OCEAN PARK!

This week was super cool! To start it off on Monday we decided to got to Ocean Park which is like Hong Kong's version of Sea World. So we got to ride roller coasters and check out a bunch of cool animals. It was super cool because I paid for my companion from the Philippeans. It was the first time he had ever been on a roller coaster and it was super funny to hear him squealing on the roller coasters haha. It was super fun and was super cool to go to Ocean Park with my companion. 

After this week we found 4 new investigators. Some of them we aren't sure on how their desires are or why they want to meet with us. But I think if we keep meeting with them they will slowly want to meet with us and learn more about the Gospel. A lot of the people are super cool and I just really love meeting with these people and helping them! 

This week our bishop called one of our investigators parents because our investigator is 15 years old but she really wants to get baptized and her parents want her to slowly investigate the church so our bishop called her parents to introduce himself to them. And he told us that her parents are super nice and that they even want to come to church and check it out. It has been a super big blessing to be working with the members and the bishop! I am so thankful for members! 

I went on exchanges with Elder Lutkin (the Brit that I live with) and it was super fun! we met with one of our investigators and they sang together. our investigator played the guitar and Elder Lutkin sang. It just seems like everyone here can sing and play the guitar except for me haha. But it was super fun listening to them. 

I really love missionary work! I know that it can bring happiness to peoples lives. It has brought happiness to my life! I know that this happiness is an everlasting one and it is one that we cannot find with worldly things. It is the type of love and happiness that can change lives. 

I am super happy to be here! 

Elder Gubler

France!

Hello

This week has been a good week. France won the World Cup so I am pretty happy and living with two Brits it was really fun to follow the world cup. They were pretty mad when England got out but then one of them bought a French jersey which was really funny and his companion who is the other Brit I live with like disowned him ha ha. 

This week was good. We met with our investigators. This weeks problem was trying to figure out how we can help our investigators keep their commitments. We came up with a list of ideas such as: follow up daily, offer our help, and other things. We haven't done anything special yet but we will work on this for the weeks to come. Keeping commitments is super important for the progression of investigators. 

We had a "archery" activity for our zone that I thought was going to be actual bows and arrows and targets and stuff like that. So we invited our investigators to come with us and when we showed up it was like a giant Nerf war with Nerf bows and arrows. My first thought was "aww crap this is going to be super dumb and not fun" but it was actually pretty fun because a lot of people got into the wars and all the missionaries made it super fun so it turned out to be something that helped us get to know our investigators better. 

I had my first interview with president Phillips and Sister Phillips this week. They are wonderful. I am super excited to work with them. President Phillips offered so much help and this week I tried pretty hard to do what he told me to do and it worked I felt a lot better with my personal study and stuff like that. 

That is pretty much all for this week. 

Elder Gu

The bow and arrow activity. The girl in it is our investigator and then it is me and Elder Lutkin (the Brit that I live with).

This is me and Elder Delabahan at the temple.

 The picture of the view is when we went less active finding and got rejected by all the less actives at their houses ha.ha.

~From last week July 15, 2018~

 Hello!

This week has been raining a lot and in China and the people here sometimes are super afraid of the rain so they won't even come out to meet with you if it is raining. So one day we had like 4 lessons planned and they all rescheduled because of the rain so we after our studies we had nothing but hitting the streets to go finding. Finding is all about your attitude because if you walking around thinking "I don't want to be doing this" then finding won't be fun and won't be effective. But, if you walk around with the attitude that the Lord is going to help you find people and you are excited to do be doing the Lord's work then finding will somehow be a lot more fun and be a lot more successful. It is pretty cool to see how this works. So I told myself I would have the second attitude and go out and be happy. And it worked. We did a lot of finding: Soccer finding, walking everywhere, and it ended up being a really good day. We got a decent amount of people who were interested! It is really cool to see that if you are willing then the Lord can help create miracles. 

This week we were able to meet with a few of our investigators. Most of our investigators are super busy with work so they have like no time to come to church which is kind of bad but they seem to like meeting with us. So we just have to keep working with them slowly and maybe we can help them come to church with us. 

This week we also had Zone Conference. It was the first one with President Phillips. We talked about faith and it was super cool to see how President Phillips taught it. We really just kind of dove in to the scriptures about faith and about what faith can lead to. I really like President Phillips he is a respectable guy. He went finding with the Pok Fu Lam Elders for 3 hours in the heat so i was super impressed by that! He is a man of God. 

This week a small miracle kind of happened. So recently i have been learning Chinese characters. So I have learned like 600 characters and felt like I still couldn't read very much and sometimes I would forget the characters but I tried reading the book of Mormon for language study and I could read some of it which is a huge miracle and i could understand it too so I was super happy and it just showed me that as a missionary we really do have the gift of tongues. 

