First off, thank you mom for organizing my email for me! It added about 5 minutes to my emailing time!
Monday: My companion is awesome and showed me this GREAT place next to the mission office in Taipei. There I bought my new favorite tie. It says "Families are forever" in chinese! AND it has dragons on it :). I then realized when we got home that I really need to be better at managing my mission money. I had enough food to survive. I just had to have a peanut butter sandwich for more than lunch the last Two days of November. This month I set up a budgeting plan for myself including my grocery list and Travel. I spent way over 500 kuai on travel last month! Very few missionaries have to take the train as often as we do. To Americans it is cheap but I get sick of spending a minimum of 84 kuai a week and an extra 42 to 112 for trips to the stake center and the mission office. But It is better than riding my bike so I won't complain! :)
Tuesday was good! My companion and I learned definition of godspeed! We had a member appointment on Tuesday night and they were going to feed us. They lived in the sisters area. We had to ride our bikes for and hour going downhill to find their house and so we started with them at about 6:40 at night. We stayed our hour and had a 30 minute lesson after because they invited an investigator! Then at 8:10 we realized that we had a lesson back at the train station uphill in a park by our house. It was scheduled for 8:30 Erm... How does one go uphill THREE TIMES as fast going downhill and make it to their lesson on time? I will tell you right now. We had ANGELS pushing us. There is no other explanation. We made it all the way back to Puxin in 25 minutes. We were 5 minutes late. The best part? Our investigator was 10 minutes late. WE were five minutes EARLY for the lesson. You may begin applauding. Oh also we found out that this Investigator, Wang Jenson, is moving to New York this month so he will not be meeting his baptismal date on the 13th... He will be on January 24th instead! He is so great. AND he is the only person all day that noticed my new tie. He is so great.
Wednesday: Ok you can stop applauding now. Wednesday was ok. One of the people we set a baptismal date with gave us a fake phone number so we had to drop him because we had no way to contact him. He also did not show up to the lesson we planned with him. Jesus loves him anyways... We did meet with our guy who is set for Christmas though. We need him to come to church every week this month to be Eligible. PRAY FOR HIM!! His name is Wang Shang Quan. We want that white Christmas and another soul brought into the fold!!!
Thursday: All of our appointments cancelled. I will just say now that the week overall had over 10 planned lesson's cancel or just not show up. Thursday kind of sucked. Let's forget that it happened. OH also, that excommunicated member that we are working with... The other Elders in our district ran into him on Thursday night and can you guess what he was doing? It involved a cigarette tossed to the side of the road at lightning speed and a can of "grape juice". Pray for Brother Karch too. Its a good thing he cancelled the next day's lesson with us that night. I would have burned his ears off at that lesson.
Friday. I DID burn someone's ears off on Friday. I also had a bowl of true chinese hot and sour soup! Mmmmm.... But the only lesson that we had planned on Friday was with the Brother Li that we talked with about authority. In the lesson he said that in his prayer Jesus told him the he was special and didn't need to be baptized with proper authority and that his first one made him ok. I wasn't mean... I just didn't hold back. It was kind of a "who do you think you are?" and I very directly told him that he was WRONG in the most loving way I possibly could. Elder Nelson said that it was great. He actually just let me take control that lesson and we were both super bold with the guy. I was totally into this lesson and the spirit was there. He said Jesus said he didn't need to, then he said he just didn't feel ready. I told him if he would use some effort that we could help him be ready by next month. Then he said he didn't want to because he liked tea. He was backtracking A LOT. He talked himself into a ditch and finally at the very end he said "I have been investigating the church for 8 years and you think you can have me baptized next month?" I totally didn't understand but I said yes anyways. Elder Nelson laughed, Then said a lot of things that I didn't understand either. Then Brother Li finally said "I'll go talk to Jesus about it". Elder Nelson later told me that the man looked like he was in shock in awe the whole time. I was kind of surprised with our forwardness... We really made an impact on the guy.
Saturday: All of our lessons cancelled again. We did finding all day and my companion talked to a man on the street who actually new how to Joke... When my companion said he was from mars the guy responded, Oh really? I am from Saturn! We must be neighbors! That was about it for Saturday though. OH WAIT! That brother Li we talked to on Friday called us tonight and told us that after really thinking about what we said that we wasn't going to come to church anymore and that he wanted to stop meeting with us for a little while. I guess we may have been a little overbearing... BUT the sisters did ask me to do a baptism for them on Sunday.
Sunday: SURPRISE I got to baptize someone! Right after church we performed the Ordinance. She was a Filipino so I got to do it English and it was just Cool. I want to experience that many more times out here in the field, but maybe with my own investigators :) This week I also might end My training! If me or my companion moves Ill be sure to tell you all next week.
It is so easy to say I don't feel like I am growing that much. I still feel lazy, I know that we have a lot to improve on, I think everyday that I could be the best missionary out here only to stop and wonder how I slipped through the Cracks to make it into the mission that they only send the best too. I'm no Eagle Scout or 4.0 student, I'm no musical prodigy or an Albert Einstein, I haven't walked on the moon I'm just some white kid from cache valley trying to sound asian so that the people will look past how foreign I am to listen to a message that I know is true. But that IS why I am here. To share. We all need to share. A testimony freely shared is one that grows and flourishes. A testimony not exercised and selfishly held withers and dies. Using something is the best way to ensure it's growth. I hope we can all use what we have the right way.
I KNOW this church is true. It has to be. There is nothing more life giving than the true and simple doctrine of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am grateful for the book of Mormon and divine guidance through prayer. I know that prayers are answered in the Lord's own time. Patience is a virtue that I am still developing for sure. I certainly had very little when I entered the MTC. But I truly am seeing lives change. I can't wait to see these people take and apply what we teach them.
I love you all. Take care, Be safe, Make good choices and HAVE FUN.
Until Next Week,
Love Ben :)
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| 1st baptism |
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| Taipei 101 89th Floor |
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| Taipei 101 - 3rd tallest building in the world |
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| Elder Nelson and Elder Heaps |
