February 6 - Follow the Promptings of the Spirit

Nyob zoo

I hit my 6-month mark on Friday so I am now officially starting my “18-month sister missionary mission.”

This week, we had mission tour, which is why I am emailing today.  It was yesterday.  Basically what that is is a general authority from the seventy comes to our mission and, in a way, inspects us and sees how we are doing.  Elder K. Brett Nattress came and it was all day long conference yesterday in Green Bay so we woke up really early to drive up there.  It was combined with our Appleton Zone, Wausau Zone, and Green Bay Zone.  The other 3 zones will meet with him today.  That was really cool to feel the spirit that he brings to a meeting.  He was a super awesome guy and he was pretty young and even though he is a general authority, he still cracked jokes and was fun. But at the same time had the strong spirit with him. He told lots of awesome stories.

This week I also started reading the Book of Mormon in Hmong and it’s a good time because I got a whole 5 verses read in 30 minutes.  The whole time I was looking up words I did not understand.

We met this week again with Nuekue, Nou, & Cynthia and had a lesson.  The deadline for them to apply to BYU Idaho was also that day. We called our Bishop and set up an appointment for all of them with him and they got their applications in - the last minute too.  But that would be so good for them if they are able to get in there and go there.  It would be a good environment and a good school for them.

We all know the Super Bowl was on Sunday and that day is officially now the hardest day on my mission so far.  I wanted to watch it so bad.  When we were driving around in our car, we could see everyone’s TV’s on and no-one was outside. Everyone was home watching the game.  That was a hard day, but instead of watching, we had a dinner appointment and family home evening

Also this week we did exchanges with the elders from Appleton.  Elder Jeffs, who is one of our zone leaders, came here to Sheboygan with me and Elder Vang went there to Appleton.  We had a pretty cool experience when we were together.  It was around 8:00 and we had just finished an appointment.  We decided to go visit a random less active family so we opened up the binder and just picked a random family and drove there and they weren’t home.  We both needed to use the restroom, so we ended up walking down the street and into the woods.  On the way back, we were walking to our car, and we saw this guy get out of his car and go into his house in front of us.  And we thought, “Dang. We just missed him.”   We both felt the Spirit prompting us to go knock on his door, so we went and knocked.  Eventually, we got in and we taught a very quick lesson on the restoration and gave him a Book of Mormon and the whole time he was like, “Dang!  That’s pretty cool.”  He seemed pretty interested.  The craziest part of this is when we got back to the apartment, Elder Jeffs opened his scriptures to a random page and read a scripture and it pretty much just talked about following the prompting of the spirit.  It was pretty cool.

The thing that I learned this week for sure is to act on the promptings of the Spirit.  A lot of times, we don’t know necessarily if it is our gut telling us to do something or if it the spirit telling us to do something.  Elder Bednar says it pretty good when he said If it’s a good thought or good feeling, just do it.  That’s something that I need to work on too.  When I have that impression to go do something, just go do it because God will help us out and God will bless us for doing so.

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Tshwj Xeeb

On a side note, I got a surprise visit from Brooke Brady who was in my home ward in Draper, but lives here now and is in my Stake.  She came with the Sister missionaries for an investigator's baptism interview with Elder Vang since he is our district leader.  It was a total surprise and it was really cool to see her. She gave me a lot of my favorite stuff.  It's too bad Jordan couldn't be there, but I got to facetime him for a minute.

Photos:(1)  Our investigator Chong Dee's birthday. We brought her a cake and celebrated with her (2) Sheboygan district (3-4) Superbowl Sunday. My mom sent me some Superbowl snacks to have today. This is me crying (almost) (5-6) This is a flagpole at an insurance company called Acuity I think. The building is just ridiculous. They are so loaded. It is the tallest flagpole in North America.  It was huge! (7) Picture with Brooke Brady this morning

Jan 29 - Grateful for my 6 month mark

Nyob Zoo

This week, just like the past few weeks, we spent most of our time tracting and finding people.  There is a list of a bunch of Hmong houses that we use, put them in our GPS and drive to them.  But a lot of them had either met missionaries before and had been knocked on before, so weren’t really having any success.  On Tuesday, for about an hour, we went on the computer and searched for new addresses and we got a list of about 100, and this week we tried them out.  We found a lot more success because they were new houses that hadn’t been knocked on for awhile or maybe ever.  So we had a lot more success this week with our new list of houses which was really cool.

