Jan 22 - Lots of tracting

Nyob zoo

Man - the time just goes by so fast.  I feel like I was just emailing yesterday.  Every single week, the time goes faster and faster.  It’s just crazy.

This week we did a lot of tracting and finding which is something that we’ve needed to do because we do not have very many investigators right now.  And this week we found 4 potentials, not necessarily investigators, but hopefully, they can become investigators.  It was kind of weird because I usually hate tracting - it’s one of my least favorite things to do, but I just had a good attitude about it this week. I really wanted to go tracting because I really wanted to find some people because we don’t have that many people to teach right now.  We only have a couple of people right now that we are teaching.  All of the people that Elder Vang used to teach before I got here are not really interested anymore.  And also, I have not taught a Hmong lesson the whole time I’ve been here.  In 3 weeks, we have not taught one Hmong lesson, so I really wanted to find some people who speak Hmong so we can teach some Hmong lessons.

Right now we only have a couple of investigators.  One of them is named Melanie and she has 4 kids.  The oldest kid is 15 and his name is Isaiah.  The 2nd one is Arianna and she is 10.  She got baptized not too long before I got to Sheboygan.  Isaiah and Melanie have not been baptized yet.  They’re both super awesome and they’ve both been taught everything.  It just takes a little time with them.  Melanie is interesting - she is super nice and super awesome, but right now at the moment, she likes smoking too much.  She doesn’t really have the desire to stop smoking which is kind of hard because we can’t really do anything about that.  That’s got to be something that she wants to do.  Even her kids want her to stop smoking, but at the moment she has no desire to.  Her son Isaiah is super awesome.  He comes to church sometimes and he comes to sports nights on Fridays so we have a good time playing sports with him.

Our other investigators  - One of the Hmong members named NueKou, who is a senior in high school, was baptized about a year ago.  She has a couple of friends named Nou and Cinthia. They all started learning about the gospel at the same time, and they both know it’s true and they both want to get baptized, but because their parents believe in Shamanism, they won’t let them get baptized until they are older and they can make their own decisions.  They are both seniors and both 18 or almost 18, so there is nothing we can do.

This is why we are trying to do a lot of finding because we need more people to teach and we need more people who speak Hmong to teach.  Sometimes it is pretty frustrating because we are not able to speak Hmong that much; we don’t have anyone to teach in Hmong.  So it’s kind of hard to see how I’m going to improve in my language.  Yesterday in church, I was translating and I was just super frustrated.  It was hard because I don’t know what to say half the time - I don’t know that many words.  I know I just need to keep studying and keep working and hopefully be able to find some people who speak Hmong so we can teach them.  One thing that I thought was super cool was when I was translating and I was super frustrated.  Then it was Elder Vang’s turn to translate.  A few minutes after that, a member came up to us and gave us a candy bar and said, “Thanks for all you guys do.”  I thought that was pretty cool and it kind of just picked me up.  And even though I was having a hard time, I just realized that people appreciate what we are doing, and God appreciates what we are doing.  We just need to trust in God and everything will work out.

Prov 3:5

5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. 

Talk to you next week.

Elder Tshwj Xeeb

Me and Elder Vang at a dinner appointment this week

Snow

Snow

Random snow sculpture we ran into

Brat at a dinner appointment. Sheboygan is the Brat capital of the world apparently. And it was way good.
It was stuffed with cheese curds :0  So unhealthy but so good. We get fed like every day since we
are the only missionaries. So we eat really good food for dinners. 

Using my gift card from Gma for P-day

Jan 15 - Find Joy in the Journey

Nyob zoo

This was a super hectic week.  This week we had zone conference and since we are so far away from everyone, we had to drive an hour and a half to get there and an hour and a half back so by the time that was over, the whole day was over.  We also had interviews with President Williams at our Sheboygan ward building since he was already up this way for zone conference so this whole week was a lot of meetings and we didn’t get to do a lot of missionary work.  So next week will be good because we can finally get some work done.

Other stuff this week:  

We got to watch President Monson’s funeral on Friday, so that was really cool to be a part of that.  

On Wednesday, our ward mission leader, Brother Klunk, had his 5 year anniversary of when he got baptized.  Elder Vang and I went to the store and bought him some apple pie and we brought it to his house.  We were able to take a picture with him and celebrate the 5 years since he was baptized.

Also, there is a less active family in our ward that owns a Hmong store and sells Hmong food.  We were going to go in there for dinner because we were hungry and wanted to buy some Hmong food.  It was around 7:30 and that was right around when they were closing.  They would have had to throw all the food away anyway so he just gave us a ton of food to take home.  We got chicken, pork, sausage, rice, and some noodle dish. That was awesome and we haven't even eaten it all yet.

