47 Weeks Remaining -April 28, 2013

Hey everyone,

We had a good week out here. We had transfers this week and it was crazy becuase my last companion got called to be a zone leader and he's only been out 6 months. Most people aren’t called to be zone leader until like a year and a half in to their mission. So I got a new companion. He has been out 1 transfer (6 weeks) longer than me and used to be a district leader and senior companion. So we are co-senior companions and then I’m the district leader. It’s a little different from having a 4th transfer junior companion to now having a 9th transfer companion. He’s completely different from my last companion. My last comp was super talkative and funny. My new companion is super quiet and doesn’t speak much during the lessons. So I do most of the teaching but his testimony is powerful and he's super nice. He’s from Utah and he's taller than me by about an inch. So the two tallest elders in the mission are together lol.

 Monday, we went and visited a recent convert who is a young man and taught him about the temple and invited him to prepare to go in. Then we were going back home and I had this impression to stop by this less active young man’s house. In previous weeks, we had called and setup with him but then he would never showed up for his appointment. I felt like we should stop by, so we did and he was there. We got to know him, shared a Book of Mormon scripture with him and are going to start working with him. He got baptized when he was 12, but has been at all in these past 7 years.

On Tuesday, we met with Brother Luo. He's probably our best investigator right now. We invited him to be baptized next month. He accepted and is doing great. He's reading, praying, coming to church, etc. and is really starting to develop his testimony. He's probably around 60 years old and is a little strange at times. For example we were teaching him about the plan of salvation and then he randomly pulled out some paper and started drawing Chinese characters on it. He started telling us how they relate to numbers and dates and stuff. But I love the man! He's super humble and willing to learn.

Also this week, we met with Brother Wang. He went to Germany for work stuff for 2 weeks and then just came back. We met with him and reviewed the Restoration and answered some of his questions about what he read in the Book of Mormon. haha He was like I’m not really sure what I just read - Nephi chops a guy’s head off and rules over his brothers, what exactly do you guys believe? The elders who first met with him just gave him a Book of Mormon and didn’t explain anything about what it is. So we slowly explained it and answered all of his questions. This guy is super hungry to learn, but like most Taiwanese has no Christian background. For example, he had no idea who Jesus Christ is. So when he came to church, he felt completely lost because the speakers were talking about temples and stuff and he just felt overwhelmed by all the things being thrown at him. So we are taking it really slow with him.

Sunday, we had Stake Conference. It was great because we had 4 less actives that we've been working with, all show up! The coolest was probably the father and mother that showed up. They hadn’t been to church in over 20 years! The father loved it but when I asked the mom, she was like “eh, it was so-so.” We're hoping to get them back active and then hopefully they'll start bringing their kids.

Something cool I learned this week was that those scriptures in Alma 63 about Hagoth and the ships he builds and sails out in actually went out to the Pacific islands.  That a prophet told the Polynesian people that Hagoth is the father of the Polynesians. Cool stuff.

So that’s what went on this past week.

Love,
Elder Chatman

This is the District before the recent transfer.

They got to go visit the beach in Taiwan on Jordan's pday.

It is not a very clean beach. Beach is called Fu2 Long2 and Wu Mama takes the missionaries there.

This is another picture of the beach. They make awesome sandcastles there when the summer time gets close. Some of them are seen in this photo.

This is a baptism Jordan attended in Xizhi with the elders there. This is Yu Dixiong.

This is a family that had their son baptized.  Jordan's companion did the baptism and Jordan did the confirmation.