Taiwan

Hello everyone!   I'm so happy that I had the chance to skype with my family last week. That was a lot of fun. Everyone seems to be looking good and to be having a good time in all that they are doing! What was better, I got to skype you all twice! (it was because we had a problem with getting a hold of my companion's parents haha) So that was pretty special! But now the problem is that I don't really know what to write in this week's email haha. I guess I'll kind of just sum up the week.   We're still doing our thing out here in Xihu and working hard and trying out best to find people that we can meet with. So far we have seen some more glimpses of success. A fter church, we met with a lady that had met with missionaries about 4 or 5 years ago, and since then has still read the Book of Mormon periodically and loves to pray. I asked her what her favorite thing that the last missionaries taught her was and she said "The Plan of Salvation!" (she eve...

Dear Everyone,  Merry Christmas!!! I hope that all of you back home are having a good time celebrating this wonderful time of the year! I really love Christmas time. Even though the weather isn't the best, it's still my favorite time of the year. It's even better to celebrate Christmas in Taiwan because the weather isn't even a problem! I'm really grateful for the Spirit that Christmas brings to missionary work. I'm thankful for the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for each and every one of us. I'm thankful that because of His sacrifice for us, we are able to overcome the challenges and obstacles that we all face. I love watching the videos: Because of Him, and also, Because He Lives. They are really powerful and really simple and powerfully illustrate the importance of what Christ did for us. "Because Of Him"  https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2014-00-1420-because-of-him?lang=eng  "Because He Lives" https://www.lds.or...

Hey everyone!  Well after just being here in Xihu with Elder Williams for only three weeks, we had another move. Elder Williams in transferring to an even more rural place called Huwei and I will have a new companion named Elder Cole. I'm really sad that Elder Williams is leaving after I just barely arrived here. He was a really great companion and missionary. We had a lot of fun and learned a lot together. It's not everyday that I get to have a Samoan companion! I will miss him a lot. My new companion Elder Cole seems really nice though. Before the mission, he was really good friends with Elder Pearce from my MTC district. He just got down with training about three weeks ago so he's still fairly new.   Last week Elder Williams and I had a great week though. It was out mission Christmas party. You probably already know though from seeing all the mission pictures on the blog. It was pretty fun, especially because we got a chance to talk with a lot of the missionarie...

Hi Everyone,   So....week 2 in Xihu... It's been a lot of fun so far! My companion Elder Williams is a really great guy and we have lots of fun together. We've also been seeing some signs of success here, and lots of little miracles here and there.   So this week we met with a member Sister Lu who recently just came back from inactivity. She wanted us to go over with some ward members and to meet her husband who is not a member. We went over with Brother and Sister Shi, an awesome couple in our ward, and also with another member, Brother Chen. We had a great talk with Brother Chen (Sister Lu's husband, their names are different) and the Shi family shared their experience of how the gospel completely changed their lives and blessed their family. Brother Shi used to be an alcoholic, and just smoke and drink all day and trash up their house. They lived in complete poverty. But then they were able to change and now after 10 years in the church they have completely chan...

Hello Everyone,   I want to start out by saying I didn't forget about Dad's or Grandpa's birthday! I just forgot to include the birthday wishes in the last email...sorry about that. I remembered them in my heart though so that is what's important! So I thought I would make up for it by wishing a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! And a HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDPA! It seemed like you had a great birthday! Grandpa you certainly had a lot of birthday cards this year!! That's pretty impressive. I don't think I've ever gotten that many birthday cards before. You are very loved by all of us! Dad you are too! This certainly is the birthday season! It seems like everyone's birthday is in November.   This week has been a great one. It's a little interesting adjusting to my new area. Unfortunately, I didn't take a whole lot of pictures of the surrounding area, but I'll do that this next week. It's a pretty flat area, not a lot of hills. It's near the...

  Hey everyone!    Today was a sad day. My time in Nanzi has drawn to a close and now I have been assigned to serve in another part of beautiful Taiwan. It's a place called Xihu and it is very small. Actually our area boundaries are some of the biggest in the mission, but the population here is....not very much. So now I am sitting in an internet cafe in the middle of nowhere haha. It's super cool though. I have usually served in the city or factory areas of Taiwan, and now it's my first time serving in a place out in the country. Actually my previous companion Elder Moore served here before and I've heard lots of stories of this place. One of which is that there are more dogs here than there are people. We will see...    But before I left Nanzi Elder Grisenti and I had some last few stories and miracles together.  We had planned to have a lesson with a guy that usually is always able to meet, and never cancels appointments. But then for some ...

Dear Everyone, First off I'd like to start out by wishing my Mom a very happy birthday!  媽媽 ! 祝 你生日快樂 ! 我也祝 你平安和健康 ! 我希望 你的願望都應驗 ! (Translation:  MOM! happy birthday to you! I wish you health and peace! I hope all of your wishes come true!)    I hope that you all had a great time together and made some super good foods! Did Eric make some good Japanese foods for your birthday? I was celebrating your birthday over here in Taiwan. I made sure to tell everyone it was your birthday in all the lessons that we had! Thanks for all that you do for the family and for me! Thanks for the emails and the packages and all the advice that you give! I know that you are sad I couldn't be home for your birthday (at least I think so..) but I know that you are happier that I'm out here serving! I love you lots Mom!   I'm glad to hear that the package made it home alright and the goodies inside were all intact. Thanks for sending me the pic of everyone wearing the ties ...

Hi Everyone,   Well this week was pretty fun! At the beginning it seemed like just a normal week with nothing out of the ordinary, but then we were told that on Friday we would be having a member of the Seventy, Elder Wang from Hong Kong, come to our mission and we would have a big training with him. I was super excited for that and the whole week seemed to go by really slow because of that excitement haha. The training was great though! Before the big training, the district and zone leaders for Gaoxiong area got to have a special meeting with him and it was really helpful. He's a really funny and blunt man. So he answered our questions pretty straight up without beating around the bush haha. I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot.    One thing I really loved was the story of David and Goliath. We all know the story about how David knew that the Lord would be with him and that he would be able to defeat Goliath with his sling and a stone. But if he was that conf...

Hi Everyone,    We finally had the chance to go to Monkey Mountain!! It's a place that I've wanted to go to since I first came down to Gaoxiong. It's a mountain that you can go hiking on and it's really pretty. The main thing about it though is that there are tons of monkeys all over the place! They just roam all around and through the trees. A lot of them are super cute, but lots of them are really ferocious too! Elder Grisenti almost got bit a couple times and they would hiss at us if we scared them too bad. I was squatting down trying to take a picture of one and suddenly my friend Diego pulled me back just in time to avoid getting bit in the face by another monkey that was right next to my head on a branch! I tried super hard to get a picture of me sitting next to a monkey to send home, but they were just too fast, and too scary to get a good one haha. It was super fun though. I sent home a file with a bunch of pics of it so hopefully you can download them. I h...

 Dear Everyone,    This week was nice and refreshing with the rains that we just had. Fortunately the typhoon that was supposed to hit hard here in GaoXiong ended up going north and hitting the mountains near the center of the island so we didn't get much of it. We did get a lot of rain though. When it rains here, everyday we get completely soaked, usually all the way through, but usually by the time we go home at the end of the day we are dried off. I don't really wear the rain pants and gear as much, because then I will just get soaked with sweat because it's so humid. So either way you get soaked, but I prefer the rain haha.   This past week was pretty fun! We went to the tallest building in GaoXiong, called the Gaoxiong 85. I hope you all appreciate the pictures I sent home from there. Another member took some more, so hopefully I have those by next week.    We taught a wonderful but interesting lesson this week. We met with a rea...