I also ate some pretty interesting food this week.  A member family gave us deer meat. The Hmong people like to hunt and fish so I had deer and I had some type of fried fish. I don’t even know what type of fish it was, but I think it was catfish.

On Tuesday, we went tracting, and we didn’t have that long because we had a lot of meetings this week. but we had about 3 hours that day.  The first house we knocked on was an old lady and she let us in.  The old Hmong people talk forever so she talked about 99% of the 2 hours we were there about random stuff.  It was really frustrating because I didn’t understand hardly anything - maybe 20% of it.  Oh my gosh - it was terrible.  But on Sundays, we have a Hmong class the 2nd hour of church and I understood about 80% of it  - so if it’s gospel stuff, I understand pretty good, but if it’s anything else, I don’t understand any of it.

Also this week, I learned a lot about the Hmong culture religion, Shaman.  I didn’t really know what it was before.  I knew a little bit about it, but it’s actually some pretty crazy stuff.  We went over to a member’s house named Brother Yang.  He told us a bunch of crazy stories about Shamanism.  He used to be a Shaman before he converted, but now he is really active.  HIs family is probably one of our most active Hmong families in the ward. So basically, Shamanism -  they pretty much worship the evil spirits, not because they want to but because they are scared.  The evil spirits - whenever they want something, they will do something wrong and make something happen to the Hmong people.  So the Hmong people will have to do a ritual to worship the evil spirits because they are scared.  This keeps going on and on, so they basically worship the devil which is pretty crazy.  This is why it is pretty hard for them to convert to Christianity because it is completely opposite from what they’ve always believed.  One side you are worshipping God who brings you hope and that brings you love.  The other is worshipping the devil where it brings you fear and you are scared the whole time.  Someone who is using you and makes you live in fear.  This is why we have so many less active Hmong members.  They convert to Christianity and after they are baptized and something goes wrong, they don’t understand how the church can help them because they grew up in fear.  They are scared and they go back to Shamanism because that’s the only thing they know how to do.  This week we have to go over to a Hmong member’s home and visit with her because she did some rituals or something because she got scared.  We need to bless her because she accumulated a bunch of evil spirits in her home, so… I’m pretty scared. But it’ll be pretty interesting.

This week’s quote is from President Thomas S. Monson

"Find joy in the journey --- Now...There is no tomorrow to remember if we don't do something today." - Thomas S. Monson 

These past weeks, I have watched, read, and listened to a lot of the things that President Monson said.  Life is not always easy, even in the mission field, it seems that the journey isn't going how I planned it to be. Times are hard and stressful, but that doesn't mean we can't find joy NOW.  I sometimes think about the future of my mission. What will it hold? I think how in the future, I will be able to speak and to understand Hmong, but I need to focus on today and what I need to do now. I need to find the joy in everything I do - even all the hard work because life is supposed to be a good time, not the opposite.  So "Find joy in the journey, Now, There is no tomorrow to remember if we don't do something today." -Thomas S. Monson 

Have a great week

Love,

Elder Tshwj Xeeb

Pictures: (1-2) Brother Klunk and his pie (3) Lots of Hmong food (4-5) Snow pictures because it snowed a ton here

January 8 - First Week in Sheboygan

Nyob Zoo,

This is my first letter in Sheboygan.  It is a lot different than Madison, but it’s a cute, little town.  Madison is a very big city, Sheboygan is a lot smaller - I mean a lot!  but it’s a small, fun little town.  It’s right off of Lake Michigan, so it’s really cool.  It is a lot colder here than it is in Madison (if that is possible) There is a lot of wind so it feels a lot colder than it really is.  My apartment is also way bigger than my apartment in Madison.  I’ll put a couple of pictures below so you can see the town and my apartment.

Transferring to a new city was a little stressful to be honest and a little scary at the same time.  There’s a lot of packing and unexpected stuff.  For transfers on Wednesday, I rode up with another elder named Elder Linker to Oshkosh.  Oshkosh is the town where the Bradys, who are from our Draper ward, moved to.  In Oshkosh, I met up with my new companion, whose name is also Elder Vang, and went to Sheboygan.

Our area for missionary work in interesting.  We used to have 6 missionaries here - English, Spanish, and Hmong missionaries.  But right now there are only Hmong elders here, so we have to do English, Spanish, and Hmong work, but we’re pretty much just going to focus on the Hmong people for now.  P-days are going to be pretty boring now because there aren’t zone sports for us since we are way isolated. The nearest missionaries to us are an hour drive away :(  The ward here in Sheboygan is a pretty good sized ward.   There are lots of less actives - along with every ward in Wisconsin.  There are only about 3 active Hmong families that come every week.  If all the Hmong less actives came regularly, we could have a Hmong only ward here easily.  The Hmong people come to the same ward building  (just like in Madison) and we translate for them.