I really love this work. I have seen the light it can bring to people's eyes. It really gives me so much satisfaction every time someone feels the spirit and you can just see it in their eyes. It is a true work and I am super happy to be serving here in Hong Kong! 

Elder Gu 

2nd week in Ngau Tau Kok

Hello!

This week has been super good! We met with a lot of investigators, and we were able to find a few more! One sad thing happened is that one investigator was supposed to be baptized yesterday but we met with him last Wednesday and he didn't seem to want God's help through baptism. He didn't want to be baptized but he agreed to keep meeting with us and to keep learning. All of our investigators here are super good and kind people so that makes me really happy to be serving them and to work my hardest for them.

I also got to meet the new mission President and his wife. The new mission president came to our ward this Sunday and bore his testimony in Chinese. He served in my area when he was a missionary here. He still remembers Chinese but it sounds like a white person is speaking. But pretty much every missionary sounds like that. His wife was born in Hong Kong and she gave her testimony and her Chinese sounded like a white person as well ha ha. She hasn't spoken it in so long so that kind of surprised me because Sister Lam and President Lam still sounded like Chinese people but Sister Phillips didn't so it surprised me but she will pick it up a lot faster and be fluent in no time. But they are super nice! After church they got lost trying to find their way back to mission head quarters in Kowloon tong so we helped them find their way to the MTR. We got to talk to them for a while and they are just super kind and loving! they are a little overwhelmed with all the duties of mission president but I know they will do amazing. They are super nice and I love them so much! President Phillips is decently old but last week he went out finding with some missionaries for 3 hours. And to go finding at this point in summer for 3 hours is not super fun. So i was really impressed. He is super cool and I like him so much!

I love Elder Delabahan so much! He is a super good singer and one of our investigators can sing so she sang in Japanese which was super weird that she knew how to sing in Japanese but it sounded super good and Elder Delabahan sang with her! It was pretty cool! Elder Delabahan is super amazing! Elder Delabahan is a teacher in his home country which is super cool! So i have really learned a lot from him!

The language is progressing! I love it. I can understand pretty much everything but there are still a lot of things that I don't understand. I have memorized 500 Chinese characters. So I know how to read a little bit. I can almost read from the book of Mormon in Chinese ha ha. I don't know how to write the 500 characters but I think I will learn how to write later. 

 

That is pretty much it, nothing too special this week.

Elder Gu

Pday Pics...

 The investigator who can sing in Japanese

 Our investigators Becky and Ken. They are brother and sister

 Views from my area.

Some grassy area above our apartment.

All the elders in our apartment. The other two are Brits and love soccer!

Ngau Tau Kok

Hello,

So this is the first email from my new area. It is kind of on the complete other side of Hong Kong. I was on the west side before in Yuen Long but now I am more on the East side. And the geography here is completely different. In Yuen Long it flat and here it has more hills. Also in Yuen Long the city wasn't as big because it is all the way out in the New Territories. But in Ngau Tau Kok the city is a lot bigger and a lot easier to get lost. So that has been pretty hard to get used to. I still don't know where I am going. 

It was pretty weird to be leaving my first area after 9 months. It felt like I was leaving on my mission again and leaving my family and friends. It is really interesting that that is what a mission can do. It can bring you close to so many people in a short amount of time. 

I like Ngau Tau Kok so far. I have met with a few investigators and potentials so that is good to get to know them. My companion has been a huge help. His name is Elder Delabahan and he is from the Philippians. He is 23 years old and he has been out on his mission for 3 months. So it has been cool to help him learn the language. He is the sweetest, most kind person you will ever meet. I love him already.  His conversion story is pretty cool. He was in the Philippians and he went to a music concert and David Archuleta was there and when he sang my companion felt something that he had never felt before and then he did some research on David Archuleta and found that he was a Mormon and so that is when he started in our church. my companion is also a really good singer.  I live in an apartment with one other companionship of Elders from England. This has been really fun because we play soccer every morning and we do a lot of soccer finding. It is also very fun to talk about the World Cup with them because they are both really passionate about England. 

Over all the new area is been good! Hard to get adjusted to but it will be ok.

That is pretty much all 

I love you all

Elder Gu

 Last time with President and Sister Lam.

 Last time with my Yuen Long investigators and LA.

 This member family and then the younger looking sisters just got back from their missions. The ones on the very right of the couch are deaf as well.

 Deaf member family that gave us dinner before we left.

 Cheung Jau for pday.

 Me and Elder Delabahan.

 Yan Yan my Yuen Long investigator who will get baptized on the July 22.