We went to dinner with one of Olivia’s mission friends – a man she helped baptize last January, named Andy. He was so on fire that he had three other friends join the discussions with him, and they were actually baptized before he was.
At dinner he told us the story of his conversion, and how he came to recognize the truth of the gospel – and this is based on what I understood of the conversation, which Olivia was translating for us, but it was a little hard to ask clarifying questions. He said that when he grew up in China his grandfather was Christian, but his parents weren’t religious. He loved his grandfather, but he didn’t understand his religious views because even though he was Christian, there wasn’t an opportunity to attend church or have any support, so it was just this thing about his grandfather that he knew, but didn’t really understand.
As he got older he had the chance to study in France, so he went. And when he was outside of the China he came to see America as so different – from what he culturally thought. And he LOVED what he saw. He saw a people who were kind and open and helpful to each other and other people. He said it was so, so different from China, and even France. He couldn’t figure out why Americans were like that. But he figured it had to do with their religiousness. It was the one thing that was so different. So he knew he wanted to come to America.
Eventually he was able to make that happen for himself – he moved to the US, and within a few months he ran into Olivia in a parking lot, and he was really open to learning about the gospel. I guess he had met missionaries like 20 years earlier in France, and he remembered them. So when he ran into them again, he didn’t let the opportunity to learn more go. He started meeting with Olivia and started bringing friends with him.
He was baptized just after new years last winter. He has been a dedicated and faithful member ever since. He told us that in the seven weeks it had been since Olivia had left the mission, he had brought 13 friends to church with him. When we went to dinner with him his two kids, who had been living with their grandparents in China, had just come to the States about a month before. And they were on date to get baptized a couple weeks after our dinner. We got pictures of their baptism.
Yesterday Olivia said she got an email from some of the missionaries, and they said that Andy had brought three new friends with him to church on Sunday, and all three wanted to get baptized. Olivia said she text Andy about it, and he said he loves the Church and he wants his kids to serve missions, so he wants to be a good example to them, and bring everyone he can to church.
It was so good for my soul to meet and hear the story of Andy – his courage and dedication to change EVERYTHING about his life to find the joy that he knew was missing. He looked all over the world to find God, and then God found him.