For our investigators in Sheboygan - we have a few investigators, not a whole lot, so we are going to have to do a lot of tracting and finding to find some more people to teach.

This week, we already went on exchanges on my third day in the area.  I went with Elder Pinter who came here to Sheboygan, while my new companion went somewhere else. Since I was the only Hmong speaker in the area, I took over the area, and I didn’t know the area very well, but it was fun to be the leader and take over.

The area has a lot of fun things that we do.  We have a volleyball night every Friday at the church, and this week there were about 40 Hmong kids that came, so I got to play some good volleyball for a couple of hours.  Also every Sunday, we have FHE with a family and many of our investigators and recent converts can come and hear a lesson and after we play some games so that’s pretty fun.

And for my companion, new Elder Vang; I’m very impressed with him.  He is a really cool kid. He is from Sacramento and he’s been out on his mission 10 months.  He is a great missionary and his Hmong is really really good.  The first door that we tracted together this week, I asked him to do it because I wanted to see how good his Hmong was and see his style.  The guy opened his door and Elder Vang starts going off for about 20 seconds.  And the guy was like “Uhhhh??? I don’t know what you just said.” He was a Cambodian so it was pretty funny.

This week since the prophet, Thomas S. Monson passed away, I spent a lot of time pondering and thinking about his life. I am grateful for the many great and inspiring messages that he shared. He was a great example of a disciple of Jesus Christ to everyone. My favorite talk was his last talk "The Power of the Book of Mormon."  A very short but sweet message and this talk has stuck with me ever since. It made me really ponder and think about his message of how important the Book of Mormon is and how great a tool it is in our lives. It is such a helping hand in our lives. A message of love, encouragement, and hope. I know it is important for us to read and have a testimony of it - that was the last thing our prophet ever talked about.  I'll end my email with a few quotes from President Monson's talk.

“This morning I speak about the power of the Book of Mormon and the critical need we have as members of this Church to study, ponder, and apply its teachings in our lives.”

“If you are not reading the Book of Mormon each day, please do so.”

“If you do not have a firm testimony of these things, do that which is necessary to obtain one. It is essential for you to have your own testimony in these difficult times, for the testimonies of others will carry you only so far.”

That’s all for this week. 

Love,

Elder Tshwj Xeeb

Pictures: (1)Saying goodbye to some members in Madison on Tuesday (2) Goodbye old Elder Vang (3) Hello new Elder Vang (4-5) my apartment (6-7) city of Sheboygan 

Additional pictures

Ride from Madison to Oshkosh with Elder Linker

Splits with Elder Pinter

Jan 2 - New Year and New City!

Nyob Zoo!

This was a WAY cold week.  I think the average temperature was about 5 degrees.  The coldest I ever saw it get was negative 9 degree.  One day out the 7 days it was a good 12 degrees, but it was usually around 5 degrees so it was cold.

A lot of things happened this week so I’ll try to get through it all.  We went to see Mai and her family.  Mai is Naly's friend who came to church with her a few weeks ago.  She’s doing really good.  She really loves learning about the gospel and I think she read 10 chapters in the Book Of Mormon in the last week which is pretty crazy.  She told us some cool experiences that she’s had that strengthened my testimony too.  The first story was when she was a little girl.  Her mom told her that two missionaries came to their house because she died.  The two missionaries came and gave her a blessing and she came back to life.  It’s pretty cool to think about that.  The second story was about her past life.  She said that there have been a ton of missionaries that have stopped by her house over the years.  She never would answer the door or give them the time of day.  But when Elder Vang and I came by, she changed her mind and she wanted to hear what we had to say.  And now here we are with her progressing really well.  She’s come to church 3 weeks in a row with her family.  It just shows that it’s all in God’s time when people are ready to learn and accept the gospel.

Next up is Kelly.  Kelly is doing super awesome.  She is doing her missionary work.  This week she invited her sister, Ntxoov, (Her English name is Shaun) to come and we taught them a lesson. It was kind of a review lesson where we taught the plan of salvation to her sister and Kelly kind of helped us teach.  After we invited Kelly to continue to pray and see if the Book of Mormon is true. We also invited Shaun to pray and see if what we taught her was true.  The next time we met with them, we asked them if they got their answer.  And it’s pretty cool because Kelly got her answer AND Kelly’s sister got her answer that the things that we taught are true and Kelly got her answer that the Book of Mormon is true.  So the Madison area is doing really good and right when all this happens…I’m getting TRANSFERRED!!!  I’m going to Sheboygan.  It was kind of funny to hear Kelly’s reaction to this.  She said in her broken English, “No you can’t get transferred.  You have to tell the people in charge - Yeah I can’t go - You have to say just say No.  Sorry.”  After the lesson, Kelly and her sister, Shawn,  both said that they were going to start praying for me to come back.  Haha.  And that prayer will be answered when they are baptized and I will come back to see their baptisms.  

