Tuesday, February 10, 2015

STAND UP IF YOU ARE A MISSIONARY!




"The Gospel changes lives when it's principles are accepted and lived."

Oh Taiwan I love you!




Hello!  This week was a great on.  Glad everyone was nice and warm back at home but in Taiwan it rained and was cold ALL week long!

Start with the best news first: Lin2 Zhi4 Ren2 DX. Thanks for every one's prayers on his behalf this week! We truly saw God's influence and help as he gave up smoking cold turkey in 8 days! Super sick! He had his baptismal interview 2 days ago and passed. So as long as everything goes well he will be entering into the waters of baptism this upcoming Saturday. He has been so happy this week. We tried to make follow up visits every day this week to offer encouragement. And every day he would be like 1 day down! 2 days down! 5 days! 7 days! BOOM. Super big miracle. Lin2 Zhi4 Ren2 DX called us the prophets of helping people quit smoking! Haha we were like no we are just the servants! It was really really cool to see him do this. He came to Stake Conference and just loved it. Such a great guy. He also said, " When I get baptized I want to have a calling in the church. I want to serve God!" Such a great guy! Such a big miracle. Please keep him in your prayers that everything this week goes well. :)

We met with Lin2 Li3 Jun4, our 18 year old investigator who has a lot of family opposition, and we had a really spiritual lesson on temples.  All of us wrote notes to his family hoping that his parents' hearts would be softened and allow him to be baptized. Unfortunately they still are telling him he has to wait until he is 20 years old to be baptized. Family opposition is a really hard thing here in Taiwan.  It's really hard as a missionary seeing him want to be baptized but he just can't. Elder Jensen and I think we are going to go to his parents house this week, and see if they will talk to us, and give them a Chinese New Year gift! We will see how it goes! 

This past week we went English boarding with another companionship of Elders. We had a little fun. Each of us had a huge stack of English tracks and whoever passed them all out first was treated by the other 3 with a smoothie. I won so I enjoyed a free delicious Passion Fruit Smoothie. Haha. 

Elders Okison, Jensen and Willes out English boarding together
Thank you Nicole for sending us this picture from Taiwan.  We love you and we love those Elders!

We also met with Gabi Chen2 this week and it went well! We felt prompted to share the Word of Wisdom at her first lesson.  She liked it. Her health is really bad and her life is unstable so we aren't sure if she will keep progressing but we hope to keep meeting with her! The Gospel changes lives when it's principles are accepted and lived.  We also met with Jiang1 Yi3 hui4 Jm and our LA Tang DX! Had awesome lessons with them and they BOTH came to Stake Conference so that was super exciting! Tang DX is really turning around. Really cool to see. He's reading the BoM every day and has been to church every week for a month! We hope he can get a calling soon. :)

One of the highlights of the week was going to the temple with two of our recent converts, Xu3 JM and Cai4 DX, to do temple baptisms with them.  I got to witness and it was really special! The spirit in the temple is so strong. 





Last night we had a really cool night of finding. Sunday Nights are often really tiring because when you work so hard all week usually by Sunday night you are so dead tired. Our church is from 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.  But as usual, we still went out and contacted in the rain for 1 hour 30 min. Heavenly Father helped us to have some pretty cool experiences! We found this kid Chen2 Di4 Xiong1 who we had an awesome lesson with and then another kid and then we went knocking and knocked this guy's door, brother Huang2. I was like hello! We are a little thirsty. Could we have a glass of water? He was super nice and gave us a cup of water and we had an awesome lesson with him and gave him a Book of Mormon. Just planting seeds and then it's up to Heavenly Father if they're prepared or not. Super cool week.

Elder Willes outside another Christian church right across the street from the Taiwan Temple



Stake Conference was awesome. President and Sister Day both gave great talks. They spoke about missionary work duhh. Sister Day had all of the missionaries stand up and told the Stake how proud she was of us. It was a cool moment. It was like I knew she had our back kind of moment. Then President Day gets up there and he's like, "Stand up if you are a missionary." Like half the congregation stands up. Then he's like "lets try again. Stand up if you are a missionary and a servant of Jesus Christ." Then the entire congregation got the message and everyone in the building stood up! It was SO cool! Every member a missionary! So cool. Sharing the gospel is the sweetest and most rewarding thing we can do on this Earth. I encourage you all to be missionaries. Take up your cross and serve the Living Christ. Love you all! Have a great week :)  And remember to STAND UP IF YOU ARE A MISSIONARY!

Love, Elder Willes


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