My mandarin is coming along pretty good

It has been another good, some awesome stuff is happening. Yesterday was a really good day, we had 4 at church, which is a pretty good turn out. It was really weird because usually the rule is, if they say they are 100% coming to church then there is about a 50% chance they will be there, and if they are not 100% sure they are coming then they are pretty much not coming. 

That's why yesterday was weird because we had 3 who said they definitely were coming and 3 who said they probably could not come. It ended up that the 3 that said they probably could not come said all came and only one of the ones who said they were for sure coming came, and of course they were all Chinese. 

The really cool part is that they all stayed for all three hours, which is rare for the Chinese. For a while we have been trying to do a class in Chinese for the 3rd hour with a Chinese member from one of the family wards, but usually we are not able to do it because they leave, but yesterday it actually happened and it was great.

So on Wednesday we had dinner with the starting middle linebacker for OSU, he's a member his name is Fetti Unga. He is super cool, and he is cousins with the Mormon high school basketball phenomenon from Chicago. He said he is trying to convince him to go on a mission. He also said that he will be coming to Corvallis for a couple days in august to visit him. Hopefully its over a weekend and he comes to church, it would be awesome to meet him! There are a few members in the ward that are on the football team, they are all polys ha ha and they are really cool down to earth guys.

This has been a really great week in personal growth for myself. I have been pondering and praying a lot about things i need to do and changes i need to make to more full reach my potential, I have grown a lot on my mission but the awesome thing about life is that we can always improve. Its turns out that Elder Howard has been feeling the same way, it probably has something to do with we are both at the middle of out missions and we know we are not fully satisfied on where we are. So we had some great talks on what we need to do as a companionship and individually. I wish i had time to explain it all but i definitely don't, in fact i got to go right now. I love you all. The church is true!

Elder Covey
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Fearless via Faith

Short Letter this Week

I only have 10 min to write today, so sorry but this one is going to be short. 
Its has been a really good week, all of our investigators are slowing progressing, they all are doing a little better than last week. So this week Elder Howard and i taught, what is now called zone training meeting. What it is, is that the thursday after Zone leader council, instead of having a district meeting the whole zone gathers and the Zone leaders teach about all the things that they were taught at ZLC (zone leader council) and what ever else they feel the zone needs. 


This use to be 1.5 hours so that what Elder Howard and I were preparing for, but two days before it happened president told us that from now on it is going to be 3 hours long. So we were really worried about what we were going to teach and how we were going to make the whole 3 hours productive, we knew we wanted to spend about a hour or hour and a half about what most of ZLC was on, which was about teaching short powerful messages while tracting and street contacting people.So we planned out how we were going to teach that and have everyone come up with these short powerful statements and have everyone practice them. So we got that all ready but we knew that would only take up half the time. 


So we did a lot of pondering and praying about what the zone needs, and what we should teach for the other half. The night before the meeting, we got a distinct impression that we needed to teach about the importance of being led by the spirit as a missionary (being a instrument in the hands of the Lord.) and we decide the way we would focus on having the spirit a bigger influence in our work, was through prayer. So we also taught about prayer. I learned so much about prayer, and i realized that i have been completely under utilizing prayer. Ever since then i have put a lot more effort my prayers and it has helped a ton. I wish i had time to talk more about all the things i learned but i don't have time. 


But i would like to bear my testimony on prayer, its amazing and the more we put in the more we get out. Threw prayer we can have so much guidance and we can always have the spirit with us very strong. I know when we focus on our prayers and always making them sincere amazing blessings come from it.
 The Zone training meeting went good. It was relieving to get it done.  
that's all the time i have today! i love you all!


Elder Covey
Fearless Via Faith

Not your ordinary week

This week was interesting but great week. Because the 4th of July was on Wednesday thats when we took our P day, so monday was a normal proselyting day, and the 4th was our P day. For the 4th of July 8 of us Elders here in Corvallis played different sports pretty much the whole time. We started by Frisbee golfing, then we went to we went to a church and played volleyball, basketball, football and soccer. We were all pretty beat by the end but it was way fun. 


And then on Friday Elder Howard and i went down Eugene for ZLC (zone leader council.) I think i explained what ZLC is in a different email, but it was really good, it went from 9 am to 5 pm. The focus of the mission for the next month is going to be making it so every missionary can be able to give short powerful statements of truth, teaching about the restoration while tracting and street contacting, I am really exited because it is something i want to get better at. 

We had two lessons with Allen and two lessons with Daniel this week. They are both still progressing. Allen especially, he really wants to have a strong belief in God, when right now its kinda wishy washy. After our first appointment we left him with the commitment to read Alma 32, he read it and loved it! He said before that he really did not understand faith, or how to make his faith grow, but from reading that he realized the faith he already has and how to make it grow, and he learned all that on his own. Its amazing to see how simple the BOM is how it these Chinese students who have never read from the Bible or anything like it can understand and learn from the BOM. 


We got a new Chinese investigator this week named Yoa he is the friends with a different investigator name Xhenhu (Jen-who.) Xhenhu is awesome, he wants to be baptized but his parents, said that he cant because they are afraid it will distract him from his schooling. He is going back to China for a month in August and they plan to talk about it them, he seems pretty confident once he can explain it to them face to face that they will be okay with it. 


So funny story, we had a lesson with Xhenhu and asked if we wear crosses, and we talked about that for a bit, and then he asked if the church has any symbols, so we showed him our CTR rings, and he thought they were the coolest things ever, and he said he wanted one, so we told him he could search it online and he could find a place to buy them. And Lo and behold yesterday at church Xhenhu is wearing a CTR ring, its pretty awesome.
That's all the time i got for today, I love you all. Thanks so much for your prayers. 


Elder Covey
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Fearless via Faith