Week 31- November 26, 2012

Week 31

November 26, 2012

Hey everyone,

We are getting into the bad weather over here. It is starting to pour rain everyday which is not fun at times because we have to go out and bike in it, which is a mess. Plus when it rains, the Taiwanese hibernate...literally, they are scared of the rain and sun (and Taiwan is just about only those 2 things so I’m not sure why they are living here. J) For example, this Wednesday, it started raining and only 4 people out of 20 showed up for English class because of it. But when it’s not raining, the temperature is perfect.

I guess I’ll give you a quick day by day run down. Monday night, we traveled about 45 min out to Beitou where we had Family Home Evening (an evening set aside for families to have a lesson and be together each week) with a Brother from Mexico and wife. Our recent convert from India lives out there also, so we wanted to take him to it. Tuesday, we had district meeting (our district consists of 3 companionship of elders). Then we had another Family Home Evening that night with a family in the Chinese ward who is getting sealed soon. Tuesday, we met with a recent convert named Julio from the Philippians and taught him a scripture in Mosiah about how through the enabling power of the Atonement, Christ can make our burdens light. After him, we met with Lin Zhi Wen. He owns a store here where they sell a food called hot pot. He recently has been going through a hard time because he had some Vietnamese people staffing for him, but their papers expired. So they were here illegally for a bit and then they got caught. So they got sent back to Vietnam. So we discussed with him about keeping God commandments and coming to Church. He hasn't made any progress since I've been here because he's unwilling to keep commitments beside prayer. Thursday, our ward mission leader (who actually lives in Portland - Brother Skanky), drove us up to the Bishop’s house on a big hill where a lot of the English ward members live. We had Thanksgiving dinner up there with the Bishop’s family and some other families in the ward. The food was ridiculously good. The Bishop went all out for this dinner. We had turkey, rolls, mashed potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie, the whole sha-bang! So good!! I felt so lucky because all of the other missionaries didn't get to do anything because it isn’t celebrated here. Friday and Saturday, I went on exchanges with the district leader, Elder Robinson. He is from California and played high school football. So it was nice to finally talk to someone that plays sports. Taipei 101 is in his area and we did some tracting and less-active visits near it. The area is really ghetto surrounding Taipei 101 until you get up right close to it and then it is super high tech. Then Saturday, we taught a sweet lesson about the Plan of Salvation to one of their investigators. That is it for this week...

I just want to say that I know without a doubt that this Church is true and it is Jesus Christ’s true church and gospel restored to the Earth today, just like when Jesus was on the earth. If you are reading this and you aren’t a member of our church, I would encourage you to talk to the missionaries and set up a time to meet with them. Meeting with missionaries doesn’t mean you have to join the church or anything. They just want to teach you a true message that will bring more happiness to your life than you can ever imagine. Hit them up and give it a try. It won’t hurt to try and wouldn’t it be worth it to know for a fact for yourself if our church is true of not? Either way, I love you guys. God is love!

Elder Chatman

Week 30- November 19, 2012

Week 30

November 19, 2012

Nimen hao,

Another quick week…. it is amazing how the mission starts to pick up and time starts to fly. My first transfer felt really slow but my last transfer flew by...

This week, Benjamin came back and showed interest again. After weeks of him falling off the face of the earth, we finally got into his apartment and were able to meet with him. He is getting married on Saturday and has been super stressed about that. The Taiwanese have a lot of culture things you got to do when it comes to marriage.  So he says he's been tied up in that and trying not to upset the in-laws. Plus, his mom is having trouble getting into the country. So he's been trying to work on that. This week we just did a little gut check lesson to see how he's spiritually doing. He said he knows the Book of Mormon is true and still wants to be baptized! After his marriage, we just got to get him to consistently come to church and then he'll be on his way!

Also, this week we got some bad news that our investigator, Ruby, from Indonesia can’t be baptized anymore. We have to be really careful teaching her because she is originally Muslim and her family in Indonesia is strong Muslim. She’s really scared that if she goes back there that she'll get persecuted. So we don’t want to baptize her and then have her go back next year and have something bad happen.

The biggest problem we are having right now with our investigators is that they won’t come to church. They will say they will come to our face, but then Sunday rolls around and they don’t come. We’ll even call them Saturday night or Sunday morning, but they don’t answer their phone. It’s hard to progress if you’re not coming to church. So we got some work to do with them.

It started to get really cold out here...for Taiwan that is. My companion is freezing but I’m good because it’s nothing compared to the Washington cold (which isn't even that bad). So to me, the weather is perfect right now, not too cold and not hot. If only it would stay like this year around.

