Josh’s Mission Email April 13,2026: Egg 🥚

We had a crazy week, so I haven’t been keeping a good journal. Just a couple highlights for you guys, hopefully I’ll lock in next week.

Life is good, we keep busy. We spend a good part of the morning studying the gospel, the language, and planning our lessons and finding. We are assigned to cover the entire mission for mandarin work, so we’ve had to make some decent drives a couple of times this week for lessons. While we drive though we usually try and do some calling, studying, or planning so we can maximize the amount of time we spend meeting people. For the most part, we try to remain around the same area all day so we are in the car as little as possible. 

Something that was really cool to see this week was how much people respect what we are doing, even if they’re not interested. A lot of the people we talk to are from China, and they’ve expressed that they admire just the fact that we are able to go out and preach what we believe. One of the lessons we taught this week was with a woman who grew up in China, and was taught from the Bible by her grandfather. Her parents didn’t want to practice because they were afraid of retribution from the party. She still believed in God, and learned in a private (maybe secret?) room in their house. She has such a strong testimony of prayer and the connection we can feel with God even when we feel alone otherwise. 

Another person we talked to was telling us about the censored Chinese Bible, and was super excited that we had the scriptures in Chinese. She told us about how religion was discouraged and persecuted as she grew up, and how they were encouraged to abandon religious affiliation for party affiliation. She said she really appreciates the Christian message and how devout believers impact a community and a country. Meeting these people has increased my appreciation for where I have grown up. It’s a great privilege to believe what I want to believe, and to be able to share that with others. 

During one of our lessons we were given an incredible gift from an older woman. She has trouble moving around, but I heard her say “ji dan” and she walks over to the fridge, rummages around for a couple minutes, and gives us two (2) eggs. This was about 4 in the afternoon, and we were not getting back to our apartment until about 9, so we ended up carrying them around all day. It felt like that classic assignment where you have to take care of an egg like it’s a baby. We had some CLOSE calls with falling phones and hard right turns, but they made it home safe. Your boy is a proud father of a healthy child 🥹. 

I’m excited to have more things to share with you guys, it’s a little rough right now with the language though. I’m still only catching bits and pieces, but I’m gonna keep working on getting more and more out of it. 

Spiritual thought:

3 Nephi 22:10

“For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.”

You are never alone! Christ is always there for you no matter what you are going through. He has promised us peace as long as we look to Him in both the good times and the bad times. I know that faith, hope, and patience can work miracles in our lives if we are willing to follow God. Have a great week!

Elder Banks