Week 27- October 29, 2012

Week 27

October 29, 2012

Hey everybody!

This week was a good one to say the least. Yet again, we came in contact with people from all around the world (Singapore, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Honduras, Hong Kong, and Guatemala just to name a few).

The highlight of this week was definitely me and Elder Bowcutt’s journey back to my homeland of Bade. We arrived an hour early to find that the baptismal font (where they perform the baptism) was broken and the whole chapel had no water. So we ended up getting some clean garbage cans and rolling them across the street. We filled them up and then dumped them into the font. We ended up only having one and a half feet of water. That’s it!! So I had to baptize the 16 year old son and I tried 3 times but it was impossible to get him completely under! (When we baptize people, it is by immersion and their whole body has to go all the way under.) So finally he had to lie down to do it. One of us had to hold his legs down while the other baptized him. But on the way down, he hit his head on the step in the font! I will just say, it was a crazy baptism but we got the job done. We baptized the daughter and son. The mom is also ready to be baptized, but wants to wait for the dad before she'll get baptized. The dad has a smoking problem right now, so we'll see how that goes out there. Anyways, it was a great experience to go out there.

Also, this week we had two baptisms of our own. The first was Asutosh. He is from India and is the most Christ like person you'll ever meet. He is here studying. Then a sister from the Philippians, named Roseandres, was also baptized. We had both of their baptisms yesterday after Church and so many people came that not everyone could fit in the room. It was great! The baptism went well!

It is funny. A lot of missionaries over here think that China is going to open up (for missionary work.) Some missionaries have been having dreams about going to China and a few days ago at a meeting our Mission President said that some big changes are going to be made soon that will amazes us. He said that all of us younger missionaries will have to become leaders and senior companions. Not sure what changes he talking about but we'll see what happens. I’m thinking they might reopen up the Gaoshang mission (southern Taiwan) or something. I’ll keep ya'll posted.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve come to love the Book of Mormon even more! I really love how it answers the questions of our soul, such as what happens after we die, why are we here on earth, etc. The Book of Mormon has the answers to them all. Whoever you are, you need to read the Book of Mormon and ponder it every day! I feel one of Satan’s biggest tricks is to make us forget the eternal perspective. Reading the Book of Mormon helps us keep the eternal perspective!

God is Love,

Jordan Chatman

This is Jordan with some other elders, eating lunch with Rusty, who is a member in the Jin Hua Ward. This is on a pday. Elder Teshima is next to Jordan. 

Week 26- October 24, 2012

Week 26

October 24, 2012

Hi everyone,

This last week some local news people wanted to film our English class that we have every Wednesday. So if you saw the short clip that was me and another elder from Las Vegas teaching our class.

This week was crazy. We taught and met people from all over the world. Let me list the ones I can think of off the top of my head - India, Gambia, Ghana, France, Italy, St. Lucia, and mainland China. Being in the English ward is cool because there are tons of foreigners here, so we are the elders that get to teach them. Yesterday I got to eat octopus and seaweed soup. That was interesting!

This past week we had a baptism. It was a Phillipino sister who is here working. A lot of Philippines and Indonesian sisters come here and take care of the elderly people (because they don’t have elderly care homes here like in America). The baptism went great. We were a little bit scared at first because 5 minutes before the baptism started she wasn’t there and the person baptizing her wasn’t there either. They eventually got there, but then we couldn’t find a baptismal suit that fit her (it was either huge or way to small.) We eventually found one though. Another funny thing that happened was that she went to the bathroom to come into the font. So the guy baptizing her came out, but she never did. It was because the door to the font was locked. So we had to give her the keys to unlock it and then she got baptized. Other than that, it went good.

We also have two baptism scheduled for this upcoming Sunday. A twenty one year old young man from India and another Phillipino sister are both getting baptized. Both of them were awesome. The young man from India was amazing. He had already being living all of the commandments without even knowing because the culture in India has pretty high morals from what he says.

This week we got a call from my old companion (Elder Murphy) in my old area in Bade. He said the Li family I was teaching when I was there is getting baptized this week and wants me to baptize them. It takes about one hour and a half to get there. My first companion (Elder Bowcutt) called us up and said he talked to President Day and said we can go on splits (this is when you switch missionary companions for the day.) So me and Elder Bowcutt will go to Bade this weekend and help baptize the family and my companion and Elder Bowcutt’s companion will stay here. I’m happy that I get to go to Bade to baptize them.

