Rain, Rain, Go Away...

October 26, 2015

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 really nice man named T.... He is Vietnamese. He has lived in Taiwan for about 10 years but his Chinese and English are just so, so. We communicated fine about the basic everyday stuff, but as soon as we started talking about gospel related things, he had no idea what we were saying. It turns out that his vocabulary on religious things is basically zero and he didn't know what prayer or who even God was. He said he really wanted to learn about our church and how it could bless his family, but we just didn't know how to tell him! In the MTC and in all of our training, they taught us to teach very simply, and so we took that training to heart! Luckily we had a copy of the Vietnamese Book of Mormon so we used that to teach him very simply about who God was and what prayer was. We opened to Alma and shared the story of Ammon teaching of God to King Lamoni and used that to teach T.... We also opened to scriptures of prayer and taught him how we could communicate with God. It was very difficult to express what we wanted to say. However, despite the simpleness of our words, the Spirit was really strong, and T... definitely felt it. He says that he wants to continue learning and to be baptized on the 21st of November. We will really need God's help to help us know how to help him!

Oh, another funny and kind of scary story from the week, and also on the week of Halloween. We were eating food outside a 7/11 (in Taiwan they have a 7/11 basically on every single street corner) when we noticed an old guy on a bike just staring at us. I mean that happens a lot here in Taiwan since we are the only White people so it wasn't bugging us too bad, but then he just started smiling and whispering to himself. I don't know why but we both had the creeps so we decided to leave. Then the guy started following us! He followed us for like 10 minutes then we decided to use our superior athleticism and bike as fast as we could. Later that night when we were returning to our apartment we saw him again. We didn't think he saw us so we parked our bikes and started getting off when we heard the unmistakable creaking of his bike coming behind us. He got within 10 feet of us by the time we got back on our bikes and booked it out of there. He followed us for a good little bit but we were too fast. My adrenaline was pumping. We were nervous because he found out where we live but so far he hasn't attacked us in our sleep or anything so that's good. Several days later we saw him again while we were eating inside a restaurant. He just pressed his face against the window and stared at us for 10 minutes straight then left. We haven't seen him since then so it's all good.

We also went to celebrate the birthday of one of our friends and investigators K... We ate lots of noodles and shrimp, and he even bought a really fancy cake that after blowing out the candles, he just gave to us to take home haha.

And awesome news...S..., our dear friend we baptized a few weeks ago received the Aaronic Preisthood yesterday at church, and is continuing to be super awesome! He is loving it so much. It's super cool to see. He always tries to put on the "tough guy" attitude because he's a weight trainer, but he is actually super excited! I love that guy! Also....I did my first one handed push up last week so my workouts with him are paying off haha.

Well this week I wrote a lot. Hopefully I didn't bore you haha. I love you all I wish you all the best!! Have an awesome week!

Love

Elder Stevens