It's been a little over two years since I've been called as Branch President. Many things has happened.
I‘ve reorganized the branch presidency, called new counselors. Then I called Sara Huang as new Relief Society President and released Abbey so she can care for the family while I can better serve our branch. In the beginning Sara was timid and was not very confident that she was able to fulfill the calling as RS President. After much prayer and encouragement, she accepted the calling and became a great RS President. Then I called Liz Huffaker as Young Women president. The YW love her. I called Sophy Fugal to be Primary President. She's doing a great job! I did not release Ben Tsai as Elders' Quorum President as there weren't many brothers in the quorum and at the time I did not felt impressed to released him.
Since then I've was also privileged to marry Ricky and FangLan. I also gave a baby's blessing to Julian Wang.
All was working well for about two years. Then in October 2024 Charles Huang informed me that he accepted a new job in Taiwan. Which means he and Sara will be moving to Taiwan to live. That was devastating because I will need to prayerfully look for a new RS president. For the one year that Sara Huang was slowly building up herself to be self confident and take care of our sisters, she is leaving. It was a very very big shoe for the next sister to fill and I have to really think about which sister can do it.
After much prayers and going to the temple, Sister Ella Chong felt just right. When I first asked her, she declined. She says she was not good enough and her English was also hindering her. However, I asked her to pray, fast, and go to the temple about it. She came back and was still very hesitant. I asked her how she felt how I was doing as a Branch President. My Chinese and my Mandarin was bad. I told her I also feel I am not adequate to be the Branch President. She says I am doing good. Then I say, the difference is willingness. I told that she's incredible sister, always the first sister to encourage all the sisters to go to temple session each month, she always puts a lot of spiritual posts for the sisters, and they all know her and love her. I simply helped her recognized that she's already doing some of the things a RS president would do. I told see her that I see her as a great Christ-like leader to lead the sisters in our branch. Though she was not very confident in accepting the calling but say she would try her best. I was ecstatic!- I felt my prayer was once again answered! She says she would have a hard time the English interactions with other members of the stake, and I told her my Chinese is horrible so I asked two counselors that are very good in Chinese. So she chose two awesome super strong counselors: Sister Lifang Tsai and Abbey to compensate for her English.
Why did I write all this? -to get to the point of why I am writing this post. Calling Sister Chong has been a huge humbling experience and blessing for me! I realized that when I called Sara Huang to be RS president, her English was good enough that she would mostly interact with me and in meetings using English. This made me very comfortable using English in our meetings. Well it was a disservice to me as Branch President to 'hide behind my comfort zone of English' and not try to improve Chinese and Mandarin.
However by calling Sister Chong as RS President, I quickly realized I must change myself very fast. Since her English is not proficient, I had to start using google translate. It essentially became my best buddy whenever I needed to make any communications with her and other members. I used it on a daily basis, multiple days a week. When I email agenda items for Branch Council meetings, it would take me 3-4x the amount of time I needed to compose the email with the agenda in Chinese. I would double check and triple check before I send it out.
It doesn't stop there. Any interactions or things I would need the Relief Society to do/participate, I would also send her text messages, in Chinese. I typed a lot of pinyin to compose these text messages, then copy it back from Chinese to English make sure it means the same. In the beginning I had to make many many corrections back and forth before I can send the texts to Sis Chong. Then when she reply with Chinese I would copy the text to google translate to know what she's saying.
It was worth it.
These exchanges of Chinese texts and google translate have been doing some very amazing things to me. I am quickly learning to recognize words in Chinese and slowly I am feeling more confident to respond to Sis Chong's text messages using just pinyin to recognize the characters and using less of google translate. The last three months from November to February since Sis Chong's calling has slowly teaching me to become better reader and writer in Chinese.
I especially felt the Lord's hands in the this blessing when Sister Lynn Xu's dad, 徐永毅, passed away and she asked me to bless his gravesite. When she asked, I was very very nervous but said said YES anyways. So for the one week leading up to his funeral service. I prayed for help, A LOT of help. I started to write the blessing in pinyin, and then used google translate to write in Characters. I asked Abbey to help me proof to make sure the sentences make sense. After reading the blessing in Chinese, I realize (like a lightbulb moment) that over the last three months, my Chinese has improved significantly and I can actually read most of the Chinese characters and annunciate the tones correctly! It's not 100% but 70-80% is a huge improvement. After many practices of the gravesite prayer in Chinese, I felt much more confident and definitely felt blessed that I was honored to bless Brother Xu YongYi's 徐永毅gravesite.
我非常感谢天父一直带领我，学中文， 这样我可以有进步还有可以明白我们分会的成员和慕道友。 我希望我一直都会进步学更多中文。我也非常感谢老婆常常帮助我， 鼓励我， 也对我有耐心。 我感谢天父祝福我的家庭， 我们的分会， 还有给我力量来在我们的分会服务。
