Hey Family!

So next Monday is memorial day so I'm just sending the email early because I won't be able to write on Monday. It's raining outside now so we decided to take a break and write our emails home and to mission president. also my hands we're pretty cold, see you all later!

 

We had a super cool experience last night with the "T" family, they said the felt the truthfulness of our Church right after they met with us the first time and read the restoration pamphlet, I was so blown away, I never expected it to happen in my mission. Still got to be careful about how sincere they are, but honestly it seems like they truly do believe, gotta pray extra hard haha.

 

So other than that I'm doing pretty good! Me and Elder Toone have been doing a lot of cooking lately so that's been pretty fun. The weather here is so crazy one day it'll be raining the next day it'll be 85 degrees. Haha, the weather is as unreasonable as the people I like to say.

Hope everyone is doing good.

 

 

Elder Wong

Transfer 5! Week 2.

Start of a new Transfer, I'm working with Elder Toone, I love it. (He looks like buddy holly)

 

He's really funny and we have a lot of fun working together, we get distracted sometimes so we're working hard on keeping focused. We do a lot more than just cooking ramen together, we make wraps a lot of the time with breaded chicken cucumber lettuce tomato, it's pretty awesome.

 

Not too much to share this week.

 

I like talking to spanish people more, they're a lot nicer than chinese people...

 

Well I think a whole issue is that I'm racially at a disadvantage in my mission. I'm an ABC, most white people don't like talking to chinese people cause they don't speak english. Chinese people don't like talking to Chinese people because they're chinese people. So there's my chinese portion of the mission. The Spanish people think its a riot that they can talk to a chinese guy in spanish so I'm displaying my willingness to the lord to find people... in Spanish... and hopefully he'll bless me with chinese investigators too hah.

 

I'm kind of getting frustrated with chinese people... but It's just a test to have me love them even more.

 

 

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!

 

 

Email sent from a member in New York:

Met these two fine missionary companions at church in New York today: Elder Wong and Elder Wang. Thought you would like to know:
They look good. They are happy. They are in a great ward that's taking good care of them. And they're working hard!!  Happy Mother's Day!  : )




We are here in the NYNYS Mission to pick up our son Elder Scoffield. :)  :(

S. Scoffied

Broke a Chair...

How are things? Hope everyone is doing well at home.

 

I broke a chair at a Member's house during a DA. I would say its a sign for me to start to work out, but thing is I'm already working out a lot... and lost a lot of weight...

 

One of our investigators was baptized yesterday! Her name is Sunny . Our other investigators are progressing pretty well, happy for them.

 

It'll be fun to call next week for Mother's Day.

 

 

Love, Elder Wong

April 22, 2012

I had two exchanges this past week so I got to learn from my past missionaries some good knowledge. Elder Quist one of our zone leaders is amazing, and from him I'm learning more and more about the atonement, not just the redeeming power of the atonement but what the enabling power of the atonement can accomplish for me not just now, but for my entire life so I'm very grateful to him for the good example he has set for me, he also loves name puns.

 

I've started studying characters because it actually helps me remember Chinese better than just standard pinying pronunciation and what not, so that has been fun!

 

Hope all of you are doing well at home and I'm excited to talk to you in a couple of weeks! I cant believe this transfer is halfway over already!

 

Love, Elder Wong!

Transfer 4 - Week 3

Wowie another week gone by fast.

 

Main points of this week... nothing too much really it was a pretty average week. I stepped in Dog poop, the entire heel of my shoe was covered in dog poop it  was kind of rough...

 

We went to graffiti park last week that was really cool, and my ability to read Chinese characters is improving as well.

 

Love all of you very much hope everything is going well for you guys, the days are going by faster and faster it's pretty crazy!

 

Love, Elder Wong

Photos of Adam in New York 4

Photos of Adam in New York 3

 

Photos of Adam in New York 2

 

Photos of Adam in New York 1

 

Transfer 4- Week 2

Transfer 4- Week 2

Conference marks my 6 month mark (plus 1 week but who's counting?) I can't believe half a year has passed already. I'm not really sure what to write today. Well for sure I love all of you guys and hope you're doing well. It's been a while since I've heard from some of you so not really sure how you've been, but hopefully  I can hear from you guys soon.

 

I made korean BBQ beef yesterday for inbetween conference sessions that was pretty fun. Chinese is going well, my spanish has been improving too. I'm writing a letter home too so you can get one of those. Julie! I did end up finding a place to use the chipotle gift card at, thank you, i had a nice delicious burrito.

 

The work is going well, I enjoy my companion elder Wang he's teaching me a lot of Chinese and I'm teaching him English and Spanish, we have a lot of fun working together.

 

Love, Elder Adam Kwan-Min Wong

First Snow!

We had our first snow out here last friday and again today, it's a nice experience. Funny enough it's still not cold enough for me to want to put on a large jacket so I still wear my suit coat hahaha, the other Elders think it's way too cold, guess body heat has its uses sometimes.

I've been blessed to be able to practice a lot of piano while waiting in between appointments so I've been improving a lot.

Our companionship has been having a hard time getting new investigators so we decided to shift our focus to doing less active member work while the other companionships go out and find investigators.

Not too much else to share hope you're all doing well! here's some pictures of us at 6:30 am during district prayer, also 6:35 AM birthday cake. Hahaha

Love you all

Elder Wong

Big Heart, Tall Boy

Hey Family, not really much to share no real major breakthroughs out here. We've been continuing teaching lessons and sharing the gospel with people, we still offer English Classes and just trying to do our best to do well. It never snowed out here, or got cold enough for me to need to use that overcoat that we bought hahaha.

