Elder William Willes Taiwan Taipei: A CAT AND A DOG AT CHURCH

Our beautiful chapel

Hello everyone and Happy Thanksgiving from Taiwan. Lots to feel grateful for. Wow this week was incredible. I am sitting here emailing home at this little internet cafe feeling so blessed for the opportunity I have to be a missionary. Unfortunately there won't be any turkey and mashed potatoes here so eat lots of amazing Thanksgiving food for me. :)

We are working hard and the Lord keeps blessing us. This week we met with Brother Chen2 who is less active. We had a powerful lesson with him on the Sacrament and for the first time in years he decided to come to church! He looked super shuai4 in a suit, white shirt, and tie at sacrament meeting on Sunday. It was truly a blessing.

Elder Seamons, Brother Chen2 and Elder Willes

Our investigators are doing really well and we have lots of investigators we are working with right now. One of our investigators, Grace, is incredible and so ready for the Gospel. She hasn't been to church yet because she works. We had a very bold and powerful lesson with her where we felt like we needed to invite and encourage Grace to quit her job so she could come to church. She is praying about it. She did talk to her boss and committed to coming to church next week so that is super exciting! She has a baptismal date set for 12/25/15 and I think she will make it. I am praying she has a great experience at church and feels the strength she can gain by being there each week.

This week I went on exchanges with a new missionary, Elder Puzey. We were out contacting and felt prompted to bike down this road we had never been on before. We met a cute family with a 3 year old and a baby while they were out buying dinner. We shared with them all about being an eternal family. We showed this family our family pictures and a picture of Christ and taught them that through Christ we can be with our families forever! We met with them again on Saturday and they came to church on Sunday! It was such a miracle. Seeing that family at church made my whole day. They don't live in our area so the Sisters are going to keep meeting with them.

Elder Puzey and Elder Willes

The Lin family who we met and came to church

I love going to church in Taiwan and I will miss it. It is unique. This week at church some crazy things that happened. In the middle of Sacrament Meeting a random lady walks into the chapel and sits down by me. I look over at her and in her purse is a cat. I repeat, a straight up orange cat, just chillin on her lap. It was crazy. The Bishop decided to just let it be because she wasn't a member. After Sacrament Meeting all the kids were petting the cat. To make it crazier, as Sacrament Meeting was ending, two less active little girls (big miracle by the way) show up and in their little bag they have a little dog. So there was a cat and dog at church. Crazy. The joke in our apartment right now is, "You've cat to be kitten me." Haha

Thanks to everyone for the prayers on behalf of our less active blitz this week. It went great. I made little cards for the 80 less active members we went to find and visit. We saw big results. We had 8 members go out with us and all 8 missionaries serving in our ward went out with a member and found about 10 less actives each! So cool. About 20 minutes before we left one of the members cancelled. Elder Seamons and I prayed and both thought of a member and called him and he was able to come! Brother Zhang1 saved the day! I went out with Brother Zhang1 and we were biking all over the city to find these people. It was so hard and tiring but so worth it. We ran into one of the less active members we went to visit in the parking lot and taught him right there. Then we went out to the boonies. It was seriously like a 30-40 minute bike ride and visited a former Relief Society President. She let us in and we had a really cool lesson with her and she committed to come to church this next week! Incredible. In total we found about 15 new less active members we can start meeting with which is huge! It continues to rain here in Yilan but the Lord continues to pour out blessings as well. :)

Lastly, we took our two recent converts to the temple; Hanny and Huang2 Shi4 Neng2 DX. Our bus got caught in traffic so we were worried that we were going to be late but we made it! We ran from the MRT all the way to the temple. It was awesome.

At the temple with our recent converts

I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have to be a missionary and for my supportive and loving family. A missionary told me six months ago, "The last six months of your mission is when the Lord molds you from a boy to a man." I feel like I've learned so much lately and I am so so grateful to serve the Lord and be a part of His team. I know Jesus Christ lives and loves us all! I'm so grateful He died for us so we can have eternal life. Love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Willes