To: Jolene Wright
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 8:48 PM
Subject: hello
Hey, its me Elder Wright and I can't tell you how happy I am to email you today. We have just been having a blast in this new area, but we have had our challenges. Coming into this area, the previous elders did not have any investigators, or recent converts, or less actives that they were actively visiting and teaching, so I knew that Elder Chang and I had our work cut out for us. West Point is a very special place, a lot of construction, thousands of high rises and billions of people, as well as, all these great worldly features. This place has had a horrible reputation for missionary work. When I got told I was moving here, many said, " oh good luck Elder Wright, that place hasn't had success for a long time ." " that ward is awful and doesn't help with the work at all. " Many other negative things about the area, and every single time I heard that, it just put a huge smile on my face because I knew the Lord sent me to this area to change what everyone thinks of it. To involve the ward in everything, to develop a strong relationship with them, to find investigators to teach, to bring less actives back unto the fold once again, and to make this place have a nice little ring to it when others get called to serve here! We will be having a baptism for a young man named Benjamin next week, and he is so excited. Benjamin is special, he did research on the church, and found out for himself that it was true through our church online website and other articles and then came to the church and found us missionaries. That shows to me that the Lord is always preparing people, and then on the other hand, other people need to be prepared and thats my job. I have recently come to the conculsion while talking to other missionaries and friends, that the key to missionary work is the members. We can find all day, knock on doors for hours, make calls day and night, and of course we will find little success, but the real work starts when members start doing the work and inviting us to become a part of their friends conversion. Prophets for generations now have said that missionary work is NOT effective unless the members are invovled in the work. Are you involved in the work? Since realizing that the last few months of my mission, I have made a goal to visit and talk with, be friends with, every member in my ward. I did that in my last three areas and great success came from it, and it was so easy to schedule the members and I thought it would be just as easy here in this new area, haha boy was I humbled. They would say, " elders we will see you on sunday and that shall be enough for us. " Same thing call after call, finally we got to the point where we just dropped to our knees and fasted with the Lord, to find a way that we could get to know our new members and friends. The next day we called again, and since that day we have visited over 15 families and have 6 more families to go! Miracles! We have had several referrals and made some great new friends! This area is changing slowly, but its changing. A normal day for us right now is to wake up do exercises, studies, and than from 1130am-10pm we are contacting ( walking down and up the streets ) the days are long, hot, and at times we want to give up, but a talk always comes into my head whenever I think I have it too tough. That talk is from a recent conference talk from President Eyering, he talks about a time in his life when he was sad and discouraged and wanted to give up and them he thought about the savior and what he did for all of us, and the words came to his mind, " REMEMBER HIM "... wow, it gets me every time. He could have given up so easily and yet he didn't and nor shall we. There is never a circumstance in which we need to give up, as hard as things get, and as sad or as discouraged as you get, you can never give up. The Lord knows exactly how you are feeling at all times, just talk to him and have the paitence he needs you to have to overcome this trial or hard time. The work is great and how blessed am I am to be here in hong kong today. I never want to leave. my time is going by too fast. I love it here and all my new best friends I have made. I am so glad Heavenly Father gave me this chance to meet them again, because I know they were my best friends in the pre exsitance and they've been waiting for me to find them again and I've been waiting for them. I love you all and remember Alma 13:24. " Your smile might be the closest thing that someone will feel of the saviors love " SMILE TO CHANGE LIVES."
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