I am so grateful for the spirit's help every day of my life

Elder Jake and his new Mandarin companion, Elder Hancey

Jake said they get along great!

Winter is here! Well it is pretty cold. It snowed yesterday. That was about as depressing as it could have been. At least that means Christmas is coming! I can't wait for that!

The work is going well. Apparently this is the busiest Mandarin area so that's kinda cool. We are meeting with some sweet people. I had real Chinese food the other night for the first time. I have no clue what it was but it tasted great. And my hand felt like a pretzel after from using chopsticks haha! Those things hurt! One of our investigators, Lulu, fed us after we helped do some yard work for her. She is super nice and her little boy is super hyper and hilarious. I can't understand a word he says but he is super funny. We are basically best of buds.

We are also teaching two twins in college, Daniel and Justin. Their English is pretty good, but the lessons are in Mandarin so they understand them better. They are super cool. They live in a member's basement and that is how they were introduced to the church. The members called the missionaries for translating haha! Pretty cool.

We also are teaching this lady Jane. She comes to our ESL classes (English as a Second Language). She became interested in the church and we are now teaching her. She is super sweet. Her husband speaks really good English. He is really cool. We are also working with Joanne and Jimmy. They are husband and wife. They are super cool. She wanted the family to be united in a religion so she invited the missionaries over. The dad is really interested and she really likes what this church teaches.

We are also teaching a man Brother Wang (pronounced Wong). He is an eternal investigator haha. He smokes and doesn't really have any desire to quit, but he likes us coming over to teach him and he has a ping pong table downstairs that he lets us play on after the lesson for a few minutes haha.

Yeah so the teaching is going really good. Although there is an obvious language barrier, I am amazed at the opportunities I still get to help out in the lessons. For example, we were teaching Lulu. She speaks pretty basic English. She was struggling with tithing. She didn't understand why we had to pay it and why God wouldn't just bless us regardless of whether we pay it or not. I was able to share your experience with tithing, Mom. About when you were struggling and went to pay your tithing and when you put the check in the mail, there was a check for you in the mail from one of dad's cases that was supposed to come a while ago. I think that's how it went. I told her that the Lord helps us provide for our families when we help provide for his church. Right then she understood completely and it was no longer a question of why we have to pay tithing. It was awesome so see how well the spirit was able to help her understand what I was saying and the importance of this principle.

It is amazing the things that the spirit is able to do. I am so grateful for the spirit's help every day of my life. It is such a blessing in our lives to be able to have that direct connection to our Heavenly Father through the spirit. I hope that we are all doing our best to remain worthy of the wonderful blessings the spirit has to offer. For without the spirit, we are lost. I know this is true.

I hope you are doing well back home. I pray for you all every night! I am grateful for your prayers for I feel them all!

Take care! Love you!!

Elder Anderson