Also, Elder Vang and I had one of the best door approaches this week, for sure in Sheboygan, maybe even the whole mission.  I’m not sure, but it was pretty cool because we flowed really good just going back and forth.   Elder Vang was just speaking so fast, it was almost like he was rapping - it’s so crazy.  I don’t even know how to explain, but it’s just so insanely fast.  We worked well off each other and we both spoke really good.  And I was able to understand it all, and what I said flowed well and it just felt… good.  It made me realize…Dang!! I’m getting the language.  After that, we were both pretty confident.  But 10 minutes later, you get humbled quickly.  That’s the language - you have high moments, then you get humbled.  You get another high moment then you get humbled and it just keeps going.  KInd of funny.

Also this week, we went back and visited the old lady I talked about 2 weeks ago in my email.  I cannot remember her name, but she was the one that just talked forever for like 2 hours about nothing.  So this week Elder Vang said, “Let’s go back and talk to her again.” And I was like, “Heck NO!!!  I do not want to go back.”  That was terrible.  It was torture.  But we went there and it was cool because Elder Vang had me practice teach.  I taught the whole Plan of Salvation lesson basically by myself and after, we talked to her (mostly Elder Vang talked to her) and got to know her a little better after I was done teaching.  We found out that her son was baptized and in the past, she wanted to get baptized too but her husband would not let her.  So we will go back and teach her again and we will probably have to reteach some of The Plan of Salvation because I missed some of the points and probably didn’t explain it the best.  It was cool to talk to her.  I don’t know if she’s interested anymore, but she was in the past so it’ll be fun to visit her again.

Now, it’s almost my 6-month mark on my mission.  This Friday I will hit 6 months which is pretty crazy. It just goes by so fast.  I have really seen my language progress, but at the same time, it’s really slow to see it sometimes.  When I look back to where I started and where I am now, it’s pretty cool.  I am getting pretty comfortable teaching the lessons, but I still need to practice them.  One thing that I really want to work on is conversation Hmong and the words that they use every day, instead of just gospel stuff.  When they speak gospel, I can understand, but when they speak other stuff, I just don’t understand and am not able to speak the everyday stuff, so that’s something I really want to work on.  But it’s pretty cool to see that if you keep working on it and keep practicing it every day, things just start making sense. There is a bunch of grammar stuff that I still don’t understand.  But over time, you’ll be talking to someone and all of the sudden you’ll start using it and you’re like, “What the heck?!! I never knew how to do that.  And I haven’t been practicing that in like a month.”  And then all of a sudden it makes sense and it’s just pretty cool.  When I think back on the last 6 months, I know that Heavenly Father has blessed me to learn patience and to trust in him. Those have been the biggest things for me - knowing that I will not learn everything overnight, but it will take a while and knowing that I just have to work day by day and I will continue to improve.

My mom asked me this week how I feel about reaching my 6-month mark.  Am I excited? Happy? Am I amazed because it's going too fast?  Am I sad because my mission is 1/4 over? etc  And the best word I can think of is  - grateful.  I am so very grateful for the time I have spent so far in my mission. I wouldn't trade it for anything. I am so very grateful for the experiences I have had and will have in the future. I have grown so much in so little time and it is all because of this gospel. I know this gospel is true and I am grateful to have the opportunity to bring it to others in the next 18 months I have remaining.

D&C 59:7 Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things.

Have a great week,

Elder Tshwj Xeeb

This is where we email at the church

Taking pictures of Lake Michigan

I think this looks cool

More Lake Michigan

Having a little fun while out tracting

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