Taiwan

  Ni Hao,   This past week we have really been preparing for S... baptism this Saturday. He is so excited and has been looking forward to this day for a very long time. We've also been meeting with his two daughters a few times and I hope we can continue to meet with them. They're really nice too. I hope that they and his wife will be able to attend his baptism and that his wife can have a change of heart.  S... really wants to be baptized, so he's not going to let anything stop him this time. It's funny, whenever he hears something he likes in church, or in any film we show him, he'll make some sort of hmmm and get really into it!    We had a fun Christmas party for our English class last week. It was pretty well attended and we had a bunch of fun games and activities. We had snowflake making, pin the carrot on the snowman, a snowball fight (dodgeball), musical chairs, lots of goodies, and pictures with Santa! Elder Page dressed up as Santa and a...

Hi Everyone,     I can't believe that it's already so close to Christmas! It's coming up so quickly and I didn't even realize it, haha. I guess it's because we're so busy we don't even think about it. We'd better start thinking though, because we have a big Christmas party for the English class we teach and Elder Smith and I are in charge of making hot cocoa and organizing a snowball fight. No, there isn't any snow here, but we're getting a bunch of balls and folding up some of our socks to use. We're trying to stay pretty cheap lol. That's coming up this Wednesday and should be really fun. I love having the English class because we get so many people to teach from it. Last week I was talking with a guy named D... and he said that he wanted to meet with us this Thursday so I'm excited for that.     We had an amazing miracle yesterday. The trio of Elders in our district (Elders Brady, Galura, and Page) had met this cool member ...

  Hey how is everyone doing!? It's always so hard for me to organize my thoughts and write everything I did because there's so much to talk about! First of all I want to say that we have an investigator with a baptismal date! His name is Su DX. He investigated the church around 8 years ago but his wife was against it so he stopped. Elder Smith was on exchanges a few weeks ago and found his record in a pile of old former records and decided to call him. He said he was excited to learn again and this time he wouldn't let anything stop him from baptism! That's a crazy miracle to find his record out the midst of so many. We set a date with him for the 27th of December. I really hope that he will be able to follow through and set an example for the rest of his family. His kids seem to have some interest as well. For the month of December our mission has a goal like Eric's. We want to have 100 baptisms this month. Pretty much we want every companionship to have a baptism...

Alright, it's time to tell about my many adventures in the tropical island of Taiwan! We've had a pretty fun week and got a lot done. First I'll give you an update on some of our investigators. Actually it's more like an introduction since you don't know who they are yet. We have a guy named L... Dixiong (dixiong means brother and all their names sound the same and are confusing so I just say brother/sister so and so) L... DX has a wife who was recently baptized and the missionaries have been working with him for a while to see if he would like to be baptized as well. There hasn't been a lot of progress. He was supposed to be baptized this coming Saturday but he hasn't been reading or praying so he doesn't know if the church is true or not. He said he would put more effort in.   P... is really nice, she's 29 and we met her in our English class. She is scared to ask her parents if she can be baptized. Most of the time, parents are against their ki...

 Ni Hao Everyone, Well, I finally made it to Taiwan and it's amazing! I feel so privileged to be serving in this beautiful place! I didn't get to take a bunch of pictures of the city or country because we've been a little busy. I'll be sure to send some that I have though, because it is awesome over here. Right now I'm serving in Tainan, which actually means, south Taiwan, so as the name implies, I'm in the bottom part of Taiwan. We're in the city. It's a little smaller than Taichung, but it's still a fairly big city. It's crazy to ride around on your bike through the streets. There are tons of little motorbikes all over the place! Literally thousands of them! They always weave their way through the traffic and I've almost been hit many times already haha. (maybe I shouldn't say that...I don't want to scare you. I'm actually fine, don't worry) Taiwan is so different from the US, and I couldn't write down all the cool t...

  Well the time has finally arrived! I got my visa, and I'll be leaving for Taiwan tomorrow morning at 8:30am. I'm so excited to finally be leaving and going to a new country! Especially because it's starting to get really cold here and I'm already tired of it haha. Hopefully the weather will be a lot warmer over there. I think it will definitely be warmer than 0 degrees with the windchill like it is over here. And hopefully I won't have to wear my suits anymore! Actually it's not to bad wearing them. I guess I've gotten used to wearing them so they don't feel uncomfortable anymore.   I ran into Bishop Hale's dad after we finished with the Summerwood meeting and I didn't even know who he was until he asked if my bishop back home was doing a good job. Luckily I said that he was doing a great job haha. I've also talked with the Marshells who lived in our ward a while back. It's nice that I've seen so many people here, but I doubt t...

Dear Family and Friends, I want to start off by wishing Mom a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! It's amazing to think that 29 years ago you were born. Time flies! Pretty soon I'm going to be older than you though haha. Hopefully tomorrow will be a nice day for you so you can enjoy your birthday. It's certainly getting cold over here and I'm not enjoying it at all!      Other than the weather, things are going very well here. We took C... and her kids J... and Z... to church and they loved it. C... is still wanting to be baptized and she is awesome. She had lots of input and questions during class at church, and she seemed excited to come back. Hopefully that will make Z... more comfortable and want to be baptized. She is a little scared and hasn't wanted to, but that's alright. She just needs to get used to things for a while.   We also took W... to church. She really enjoyed it too. The whole time during sacrament meeting, she was wiping tears from her eyes. She...

  Well this week is transfers and it looks like I will be staying here for at least another 6 weeks! This is a great area so I'm glad that I'm staying. Unfortunately my companion is leaving for Kaysville. I'm really going to miss my companion because we worked really well together and got along great. We also were getting a lot done, but I guess there's other work to be done for him. Our roommate, Elder Palhegyi is getting transferred too, but Elder Firpo is staying.      That's so exciting that Tim got his mission call to Portugal. He will have a great mission!      I talked to the doctor yesterday and he said that I would probably be fine to wear contacts again. He didn't check my eyes or anything but he said it's been long enough. Hopefully they'll be alright.      It was a lot of fun teaching the exchange students from Taiwan. It's too bad they've already gone back home because it would be nice to be able to te...

   We had a pretty busy week last week. Lots of stuff has been happening. First of all, our investigator C...decided to be baptized! I'm so excited for her. She has been great and prayed about what we taught her about the restoration and she got an answer that she needs to continue in this direction. We still have more to teach her, but she is scheduled for Nov 22 to be baptized. Unfortunately she wasn't able to come to church with us yesterday, but there's always next week.       Our other investigator W... decided she wants to look into the church a lot more. She wants to start coming to church. She was supposed to go yesterday, but she had a migraine. So I guess we'll just have to go next week with her too.  At least J... and his two girls were able to come to church. The girls both had parts in the primary program and they did great. One of them gave a short talk about D... meeting with us and being baptized. It was really sweet. We are g...