"You can count the seeds in an apple, but you can't count the apples in a Seed"

Hey everyone!

Life here is wonderful :) This week was a busy week with lots of new investigators and lots of lessons...it was wonderful. The week before we had spent most of the week finding, so it payed off this week, but it meant that we didn't get much finding time in, so this coming week might not be as great. We'll see how it goes :) But it was pretty exciting; Sister Williams had met a girl on the metro and set up an appointment with her and when we called the night before to confirm, she asked if she could bring a friend. Then we had a pass off lesson from Elder Jest and Elder Laforney, and that girl ended up bringing her friend, and the lesson just went so well! It really was wonderful; we were explaining about the Great Apostasy, and the friend (Karine) asked, "But then wouldn't God just give us another prophet? Like He did in the Bible?" It was so perfect. It just really made sense to all of them. I love it when we teach people and they actually get it. So often we teach people and they find the simplest things and try to make it in to a problem thinking that nothing religious can be as perfect or make as much sense as the Gospel does. So instead of accepting that maybe God really is a God of reason and not one of confusion, they spend the time and energy trying to find any problem they can, because they "know" there has to SOMETHING that doesn't make sense in it. That can get a little old sometime...so it was fun this week to teach quite a few people who actually understood and accepted what we were teaching, and I'm excited to teach them again this week!

And it was SO exciting: we taught Gabrielle, our miracle from last week, the Plan of Salvation, and she just loved it! I guess she's been looking into things about the church for longer than I thought...she said it's been about a year and a half that she's been curious about the church and trying to find information about it. It's so neat; she is just SO prepared! She has one issue that we know of that we're going to work out this week, but other than that, she is set to go. I just love her...we were talking about the Plan of Salvation and about baptisms for the dead, and she was SO excited and said something like "I want to be baptized for myself and for my grandparents on the same day!" and then she asked me if she was in a car wreck the next day, if I would be baptized for her, and I assured her that we would find somebody to be baptized for her (most likely by teaching her family). It was just so neat; I love her. And I love that God trusted me and my companions enough to send her to us and allow us to teach her. It really is incredible.

This week I also had to teach English class by myself, which was an adventure. My companions were teaching someone else, so I went in to English class and tried to teach them about vowel sounds, and there were two cute girls who were interested in learning about it and then one man who's been coming to English class forever who argued with me seriously the ENTIRE class. He started off the class by asking me about homosexual marriages and then how many states in the US allowed them, and he wouldn't listen to my "I don't know." He then tried to argue with the "U" sound and said that I was saying it incorrectly, and told me that "W" is a vowel, which I'm sure it's not. It made class VERY interesting. Then I was giving an example of something and said "10 push-ups" and no one in the class knew what a push-up was. I tried explaining it, but they still didn't get it, so I had to demonstrate one in the middle of class. Then a girl in the back didn't see it, so I had to do another one. Kind of crazy. Oh! And it was so sad! So I decided I wanted to strengthen my upper body during exercises this week, so early in the week I was trying to do pull-ups on this pull-up bar we have (I learned that I really have NO upper body strength and pull-ups are ridiculously hard...). The bar is in the door, about 4 inches below the top of the door frame. I did one perfectly and then went for the second one and somehow smacked the top of my nose on the door frame and it hurt SO bad, so I gave up for a bit, but then went back and tried it again. That time I did 2 and then on the third I smacked my nose AGAIN and it bruised it so I have a huge red mark on the top of my nose that I've been trying to cover up with make-up all week. My companions were just laughing at me; they watched it all day as the mark became more and more noticeable. I think it's finally starting to go away though...or at least, I hope it is :)

Oh, and I think they just need to set me apart as the Gospel Principles Sunday School teacher. I have done it SO many times in the past 2 months since I got here. We had correlation last Thursday, and Jean-Luc thanked me for doing it last minute the week before, and I said we as missionaries don't mind teaching the class, but we'd really like more than 2 minutes advance warning. We need at least a day to prepare. So he asked me right then if I would teach it and I couldn't say no because I had just said that we would be willing to help. So I taught the class AGAIN this week...but next time I'm asked I'm definitely passing it off to the Elders...teaching the entire class isn't my favorite thing to do.

Oh, and I almost forgot! It was SO fun last Monday..Elder Pratt was a bit sick and he and Elder Clarke were a little stressed with adjusting to life as zone leaders in a new area, so we decided to take them to Elder Pratt's favorite Chinese restaurant, Hot Pot. It was SO much fun! It's like a Chinese fondue place...they bring each person out a pot of soup, and you go through the line and get whatever you want to put in it and you cook it right in front of you and you can go back and get as much as you want of everything. I loved it. I tried some disgusting stuff though..I tried one of the century-old eggs where they cook an egg and then like wrap it in clay or something and let it sit for 30 days until it's black and rotten...not the best. But I ate it without spitting it out. Then we also ate several seaweed kind of things, one that looked like a coral and didn't taste very good, and then some noodles that had a really odd texture, and a shrimp with the eyes still in place on it's head. But then there were some really good things too...the pumpkin in the soup was delicious and the lamb strips were some of my favorites. We were there for like 3 hours and they really appreciated it; it was so much fun :)

Also, I found out that John Denver is WAY more popular than I thought he was. My first week here I told a Chinese man I was from WV, and he started singing the country roads song, and then this week I told another Chinese girl and she started singing the song as well. I was a bit surprised and she said "Are you kidding? Everyone in China knows that song! John Denver is amazing!" It was pretty funny. I didn't realize he was as well-known in China as he is.

I think that's about it for exciting news for this past week...transfers are coming up this week, so that's exciting. We're getting 3 new sisters, so what we're all thinking is that President is going to split up our trio here (and most people are guessing I'll be transferred) and open 2 new sister areas. But we'll see what happens...transfer calls are always exciting! Oh, also: I think I need more sleep. My eye has been twitching almost constantly for the past 6 weeks, and I think it's becoming permanent and will just last my entire mission. It could be interesting to see when it finally goes away...

But anyways, I love you all tons! Have a wonderful week! Thanks for all your love and support :)

Love, Sister Nicole Lindsey