Mom and Dad, one sister in the ward about 80 or so, wants to congratulate you. She shared with me how it amazing it was to have 8 kids and have them all be faithful within the Church and all raised to be good people. She said she was distraught because her son wasn't interested in the gospel and didn't believe in God. There's a saying that the Chinese people really adore "Renhe chenggong bu neng mibu jiating de shibai" Any success is not possible to compensate for failure in the family. I think I've already shared this before but yeah, you really did good, and I'm sorry that I was a pretty disobedient son when I was home. I really should have worked harder at realizing the blessings within my life that you have provided me with, so that I might be more respectful and put in greater effort to be obedient to you.

Family, I share your picture to people when were tracting on the street, they're amazed by how big our family is, and it helps get them interested in the gospel just a tiny bit more. It's been hard lately because people have been telling me that my Chinese is bad, that they can't understand me I know a lot of the words, but I just can't speak it correctly because of the tonal language. Other times people really just look at me with this sort of scorn in their eyes, really looking down on me despite me being taller, it's tough, we were taught that it's the gospel that they are rejecting and not you, but still it hurts that there is just so much hardening in their hearts, but I still press on because I know that this work is true, and it's my responsibility and my privilege to help be a part of it. ... I'm working on memorizing 7 Chinese characters every day so by the time I get home I'll have 4900 or so and 5 new words every day.

It's always so good to hear from all of you hope there's much love and kindness at home.

Love,
Elder Wong.

(P.S. don't forget to send my hong-baos (red bags) from Chinese New Year here! hahaha kai-wan-xiao- eryi only kidding!)

Adam's First Week in New York!

Sooo first p-day out here in New York, and I haven't gotten stabbed! Woohoo. Right now I'm currently in Dyker Heights and I must say sometimes I forget that this is still America with all the Chinese people here. I found out why we have the most baptisms in our area is because that the Chinese people here want the baptism mostly for a Green Card, and so past missionaries would go ahead and baptize them anyways because they just want the numbers, our current district is trying hard to fix that so we have a term for "green" investigators and so we're working on that, as well as we're working on getting more overall ward activity just to yeah.

My new companion is Elder Wallis, a great guy, funny too. The weird thing is that our district is 8 people and we're all within the same apartment building so we have a lot of district unity going out and tracting sweet sweeping (advertising english class and what-not). A lot of the elders say that my Chinese is phoenomenal for the amount of time I've spent learning it and that it's great that I'm not like other greenies and are scared to use their chinese for the first week, but I just started talking right away. Our district was in kind of a lull because the past 5 weeks have all been service so we're working hard to get back into more diligent Church work.

One of our investigators name is Kelvin, he's 12 and his dad is a less active member, and oh my gosh this family situation is pretty terrible. 4 minutes into meeting the mother as she came home, started about an hour of criticizing their kid to us, basically the missionaries are something of therapists for this family. They shared many stories about how much of a liar he is and he's unwilling to change and can't focus, my heart was aching that these people had no reserves in railing on their kid with no problem. So, definitely praying hard for that family.

We also have Gao Di xiong Brother Tall, he's a "green" investigator but slowly and surely we're trying to help him get more interested in the gospel and give it more meaning to him to be baptized other than just receiving a green card.

Then we have Zhu Zai Kan, he's a bit of a quiet guy and we can really only meet with him on Sundays but he's progressing pretty well, and his baptism is set for the 23rd.

It's been a pretty easy adaptation into New York, it reminds me a lot of Los Angeles, so no real problems there, continuing to make strives in the Chinese language and I'm going to work harder on learning the written and reading portion of the language.

Not really anything else to share at this point other than I'm working hard to stay obedient and diligent, which is kind of tough since the older missionaries have kind of gotten relaxed so it's part of my duty to help get everyone back to working hard.

Love you all!

Mission Address is

85-69 60th drive
Elmhurst, New York 11373

it'll just get forwarded to me from there.

Elder Wong

MTC Week 6

> Family, the Lord blesses me so much its ridiculous. PUSH FORWARD WITH FAITH, such an easy concept and it's amazing. We watched a talk by Elder Bednar titled recognizing the spirit. Just don't even worry if it's the spirit or not, as long as it's in tune with the gospel principles you can't go wrong (obviously hahaha).

> The new Korean speaking missionaries arrived last week and I absolutely love them all, and they all really love hugs too. I think I've given out 600+ hugs in the time I've been here at the MTC and it's not stopping hahaha.
>
> I'm so happy to be serving a mission right now there's nothing else in the world I'd rather be doing right now than being here (well actually out in the field but I gotta learn the language first yah?

> I have been praying for the New York people daily and I am anxious to go out and serve them in any way possible, I know now that they need the gospel more than anything right now, and the plan of happiness.
>
> I'm thankful for you my family back at home and for your prayers and support.
>
> I keep a blessings list within my pocket, every Sunday I take time to update the list, it's really great, with more gratitude comes more happiness, and better feelings of the spirit.
>
> Take care everyone!
>
> Love, Elder Wong.

Pictures Please!

The Branch presidency has counseled us to have pictures of family and friends from home, for most missionaries it won't be a distraction it'll help lift their spirits and encourage them to work harder so if I could get some pictures from that'd be awesome. Email pictures to Kelliebarlow@gmail.com Thank you!

Brownie cake from The Lord?

The Lord blesses me so often it's ridiculous. This morning I was just thinking that I should make some Chinese flashcards to help me study and what do you know, I get some flash cards that people from the older generation left behind, among 3 pounds of so of candy and a brownie cake. I make it an effort to thank the Lord in all things because he's seriously just giving me all that I have and what better way to thank him is to work hard so that I might bring other people to know of his gospel.