. Jo didn't know why she felt prompted to but did it any way. 11 days later Dave's sister passes away. So when Dave is following up on his sisters customers, Dave and Jo got talking about his sister on the phone who passed away and he got really interested in learning about our church.

Now, that you have two sides of the story, here's how they connect. Jo just got off the phone with Dave and he is coming over to Jo's place; a few minutes later Elder Cahoon and I, with the intent to ask for an address for Dominoes pizza, call Jo. Jo, surprised that we called, told us to come immediately. So we go to her place and end up teaching Dave a little about the church and the Book of Mormon. Dave is now interested in learning.

 But the real miracle was Jo had put a frozen pizza in the oven, not knowing we were craving pizza. So when we got there, we had pizza and a lesson. 

So grateful that God used our craving for pizza to lead us to someone that is prepared to learn about His church.

Love Elder Westbrook

Week69

Hey all

Today has been pretty crazy, it was transfers today and had to get all organized. I have a new companion Elder Cahoon. He's pretty awesome, he's from Utah as well. We will smash this transfer. Emily got baptized this Saturday. It was a good one. It was small but the spirit was there. The office Elders out of the blue came over and turned the ratio of members and missionaries to half. It was only supposed to be Elder Edmonds and I, but the missionaries filled up half the room. We did a musical number as well, we sang Let Zion in her beautiful rise, I sang the bass for the first time so one of the Elders had to teach me the part. It was pretty great. 

Sheila is still trying to give up coffee so pray for her! 

Love Elder Westbrook