Well. Life is good as always!
Lots of great things happened this week!
We hit up Tai O again a few weeks ago and found this sweet old fisherman and we checked out his fish shop. He had these sweet poles (no reel, just a pole) for about $4 US so we got one and some line and some hooks and some frozen shrimp and had ourselves a real great p-day last week!
I've been blessed with piers in both my areas, so I've watched lots of old men and their Chinese fishing ways. That coupled with my ancestry of great fishers made for a successful afternoon! :)
We did a lot more fishing for men this week than we did for fish though, don't worry!
General Conference was fabulous as always! I could talk for hours about all the things I learned, but neither time not your attention span would last than long. I'll just say this though, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is so very true!
Just like the rest of the world, I'll be taking the "ponderizing" challenge and the scripture for this week will be Mosiah 3:17. You can look forward to what I learned next Monday, after it's been ponderized.
One of our fishing of men experiences (I guess if you'd like to call it that) this week occurred yesterday evening.
The Tuen Mun Elders found this Buddhist Sihfu (master) guy that wanted to "spend some time sharing together to truly understand each other better." He lives in our area, so they brought us along to his home for a turnover lesson. His wife and son have moved to Mainland and he'll be moving in a few months, so his apartment was essentially empty except for a TV, a table and some chairs and a giant shrine with a Buddha statue in it.
We sat down at the table and he pulled out his scriptures an a lesson plan that he had written out about the points he wanted to cover in our time together.
I sure felt for the guy. He is hard core "pure" Buddhist, as he refers to it, and just wanted to help us understand what true Buddhism is about and what they really believe. There are apparently lots of traditions from ancient China that have been adopted and are practiced here, such as burning incense and paper money and fruit offerings that aren't part of what he believes. Anyways, it was interesting as the tables were turned. There are so many times that we meet people who have such false ideas of what we believe and they won't even hear us out and it's so frustrating!
So mostly out of respect we decided to listen to this man. He was a really nice guy and was very respectful of our beliefs and we started and ended with a prayer and everything. It was super interesting to listen to him talk about their fundamental beliefs, most of which revolved around reincarnation and their answers to questions that we answer with the Plan of Salvation. It's amazing how many of their beliefs are very similar to what we believe, but off just enough to lose doctrines that are absolutely fundamental.
I fully acknowledge that other religions help others to become better people and can be of a lot of help to them, and in no way am I bagging on their beliefs. It was just an interesting experience to listen to this man talk and agree with some of the things he was saying, but then in my head be able to fill in the holes to questions he couldn't answer because of the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
The Restored gospel is incredible and we are blessed more than I could ever express in an email to have these precious truths. Truths like, we have a loving Heavenly Father and we lived with Him as spirit children before this life. Because we know that, we can have the courage to do hard things in this life as we aspire to become like Him and return to His presence. We know where we come from. Why we are here and where we are going. We also know that because of this eternal perspective that even thought things might not always make sense or be fair in this life, that if we do all that is required that we can have happiness and peace beyond comprehension and that all things will be made right through a loving Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.
Hope that made sense... Probably really confusing. Point is the church is true and I'm so grateful for the clarity it brings! I love you all!
Love Sister Robinson
No comments:
Post a Comment