April 13, 2015

Dear Family,

Its been another eventful week here in Gridley and Biggs California.
We taught a foreign exchange student from China this week named Duo.
She's staying with an active family in the ward which has been a
tremendous influence on her. Well the family she's staying with hasn't
been pushy at all and really hardly at all ever mentioned anything
about church unless she had questions. Well Duo dropped a bomb on
 Sister Walton and told her she wanted to be baptized and join the
 Mormon church. So we taught Duo a couple of times this past week. Its
been super neat teaching her. Being that she's from China she really
has no background revolving christianity whatsoever. So a lot of our
lessons have just been very basic stuff about who God and Jesus Christ
are, how to pray, etc. Duo prayed in one of our lessons and it was the
first prayer she had ever said in her life and the spirit was just
really strong. Duo was telling us how at school she's attracted to the
10 to 15 mormon kids and knows who they all are. She says she's
impressed with them and how they carry themselves and there maturity.
She said none of them cuss unlike all the other kids. Duo said there
was something about those kids that made them stand out and she wanted
to be like them. How cool is that? It just goes to show how important
being an example is and living your standards because you never know
who is watching. There's a lot of logistics involved when you're
teaching someone who's a foreign exchange student and if with the
program they're in if they are aloud to join any religious affiliation.
Also the fact of who's guardianship consent she needs to be baptized
whether its her parents back in China or her temporary guardians here.
Our president said the handbook of this situation is as big as the
bible(I'm sure he was exaggerating a little bit) and being from China
makes it a bit more complicated. But he's actually in the process of
getting approval from Salt Lake so Duo can get baptized. Hopefully
we'll be able get approval and be able to put her on date soon. The
unfortunate part is this summer when she goes back to China she'll be
no where near a Mormon church. Fortunately after she graduates from high
school she's gonna be back in the United States for college so she
could be involved in church again.

This week we were able to get a bike rack for our car. Gridley and
Biggs are both area's capable of being biked, its just going to and
from each city that's the hard part.  So this week, with the bike
rack, we were able to do a lot of biking which was nice and just talk
to a lot more people. We did lots of finding and street contacting and
got a whole lot of new potential investigators to start working with.
Hopefully we can benefit from some of it and have it transition over
to teaching more.

We were able to teach a good amount of people this week like Beverly
and her family, Rosie, Brendall, and the Valachez family.(all
investigators)But sometimes you wish people didn't have that darn
thing called agency. It always makes our job a lot harder.

We're working closely with this less active man named Brother Chand. We
watched conference with him and just keep pretty regular contact with
him. Well he surprised us and came to church! What surprised me even
more was he tapped on my shoulder and said if he bears  his testimony
than I have to bear mine. haha So we both ended up sharing our
testimony's which was really cool.

I've now hit 22 months... I'm trying hard not to blink because the
time keeps going faster and faster!  We went on a hike this morning
with our Zone and had a barbecue. It was all a pretty good time. We
went to Bald Rock Mountain and we got to free climb some pretty sick
rocks.   Love you guys! Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Rosenbaum