Anyways that is the news here!

Jordan Chatman

A lady on the streets with a pig

In the middle is Rosemarie. She is an investigator that Jordan baptized from the Philippians. On the right is Rose Andres. She is another investigator that Jordan baptized from the Philippians

This is Xin Beitou which is the city where Ashutosh lives. The MRT we take to and back from visiting him

This is the same city where the investigator lives

Elder Wang, Jordan's companion, at the MRT station

The lady with her pig on the street

The baptism of the Phillipino, Sister Rosemarie that Jordan taught

A part member family (Lai4) that they were teaching. The kids were members and loved basketball but their dad wasn't a member

A less active member from Ghana that we surprised visited

Jordan's area

This is the church (Church headquarters in Taiwan) right next to the temple which would be a few feet to the right from this picture and mission office across the street from where they were

Week 25- October 14, 2012

Week 25

October 14, 2012

Hey everyone!

I feel like I was just here writing my weekly letter home, time flies...

The highlight of this week was General conference (this is where the prophet and apostles of our church speak worldwide to everyone in the church.)  I've never been so excited to listen to Conference. It was the real deal. Elder Holland's talk was powerful and really profound. It was interesting to think about do we really love God and how do we show it? I feel like sometimes I’m like, yeah of course I love God, but then when you really start thinking deep about it, you realize that there are things you can do or stop doing to really show your love for God more. I loved Elder Uchtdorf’s talk about people’s common regrets in life and being happier. I loved Elder Eyring”s Sunday morning talk as well as Elder Bendars. Elder Bednar gave a similar talk to that while I was in the MTC, which I already talked about in my previous letter, so I won’t expound on it more…just that it was a great talk. You gotta love Elder Nelson’s shout out to the missionaries in his talk, "Ask the missionaries." I heard about the whole missioaryn age change thing (now the boys can go on a mission at age 18 and the girls at age 19 years old.)  That'll be good especially for the sisters because they need more sister missionaries out there. Sister missionaries are honestly way better than the elders!  Conference was also cool because our St. Lucian investigator, Benjamin came. He is close to getting baptized (he has to get married next month first), but he wasn’t sure if president Monson really is a true prophet of God. But after to going to conference he knows that he is!

This week we had a funeral in our chapel for an older member that died recently. The crazy thing was that he was the only member in his family and he said in his will that he wanted his funeral done in our chapel. So a ton of non members showed up to the funeral (90% of the people there.) Some were mad that the funeral was being held in our church because a lot of them were Buddhist.  In fact, one time when a man was speaking saying how cool it was that our church has hope for an afterlife, a non member guy shouted out "are you Buddhist or a Mormon?!" He was obviously mad that he was supporting our church’s teachings. But after the funeral, we got to talk to some of the non member people there.

Another cool thing is that we have a baptism this upcoming Thursday. It is the awesome Philippino sister named Rosemary. It is going to be at 8:30am so I don’t know who’s going to show up!

The language just keeps getting better and better. The hardest thing though is when during lessons the investigators and members start speaking Taiwanese. I have no idea what they are saying when that happens and Taiwanese is super hard to learn. Plus we're not allowed to learn it, only suppose to focus on Chinese. It’s all good though!

That’s the what’s up over here. Hope everyone learned great things from Conference.

Jia You (keep working hard!)

-Jordan Chatman

Jordan in the back.  This was at the 3rd transfer

Week 24- October 7, 2012

Week 24

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Hi everyone,

Another week has gone by fast. It is amazing how fast the weeks go by. This week our main focus was a Philippine sister named Rosemary and a young man from India. Both of them are really close to being baptized this month, so we are really trying to help them get there. We also met this guy from Canada. He left everything he had in Canada to move here and marry a Taiwanese girl. But when he got here, her parents were against it. So she ended up leaving him. Now he is stuck here without a job and has been really depressed. He had been doing well in Canada, but since being here his life has been messed up. So this led him to meeting with us. We were helping him learn about our purpose in life. The lesson we had with him went great and he is willing to stop smoking, drinking and everything else, to turn his life around. Then yesterday, we called him to invite him to church. But he's now going back to Canada because his old job opened up. So hopefully, the missionaries over there can keep teaching him.

