45 Weeks Remaining -May 21, 2013

45 Weeks Remaining

May 21, 2013

Jordan’s birthday

Hey everyone,

The highlight of this week was our investigator, Brother Luo, getting baptized. The service went really smoothly. I was able to baptize him and gave a short introduction during the service about him and how we met him.  It went great.

Some other cool stuff that happened this week: We went to this park to talk to some people. We were just getting rejected left and right.  Then we were walking up this hill and we saw this guy in a yellow shirt sitting down. I turned to my companion and I was like, “he's our guy.”  “He's going to get baptized.” So we walked up and started chatting with him and he was super cool. He is 19 years old and super humble. We met with him again the next day at the church and when we asked him if he wanted to be baptized he was like "of course!" It doesn’t get much better than that!!

We also met with this less active family. The mom and dad got baptized over 10 years ago, but haven’t been to church since. We shared with them about how the gospel blessed our families and gave us a stable foundation as we grew up and stuff. They seemed really touched by what we shared because they have a 10 year old daughter and a 1 year old child. I could tell that they really wanted their kids to grow up with gospel teachings in their lives. The mom in the closing prayer said "thanks for sending these 2 angels to help us, and thank you for not giving up on us God." It was good moment and I just kept saying in my mind saying thank-you God, thank-you. Its great moments like this that make a mission great and outweigh all the dirty looks, rejection, people yelling at us, etc that happens on a daily basis. Then on Sunday, the dad came to church with his 11 year old daughter who hasn’t been baptized yet. So hopefully we get them back active and the daughter baptized.

Oh something else cool, Elder Kang, my previous companion told me about this guy that we contacted on the street one time. Then we met him once at the church, but he didn’t live in our area. So a different companionship started teaching him and we never heard about him again. This happens a lot because often you meet people on the street, but they don’t live in your area. So you hand them over to other elders. But anyways, Elder Kang, told me that the guy recently got baptized. I just thought that was cool. You never know who your actions are going to effect. We just said hi to him and gave him a pamphlet.  Then a few months later, he gets baptized. That is cool stuff...

Love,

Elder Chatman

46 Weeks Remaining -May 6, 2013

46 Weeks Remaining

May 6, 2013

What’s up everyone,

This was a fun week. On Monday, we met with Brother Yan, a 21 year old new convert and just taught him about what we do in the temple. We tried to help him prepare to go. Lots of people get baptized out here, but then go inactive. So we are focusing on helping them get to the temple to do baptisms. According to a statistic our President gave us, recent converts that go to the temple and do baptisms are a ton more likely to stay active. Brother You came with us. He's super cool!  I love this guy. He is from Taizhong and then served here in the Taipei mission and then moved here to Taipei after his mission. He was an AP (assistant to the president) during his mission and is super cool. His English is great because he had tons of American companions. So he helped Brother Yan out and is going to go with him to the Family History Center.

On Tuesday, we met with a guy that the Sisters tracted into a few months ago that was willing to meet with us. We taught him the restoration a few weeks ago and then the gospel of Jesus Christ this week. We made sure to teach it using the Bible and the Book of Mormon because he goes to this other Christian church. I thought it was a great lesson, but he just doesn’t understand it. He thinks that worshiping his ancestors is going to help him. We are trying to nicely help him understand that he needs to only worship God, not his ancestors. It’s a really hard concept for Taiwanese people to get. Later that night, we taught our investigator, Brother Wang, the Word of Wisdom. He understood and believes that God wants him to follow it, but he was just like “I can’t do it.” He does it all - smoking, alcohol, etc. Anyways after his lesson, we went to the train station and handed out English class flyers for an hour.

On Wednesday, we called a former investigator up and set him up for around lunch time. He showed up and was like “let’s go get some lunch”. So we followed him and before you know it, he had called up a taxi and took us up to this super fancy hotel restaurant. Then afterwards, we tried to sit down at the church and meet with him and he was like, “I have a cough so maybe some other time.” I’m still not sure what to think about this…. Later that night, we taught English class.

Early Thursday morning, we got up real early and went to the hospital. My companion had hernia surgery scheduled. So basically we went there and he did tests and stuff all day. Then we slept at the hospital that night. I slept in this chair that folded down in a long padded bench like thing. I couldn’t sleep at all that night because the people a curtain sheet over were going off in Taiwanese and for some reason whenever people speak Taiwanese, they yell. So pretty much they were yelling all night. Then at like 4am, the nurse woke us up and started doing stuff to get my companion ready for surgery. Then late morning, he had surgery for about 3 hours. I just waited and studied all day with Sister Day (mission president’s wife). Then he got out of surgery and had to go back to the room we had slept in. We stayed there another night and then left the next morning. It was a bit boring. I would have made calls to investigators and referrals but this upcoming week my companion can’t go out so we wouldn’t have been able to meet any of the people anyways. Then Saturday, my companion and I went to the mission home and stayed the night there. It is super nice. I’m not sure if it really is super nice or if I’ve just been in Taiwan for too long lol. It was funny because I was about to wash some dishes and then the mission president was like you can just put them in the dishwasher. I was like, “oh that’s right, I forgot what a dishwasher is.” lol  That’s the first dishwasher I’ve seen in Taiwan. On Sunday I went on exchanges, so a different elder stayed with my companion while I went back to my area with the zone leader Elder Chen. We went to church (one of our investigators came!) and then we met with Wang DX again. He hadn’t been keeping the Word of Wisdom at all. So we had a member share his experience of how he overcame his coffee/tea addiction and he recommitted to keep the Word of Wisdom. After Brother Wang, we went to a member’s house and they feed us dinner.  Then later that night, I went back to the mission home. My companion will probably be here most of this week because he’s not supposed to walk much or carry anything.  So I’ll be in the mission home most of this week just studying.

Love,

Elder Chatman

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