Week 15- August 5, 2012

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Week 15

Hey everyone,

It sounds like the Olympics have been going good. I haven’t heard about it at all from the people here. Probably because the only thing the Taiwanese are good at are ping pong and badminton.

So this week I went swimming...okay, not literally because it is bu xing (not allowed) but if you saw me you probably would’ve thought I went swimming. On Wednesday, a typhoon hit Taiwan. It really hasn’t bad as I thought it was going to be though. The Taiwanese people made a big deal out of it but it really wasn’t much but rain and wind. We were biking during part of it. It started pouring down rain. You know the kind of hard rain when you are driving and so much is coming down you can’t see anything and your windshield wipers are useless because so much rain is coming down. It was rain like that and we biked in it. Crazy, I couldn’t see anything and our rain stuff was useless. Our mission president made everyone in the mission come home early that night and then made all the missionaries stay home the next day. My companion called the mission president though and he let us out because we had some lessons setup and the typhoon wasn’t much of anything at that point.

So this week, one of our investigators got baptized. She was an older lady, You2 Jie3mei4 that used to be Buddhist but became interested in our Church. She said she instantly knew it and that we had something special. A Church member baptized her. She just one day walked into the church my first week here and here she is getting baptized a few weeks later

Last night was cool. We went over to one an Indonesian lady’s house that had recently been rediagnosed with cancer. She asked for a priesthood blessing. So we gave her a priesthood blessing and then told her how she needs to be baptized and live how God wants her to live. She committed to be baptized at the end of the month. Also, we have another investigator getting baptized this Saturday.

We taught an 88 year old man a lot this week. A couple weeks earlier he was drinking alcohol and smoking. But he has since stopped. This week we taught him about not worshipping any other Gods except God himself. He has a Buddhist God idol thing that he burns this little stick to and bows down to it. They called it bie bie. A ton of people do that here. So we taught him about not doing that and then he got rid of his idol and he has been good since. We are hoping he gets baptized in the next few weeks.

This week I learned a ton about prayer. I’ve really come to love prayer since being out here on my mission. The biggest things I’ve learned are that we have to have faith and believe in what we are praying about. If you remember Joseph Smith, he had great faith when he prayed. Right before the Angel Moroni visited him, he prayed for a manifestation from God and had full confidence that he would receive one. Also I love the Bible dictionary explanation about prayer. It says we don’t receive answers to our prayers because our will and the will of Christ aren’t aligned. But rather we are praying for our own selfish desires.  Something I like doing is having a prayer journal, where you keep track of questions and concerns you want answered through prayer. Then ponder and seek for answers during you prayers and throughout the day. Then write down personal answers we may have received.

Good stuff -I ate bamboo this week and learned some Taiwanese (hello, good bye, do you want to race? - I say that to motorcyclists at stop lights). lol A lot of people here know Mandarin and Taiwanese but Mandarin is the main language spoken.

Hope everybody is having a good summer!

-Jordan Chatman