"The little miracles you see on a mission are awesome!"
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| Elder Marchant and Elder Willes having lunch with Thomas Chen on his birthday |
Transfer 3 - Week 4 - This week was an up and down week. Our investigators were really busy and weren't able to meet very much but we were able to see miracles like we do every week.
Something pretty crazy happened last Saturday night. The Zhu San elders were having a baptism and they started filling the baptismal font and we were just making calls to invite people with them. All of the sudden a member runs into the chapel where we were and was like "water! water! water!" haha in English. They had left the font on too long and it was flooding throughout the church! Everyone (about 10 of us including some members) was super frantic trying to stop it. Elder Marchant and I spent a few hours vacuuming the water out of the carpet in the bishop's offices. We were able to stop it before it got too big, but the main hallway was super wet. Elder Atwood (friends with Steve and Lisa) performed the baptism and that was cool.
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| Font flood clean-up |
Here is the update on our investigators. Sui2 Jie3 Mei4 couldn't come to church. She feels like someone needs to watch her mom because of her poor health. She feels scared to leave her. Yan2 Di4 Xiong1 and Lin2 Jie Mei4 are great! They came to the baptism on Saturday and absolutely loved it! We taught them the word of wisdom. They both drink tea, coffee, and alcohol and also both smoke so keep them in your prayers. They are doing their best to quit. They asked us if at their baptism they could bring their camera and take pictures. We said of course! They really loved it! We are going to teach law of chastity to them this week. So again keep them in your prayers for that as well. They live together but are not married.
Also Huang2 Cheng2 wei2 is back from Dang1 Bing1 (the army) this week so we are going to meet with him tomorrow and hopefully find a time we can set a date for him to be baptized. The same goes for Shi2 Di4 Xiong1. The miscommunication is resolved. We visited him and he isn't mad anymore. He has been really busy because his wife's dad is sick and in the hospital in Taipei so he goes up there every day. We hope to meet with him this week. We hope he will set his own baptismal date and start preparing for it. As for Zhou1 Chang2 Ding3 he came to church again. His mom just feels like he is too young and it's too early for him to be baptized. We went to a printing shop and printed pictures of Chang2 En1's baptism and gave them to the boys and told them to write their testimonies on the back of the pictures and give it to their mom. We are praying her heart will be softened. Keep him in your prayers!
Zhong1 Di4 Xiong1 our golden investigator is great. He came to church again on Sunday. We met with him and our bishop pei2 ke4'd (came with us). We taught the first lesson and the spirit was really strong. He is great. The problem is he leaves the country next week for 3 or 4 weeks so we hope he can start reading the Book of Mormon every day. We aren't worried about him. He already has a testimony. I called him the other night and asked him if he prayed about the BoM and Joseph Smith and he says he's been praying every day and that he just already knows it's true. He says he's had peaceful feelings and stuff. So incredible!
Our investigator Chen2 Mei3 Yun2, a mom and her 8 year old cute daughter, came to church as well! It was great. They walked in and she saw a member she knew who is actually her neighbor. Our member Lin2 Jie3 Mei4 helped her go to classes. It was perfect! Chen2 Mei3 Yun2 says she really liked church. She is a practicing Chuan2 Tong3 (Buddhist) so keep her in your prayers that she will be able to accept the message and come to know the truth. Also, our other mom investigator Kelly Huang2 Jie3 Mei4 is good. We met with her again this week. Her problem is church. We have been having bishop's wife Huang2 Jie3 Mei4 help us with our lessons with her and they have a good friendship already. They were talking after the lesson for like 20 minutes.
Ji2 di4 Xiong1 came to church as well. We met him at our English class. He doesn't have a ton of interest but likes church so he comes. We are working with him. He asks us why we need religion? I've been trying to figure out how to best answer that question.
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| A member went to Italy and brought us back some Italian chocolate |
This week we had a lot of finding time and it wasn't too successful. Not a lot of people would listen this week, but we are grateful for the investigators we already have. We were knocking doors the other day and I had a feeling to turn right on some little road. We starting ringing door bells and one old lady let us in. Turns out her son is a member and is in our ward but his wife isn't a member so we are hoping we can start meeting with her. It was really cool that we ran into them! He has been going to a different ward because he wasn't fully aware of the boundaries for the wards. He will start coming to our ward now. The little miracles you see on a mission are awesome!
Taiwan has amazing fruit. Right now it's mango season so anything mango is delicious. Mango smoothies, ice cream, or just mangos and it is awesome. They also have this purple fruit called dragon fruit here that is really good too.
Things are good here! Taiwan is so so hot! Over 100 degrees plus humidity so we eat lots of ice cream and drink lots of water haha. Summer is blazing hot here. I sweat like a beast! The humidity kills me out here. It is so so re4 hot! Elder Marchant has been on Island for a year on Wednesday! Crazy. He came on with Steven Bennion and the last area he served in was Dan4 Shui3 which Uncle Dan said was his favorite area he served in.
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| "This one is for you Mom. I'm getting the hair cut today!" |
I forgot to answer mom's question about my Chinese. Everyone says my Chinese is really good for only 4 months on island. The Lord has blessed me to be able to learn Chinese pretty quickly. I just need to keep learning. I'm on flashcard #600 in Phase 2. Phase 1 is teaching the lessons. Phase 2 has 2000 flashcard words and is your daily vocabulary phase. Phase 3 is characters. Specifically learning to read the Book of Mormon. I'm hoping by November I can start learning characters! Super cool.
This week I finished the BoM! I started again on day 1 in the MTC and just finished. It was really cool and I felt really calm and peaceful after finishing. I encourage everyone to pick it up and read it. You will get closer to God by abiding by its precepts than by any other book in the world. I'm starting to read the Doctrine and Covenants right now! Lovin' the work. Have a great week everyone! Jake have fun at scout camp. Nate you are in my prayers. Love you all!
Elder Willes
Wei2 Zhang3 Lao3
Ye1Su1Ji1Du1 Hou4 Qi2Sheng4Tu2 Jiao4 Hui4 de Chuan2 Jiao4 Shi4
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