Week 17- August 19, 2012

Hey everyone,

This week out here in Bade, Taiwan went good. My new companion has been awesome. After this transfer, (transfers are when they switch companions) he only has 12 weeks left on his mission. So he is almost done. His Chinese is great!  So he has been a big help in teaching me. My Mandarin Chinese has been progressing but I still have a long way to go.

This week, we did a lot of work organizing and getting to know everyone in our area. There used to be four missionaries in this area, but now it is just two of us. So we have had to take the time to learn more about our investigators. We needed to see what they have been taught and what their needs are, in order to help them progress.

On Tuesday, we were at a 7-11 making some calls and a man sitting next to us started talking to us. At first, he was just interested in learning English. But then we started talking with him about Church and setup an appointment at the church later that night. We taught him about God, prayer, and baptism. Then yesterday he came to Church. He is really interested in the Church now and the progress is has made in these short few days is awesome.

Church can be kind of an interesting time for us. Yesterday, we had twelve investigators at Church which was a great! It can be interesting because we want to make sure they feel welcomed and understand what is going on. Some investigators are very bu hao yi si…..which means they'll get scared and won’t come into Church unless you go and bring them in. So we spend lot of time making sure members sit by our investigators and help them feel welcome. Yesterday was cool as some people showed up who we had lost all hope for. A less active member came and brought her husband for the first time. He used to be a Buddhist priest in Thailand. He doesn’t understand very much Chinese, but it was good to have him there.  We gave him a Thai Book of Mormon.

Something cool I learned this week was about true conversion. During a talk by Elder Bednar (an apostle of our Church) given at the MTC, he said that a testimony is what you know to be true, but conversion is living what you know to be true. What Elder Bednar meant was - is having a testimony isn’t enough. If we aren’t converted (meaning if we aren’t living what we know to be true), then we aren’t becoming converted and it will be easier to fall away. A great scripture about this is in Alma 23:6.  It says, "…and as sure as the Lord liveth, so sure as many as believed, or as many as were brought to the knowledge of the truth, through the preaching of Ammon and his brethren, according to the spirit of revelation and of prophecy, and the power of God working ^amiracles in them—yea, I say unto you, as the Lord liveth, as many of the Lamanites as believed in their preaching, and were ^bconverted unto the Lord, ^cnever did fall away."

So basically this scripture tells us that as many of the Lamanites who first had a testimony but then were converted by living true to their testimony, none of them fell away from God and the Church.

Elder Bednar gave a great story about when he was on his mission. He said one day his mission president asked him what it would be like if an apostle (leaders of the Church) fell away from the Church. Young Elder Bednar said, “Oh that would be terrible.” But then the mission president said, “It wouldn’t phase me in the least because I’m converted to the Lord. I know what is true and I live it.”  Elder Bednar then went on to talk about how we need to be converted to the Lord and his gospel. I know that as we live the gospel on a daily basis - daily scripture, study, prayer, obedience, etc. - we will be more deeply converted to the Lord.

Love you guys!

Jordan Chatman