HELLO FAMILY

DECEMBER 4, 2017

First things first, thanks so much for the pizza, the music and flash drive, and the Christmas package!!! It was all great! We got the pizza Friday night, and everything worked out really well! Then, the package came Saturday and we put up the tree and are really excited to give out all those little tiny stockings. We have a lot of kids who will like that! Thanks so much, love you guys.

So this past week, not too much happened. Our teaching pool is kind of small right now because we've been dropping a lot of people who aren't interested or don't really care about what we're teaching. So now most of our investigators are English too, which is tough. The Hmong people just typically aren't very interested. I think maybe we're doing something wrong. We decided that now for Hmong door approaches, we're gonna ask them to teach us about their culture, cuz as soon as we say God or Jesus Christ, they typically shut down, or say they are CMA (which is a different christian church that has a Hmong branch) and then, like what are we supposed to say? "Yeah, you're church is wrong." No. Like a lot of Hmong people say they are Christian cuz when they came to America, everyone is Christian so they just did that, or like it's all one God, we're good. And then they respectfully close the door. So now we're just gonna ask to learn about their culture, or at least learn more Hmong, cuz at least then they will talk to us, cuz right now they aren't really, haha.

In other news, we weren't able to meet with Mai and Pang this past week because of their crazy work schedule, but we're meeting again with them tomorrow! Also, they said they were gonna go to church in Sacramento yesterday with his brother, so we called the missionaries in the north Sacramento branch, and I actually got to briefly talk to Elder Tayler!! But they said they didn't see them at church. So anyway, we'll find out tomorrow. But this past week, we met with Michael and Jasmine at a member's house and had a good lesson about repentance. It was good! Also, we had a lesson with a woman named Karen, who has been investigating for like 3 years, but just now decided to allow missionaries to teach the lessons again, so that is pretty exciting! It's kinda tough because no one has been on date the whole time I've been in the area, after Dalton got baptized, but we have big hopes and good plans for this week! Hopefully we'll be able to put Mai and Pang on date! 

Funny story, so on Friday night our appointment fell through and there was like a big Christmas celebration going on in downtown Wheatland... and Wheatland has population of like 3000. It's so tiny. So of course, we had to go check it out and try to talk to people. Man, it's hard to talk to people here. So many people just don't really care about what we have to say. We tried to pass out a lot of "Light the World" cards, but some people would just say no, or a few others actually took it, but didn't really care. It's tough just going around and talking about the gospel to people like that. That's probably one of my biggest struggles right now, opening up my mouth and talking to everyone. But anyway, the first person we found and went up to talk to was a JW and was super rude, and then her daughter, who is probably like 16, asks us if we believe in the Old Testament or the New Testament, so we said both and thought maybe she was interested... But then, with all seriousness and a little crazily asks "is the earth flat or round?" We just looked at her and she repeated her question, to which I said "Is this a trick question?" and she just asked again, so I said "Last I checked, the world was round" and she starts to go off about how the first page of the bible says that the earth is flat. Her mom shut her up and we walked away, but it was pretty funny. We just laughed, cuz like, I'm fairly certain JW's believe in the bible too, haha. But anyway, that was pretty much my week, most of it that I can remember. I can't think of too much else.

I get to lead this week out as part of my training, which means I make all the decisions really, so that will be interesting. Oh also, we had zone conference, and Elder Dube came. It was awesome. He talked a lot about obedience, and I got to meet the other 3 Hmong elders. It was awesome! I really learned a lot, but it's hard applying the things I've learned. But I'm trying!

Love you, Elder Muaj Koob

 Merry Christmas, haha