Also, this week, we went on about a 30 minute MRT ride to Xin Zhuang, where this recently converted (newly baptized member) man from Africa lives. He had not been heard from recently, so the bishop wanted us to go see how he's doing. So we went out to his house, on the roof of this apartment, which was really hard to get into. All the people there only spoke Taiwanese, so I couldn’t understand. Luckily, my companion speaks it, so we finally got in. After all that though, he wasn’t even home. Oh well, it was the effort that counts.

Last night, we had a fireside for all of the newly baptized people and investigators (people wanting to learn about the church). That was really spiritual until one of the speakers, a new member, started singing and clapping during her talk and talking about her reincarnation. (not something we believe in!) Yeah -not sure about her situation... 

We didn't get to watch General Conference (a broadcast from our prophet and his apostles.) They tape it and then a guy from the old ward in Bade, translates it into Mandarin Chinese. It is for everyone in Taiwan that wants to watch it in Mandarin. But we'll be able to watch it in English next week.

The city is good. It’s just like a crowded Las Vegas here. Biking is crazy because the drivers are crazy and it is packed with scooters and taxis and cars.  We're in the middle of downtown. We live about a 15 minute bike ride from the temple. We live in a really nice apartment. It is really small, just one big area and a bathroom. Some of the other missionaries in the area have big apartments but they live in the ghetto. So I love it where I’m at. Taipei isn’t as nice as everyone says. Before in America, everyone said how nice and technologically updated and stuff it is, but it’s pretty dirty and not that nice. There are some nicer areas though.

The wards here are good, probably around 75 to 100 people at church. There are 8 missionaries in the Chinese ward - us, the assistants, the temple sisters, and 2 other elder.  The English ward members are awesome and really supportive.

That’s about it here. This gospel changes lives!

Love,

Jordan Chatman

Week 23-September 30, 2012

Week 23

Hi everyone,

The new area I’m in is sweet. It’s cool being able to teach in both English and Chinese. This week, I got to teach people from all over the world. One of our best investigators is young adult named Ashutosh. He is from India and came over to Taiwan to study and work. He said he grew up a bit in the Hinduism religion, but his family didn't really believe in it. He lives about an hour from where we live, but we traveled by the MRT out to his apartment last week and met with him. He told us a cool experience about how he used to have really bad nightmares. Then one day, he met the missionaries in his area. They taught him about prayer. Then that night he had another bad dream and in the dream, he prayed the way the missionaries taught him and asked in the prayer to be safe. Then he woke up and hasn't had another nightmare since. He has come to church the past 2 weeks and should be ready for baptism here in another few weeks.

We also met for the first time with the awesome young adult sister from St. Luscious which is an island in the Caribbean Sea. Her Jamaican English accent is sweet.  But we had a great lesson with her. We shared the restoration of the gospel and she started crying during the lesson. She was touched by the spirit.

Sunday, we had a great lesson about the Word of Wisdom (our health code in the church) with a Philippine sister. She is also close to being baptized soon. She has a great spirit about her. We have 4 Philippine investigators right now and they are all great. They are really nice and loving people.

Also, Sunday we called a young man, we had met on the street, to invite him to church and he came. He is this really cool, nice, black man with cornrows from St. Luscious Island as well. He liked church and setup to meet with us later this week

So, we have a bunch of great investigators and then, of course, we have some not so great ones. We met on Tuesday with this younger American guy from New York who teaches English here. He just wanted to debate the whole time and was spitting anti-Mormon stuff at us left and right. He wanted scientific evidence of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, which actually we could show to him. But would that have any effect? No, because there would be no faith. Ether 12:6 says, “Faith is things which are hoped for, which are not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.”

Also, we had a baptism this week. It was a Chinese man that has changed a lot. He used to smoke and to do a bunch of bad things. But through the gospel, he was able to change his life and was baptized this weekend.

That’s the scoop over here.

Have a good week!

Love,

Jordan Chatman