All in all, it’s going to be pretty hard to leave Madison, Elder Vang, and especially the people here.  I’m going to miss the area, the awesome awesome investigators, and all the experiences Elder Vang and I have had…especially all the times he slipped on the ice, all the times we tried to get chased by dogs, and all the other pretty funny experiences.  Like this week, we were tracting to a guy’s house.  And it was really cold - it was REALLY COLD - and this guy was really confused why we were there at his door.  He was like, “Why are you guys here?  It’s super cold.”  And we were like, “Yeah…we know!!!” and he said. “Yeah, you guys are going to have to find another house to live in. You can’t live here.”  We were so confused.  He didn’t really get what we were doing and thought we were trying to find somewhere to live or something.  It was pretty funny.

I know that even though it’s going to be hard to leave, It’s all in God’s plan.  And sometimes we don’t understand all the things that God does, but it’s all part of his plan and he always knows what’s best.  It’s always in his wisdom.  I found a quote by Joseph B. Wirthlin that goes along with this. It says:

If we approach adversities wisely, our hardest times can be times of greatest growth, which in turn can lead toward times of greatest happiness.

That’s pretty true because right when I was getting comfortable and getting settled in, and we were doing some great things - I’m getting transferred.  But when you are comfortable, you won’t grow!  When you are uncomfortable and you are doing hard things, that’s the time that’s going to lead you to your biggest growth.  That’s what God’s plan is all about - us improving ourselves and growing and becoming better.  My mission president, President Williams, must want me to grow because first off, he put me with Elder Lewis who is one of the best Hmong speakers in the past 6 six years.  Then I was with Elder Vang who is a native.  And now I’m going to Sheboygan with another Native Hmong person.  So President Williams must want me to be good at Hmong because he keeps putting me with a lot of really good Hmong speakers - or he thinks I suck.  That could be possible too.

That’s all I have for this week.  Have a happy New Year and I'll talk to you in Sheboygan!

Love,

Elder Tshwj Xeeb

Pictures: (1) Happy New Year  (2) we are standing on the snow on the frozen lake (the whole city is surrounding this lake) (3) tracting in the snow (4) Mai and her girls (Iris 9, Kalista 7, Aliza 5) They all really like me haha. Every time we go to their house they are waiting and open the door before we even knock and in church, they always draw me pictures. It is so cute. (5) Saying goodbye to Kelly on my left and Shaun.

December 25 Merry Christmas!

(Hmong)

Peb muaj ib lub cib fim zoo hnub Christmas no thiab txhua txhua Christmas xav txog Yexus Khetos  thiab nws lub neej. Yexus yeej hlub peb thiab nws pub rau peb txoj kev cia siab, txoj kev thaj yeeb nyab xeeb, txoj kev nplij siab, thiab txoj kev zoo siab. Hauv John, tshooj peb, nqe kaum rau, hais tias:

"Rau qhov Vajtswv hlub neeg ntiaj teb kawg li, nws thiaj li txib nws tib leeg tub los rau hauv ntiaj teb, tus uas ntseeg nws leej tub, tus ntawg yuav tsis tau kev ploj kev tuag tias sis nws yuav tau txoj sia ntev mus ib txhis." (John 3:16)

Kuv paub hais tias Yexus Khetos muaj txoj sia thiab hlub peb heev. Thiab kuv paub hais tias Yexus Khetos Lub Koom Txoos Ntawm Tsoom Haiv Neeg Ntseeg Hauv Hnub Nyoog Kawg muaj tseeb. Thiab kuv ua tub txib tsaug thiab ua Vajtswv txoj hauj lwm tsaug. Kuv hlub nej thiab kuv xav kom nej muaj ib hnub Christmas zoo. Sib ntsib dua no nawb!

(English)

We have a great opportunity this Christmas and every Christmas to think about Jesus Christ and his life. Jesus Christ truly loves us and gives us so much hope, peace, comfort, and happiness. In John chapter 3 verse 16 it says:

"For God so loved the world, that he sent his only begotten Son, that whosoever shall believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

I know that Jesus Christ lives and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is true. I am grateful to be a missionary and grateful to do God's work. I love you guys and hope you guys have a great Christmas. Bye!