I feel really lucky to be in the English ward this time of year because in the ward there is a bunch of us Americans. So they celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas. So this Thursday, I’ll get hooked up for Thanksgiving.  It is just a normal day for all of the other missionaries in Taiwan. My bishop in the English ward is having us over.

It’s a great time of year. Let your light shine to everybody around you. Be an example of the believers!

Love,

Jordan Chatman

Week 29- November 12, 2012

Week 29

November 12, 2012

Hey everyone,

The highlight of this week was probably Benjamin. I told you the story of him running away last week and so we had been scared that this was going to be it with teaching him. But we had been praying a lot for a miracle with him. And so this week, we dropped of a card at his house with our testimonies on it. Then yesterday, he called us up and acted like nothing had happened, but said he wants to meet again and still be baptized on December 1st!

Also, this week we met this way cool girl from Germany named Michelle. She had been meeting with the other elders before, but because we are the English ward elders, we get to teach her. This week we did a temple tour with her. A temple tour basically is that we and the sister missionaries do a tour of the church right next to the temple and talk about the temple. It’s a really great spiritual experience for investigators. For Michelle, it was went really well and she kept asking, "What do I got to do to go in?" We talked about how baptism was a start and set a goal for her to be baptized next month. This girl is really good. She can speak 7 different languages (include Hindi - what they speak in India) almost fluently!

This week somebody let us into their house during tracting and he was really receptive to our message. He wants to read the Book of Mormon, come to church, get baptized and everything! It is great! That’s my first time having someone let me in their house during tracting.

The Book of Mormon is true! Joseph Smith was a prophet of God! Through prayer, reading, and pondering you can know this! No doubt in my mind.

Peace,

Jordan Chatman

Week 28 -November 5, 2012

November 5, 2012

Week 28

Happy late Halloween from Taipei (although it’s not celebrated here),

This week I and my companion did a lot of tracting. Our mission president wants us to find some more families to teach so we went tracting. What tracting basically is, is that you go from door to door looking for someone who is interested in hearing you. In Taipei there are only apartments so you can’t knock door to door.  Instead outside of the apartments they have a big box with every apartment’s doorbell and a speaker. So you ring the doorbell and then they pick up by speaking and you try to convince them through the speaker to set aside 5 minutes to here a message from you. Tracting doesn’t produce a ton of success here. But every now and then you can find someone willing to speak with you for a few minutes. We probably rang around 100 doorbells this week and only got about 5 people to talk with us.  An older man got mad that we were tracting and threaten to call the cops on us if we didn’t leave. But tracting isn’t illegal or anything bad, so we were like cool go ahead and call. Of course he didn’t and just walked away.  Then right after that a family let us up to their apartment to talk with them, but they ended up rejecting us.

Oh yeah another story (sad one)...one of our great investigators named Benjamin from St. Lucia island was scheduled to be baptized next month. This man was doing awesome and really making some progress. But recently he stopped answering our calls. So we went to his apartment to visit him. He lives in a room on the roof of an apartment building and outside of the door to get into his room is another door with a crack in the top. We came up to that door and knocked. From the crack, I could see him in his room run away into a different room and try to hide. He never came out and answered the door and acted like he wasn’t home. I don’t know if he knew it was us at his house but he has pretty much fallen off of the map! He’s getting married soon though, so maybe he's just stressed with that or something.

I've been thinking a lot this week about revelation and what we can do to receive revelation in our own lives. This is so important for our investigators because if they don’t receive personal revelation, they can never really know if our church is true or not. D&C is filled with scriptures about principles pertaining to how revelation works. I like the scripture in D&C 8:2 that talks about receiving the Holy Ghost through our feelings and thoughts. It says-“Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart.” This is a hard thing to do because we are constantly thinking and feeling within ourselves. A general authority in the MTC compared this to having a constant stream of thoughts and feelings in our daily lives and every now and then God will drop in a tiny pebble of revelation. We have to be sure that we are prepared and not pre-occupied so that we can discern this revelation. I know this Church is true! God lives! Jesus is our Redeemer! Through faith, repentance, baptism, the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end we can utilize his Atonement fully into our lives!

Peace!

-Jordan Chatman

Jordan and his trainer Elder Bowcutt got to go back to Bade and baptize the 2 kids, Curtis and Janet, of the the Lin Family they taught while they were there together

Baptism of Ashutosh (middle) and Rose Andres (far right), 2nd right (Elder Wang, Jordan's companion), 2nd left (Jordan Mayberry) He is a cool member that Jordan loved to talk sports with.

This is a place that Jordan ate lunch at - cheap dumplings for a little less than 2 bucks!

Jordan being cool with two of his missionary buddies during English meeting - left Elder Frank Xu, and on the right Elder Zhong

A Halloween activity that the missionaries did in the Jin Hua Ward. This is the ward mission.There were eight missionaries in that ward