Taiwan

Hey Everyone!   We had another awesome week here in Taiwan. I had a great birthday yesterday. It seemed like it was just going to be another normal day. We had stake conference in Yong Kang, and then rode our bikes about an hour to the R... house to teach D.... Like usual we had some awesome food. They gave us an interesting kind of bacon. It was the pig skin, and it still had a lot of pig hair in it...I don't really think they were necessary. lol  And they looked at me really weird when I tried to pluck some of the hairs out. I prefer normal bacon.      After dinner with them, we rode our bikes back to our chapel to have a lesson. We were sitting around in the church and D..., one of the members in our ward called me. He must have thought that I was Elder Smith because he told me about his plan for a surprise party. So I just played along and went in the room they told me to haha. They had a little party set up for me with pizza, cake, p...

  Dear Family,   I had another amazing week! It's actually pretty hard to have a bad week when you're in somewhere cool like Taiwan, and doing such important work.   Last pday, we all celebrated my birthday! A little bit early, but by the end of the month, no one has any money left in their account so we had to do it earlier haha. The other Elders, some members and I all went bowling! It was a lot of fun. There were some good bowlers there...but none as good as me. I got my best game so far...149!! I got three doubles over the course of the two games we played, but I just couldn't get a turkey. I didn't even know I was good at bowling so when I got all those strikes, I was just as surprised as everyone else. I think it's from all that practice with you dad! Afterwards we went to a big chidaobao. It was a really really nice and expensive one. Luckily one of the members somehow got a discount, it was a lot cheaper. We ate so much! After we had eaten for an hour a...

Well I actually don't really remember a whole lot that happened this week so it might be a shorter email haha. We've really been trying to pick it up with the number of lessons we teach each week. We have a lot of investigators who have potential and I'm super excited to see how things turn out. Everyday we've been basically tracting and teaching, tracting and teaching. Things are going well though and we are finding success.      D... is still looking super strong for baptism on the 31st and I don't see of anything stopping her. She wants to be baptized so badly. Unfortunately, P... is having some trouble. He is super nice though and has committed to live all of the commandments we've taught him, but he just doesn't want to take the next step. He really needs the gospel though. He always says how he feels unsatisfied with his life and wonders why there is so much confusion, why life has so many trials. I know that the gospel would bless his life. I hop...

Dear Family,   Wow a brand new year! I hope everyone had a good New Years! All the pictures from Nepal that you sent me look so pretty. I'm really jealous! I'm glad that you all had a good time and you made it back safely.   Recently I've noticed tons of miracles happening around us! This week especially. L... DX, an investigator for the past several months who has been really stubborn about putting forth any effort, gave himself a baptismal goal for the 31st of January! His wife has been a member for several months but L... Dx hasn't wanted anything to do with it up until now. I'm not sure what his thoughts are and why he changed his mind, but yesterday at church he came up to us and told us the good news!     Later that day, we went and visited the L... J... (family). L... said that he had been reading the Book of Mormon with his older brother and family and he's even prayed a couple times. He's really showing a lot more interest. Yesterday he ag...

  Dear Family,   Merry (belated) Christmas to everyone! I really enjoyed being able to talk with the family last week! It was great to hear from everyone! The best Christmas present ever! It sounds like everyone is doing well and is having a good time! It was really interesting talking to Eric through a double skype. Thank goodness neither of us had lag so we were able to talk with each other.   Some more good news, I got G&G Stevens package the day after Christmas and even better...the goodies were still good! The molasses cookies were nice and soft and everything tasted great as usual. Thanks so much!     All of the young people here are so nice, I got tons of little cards and notes, and candies that people had made. They were all really cool. It's amazing what some people can make. We also had a fun gift exchange with them and I got a selfie stick! Those things are so popular in Taiwan, literally everyone in our ward has one. So now I'll be able ...