40 Weeks Remaining -June 23, 2013

June 23, 2013

40 Weeks Remaining

What’s up everyone,

Day by day recap-

Monday - a member took us and like 8 other missionaries out to eat curry chicken. Then we went to the stake center and practiced some basketball. Then we took the bus back to our apartment and had a lesson with an investigator. His problem right now is overcoming smoking and keeping the Sabbath day holy. He reads, prays, and comes to church though and so he is making some good progress. After his lesson, we took the bus to a member’s house for Family Home Evening where we and the sisters, taught a lesson.

Tuesday - we had district meeting. Then after that we went on exchanges. Elder Gerrard came with me.   He's from Utah and has been out for like 5 months. We passed out English class flyers. Later we had some fried rice for dinner. After that we did some street contacting. It actually went really good for a change. We were able to give out two Book of Mormons during that time, which was sweet. After tha,t we met with a less active member. We taught him about the Atonement and invited him to come back to church. He ended up coming on Sunday and stayed for all 3 hours. His wife isn’t a member so we are hoping to be able to teach her down the road.

Wednesday - we met with a less active new convert and then he took us out for a meal. After that, we walked back to the church and talked to everyone we saw on the street. No one of was interested though. Then we had a lesson with our investigator - Gao. He's 18 years old and wants to be baptized, but his parents won’t let him because they don’t like religion. After we spent time with him, we took a 30 min bus to Xizhi and exchanged back. After getting back, we walked 30 min to Luo's house – one of our recent converts. He took us next door to a 13 year old young man named Su's house. He had brought him to church the previous week. We taught the young man about prayer and then invited him to be baptized next week. After that lesson we walked back to the church. Later that night we had English class.

Thursday - we met with Shi - a less active recent convert. We taught him about enduring to the end and invited him to come back to church. He said he would come but never ended up coming on Sunday. Later in the afternoon, we walked to go visit a former investigator, but he wasn’t there. That night, we met with Wang again. Afterwards, we took a bus and tried to find some less actives but unfortunately, they weren’t any home.

Friday - we had zone conference all day. The mission president basically talked about working better with the ward and teaching better lessons on member visits. Then his wife talked about developing Christlike attributes. When we got back that night, we walked out to another less active recent convert’s house, but he wasn’t home either. So we just talked to people in the area for the rest of the night.

Saturday - we visited Ah Bei. His wife is a member and has been coming to church for the past 8 years. His struggle is in keeping commandments like the Word of Wisdom. So we are trying to help him with that. After him, we met with Zheng. We taught him the plan of salvation and set a baptismal date for July 7th. He’s pretty good. After him, we taught Luo, one of the new member lessons.

Sunday - they had ward conference. It was awesome because the stake presidency came and just talked about missionary work and how the members need to be helping out. They gave some pretty great talks! I just hope it didn’t go in one ear and out the other with the members, like it has in the past. Later that night, we went to the bishop’s house and had dinner. We also sang happy birthday to Wu mama. I think I’ve mentioned her before, but she’s this super cool member that takes care of missionaries so much. She feeds us every week, sews our clothes, helps us teach lessons, and so much more. There’s always a group of like 8 missionaries hanging out with her every pday - climbing hills, eating food, etc. Plus she's going through chemotherapy right now and you would never know if someone didn’t tell you.

But anyways that’s the happenings for this week. The gospel is true.

Love,

Elder Chatman

Jordan with a less active member who went to school at BYU Idaho.

This is Jordan at the Bishop's house for dinner celebrating Wu Mama's birthday (middle, holding baby)

This is some locals that are fishing in the sewer water.

41 Weeks Remaining-June 16, 2013

June 16, 2013 

41 weeks remaining 

Hey everyone, 

The highlight of this week was probably the training we had with Elder Watson and Elder Ruan of the seventies (leaders in the church.) They were laying it down on people and it was funny. They asked us what the purpose of the church was. One elder gets up all professional and quotes President Hinckley (a past prophet of our church) about perfecting the saints, redeeming the dead or something like that. Then the seventy sarcastically responded,  "yeah when President Hinckley was the prophet" and starts laughing. I was like, "ouch that's cold man." But then the seventy was like "no thanks elder, great answer, that's right but something else too." After that they had a few missionaries come up and give talks. Luckily I didn't get picked because they evaluated them afterward and told them what could have been improved. They were pretty blunt. Then we had to do some role plays. That was pretty funny! My last companion and his companion had to role play teaching the seventy who was acting like a less active member. It was just funny and awkward because  he was super rude to them. They asked him how he was and he responded by saying I'm bad.  He ended up just scolding the elders the whole time. Another even funnier one was a role play where an elder introducing the role play was like "ok, this elder is playing the role of a less active priest." Then Elder Watson stops the whole meeting was like "Don't say it like that. He's a priest! He has more authority then most people who have ever lived on this earth!" haha They pretty much trained us on working with less actives because they were saying how Taipei has enough members for 9 stakes but only has 5 stakes. This is because there isn't enough active tithe paying Melchizedek priesthood holders. Then they pulled out a list of all the people baptized in each of our ward from the past 3 years and showed how only a few of those people have the Melchizedek priesthood . For example, one ward baptized 29 males in 3 years but only 1 of those 29 had the Melchizedek priesthood. So they want us to start working with less actives and Aaronic priesthood holders and help them prepare to get the Melchizedek priesthood. 

Other than that meeting though, we just visited tons of less actives this week. Our golden investigator got sick but hopefully gets better this week so we can help him prepare for his baptism in 2 weeks.  

But yeah don't give up on less actives. I think having member friends inviting them to church and activities is the key. 

  

Anyways that's a rap. 

Love, 

Elder Chatman 

42 Weeks Remaining- June 9, 2013

June 9, 2013

Hey everyone,

We had transfers last week. I stayed and my companion did too. It was cool because an elder and sister that I knew from the MTC got moved into the district.

A recap of the week…one night we went out and tracted. We buzzed like 12 doors and then met this guy who went to school in the States. He was pretty interested. He grew up doing a lot of the Buddhism stuff but didn’t believe any of it. His mom died recently, so we taught him about the plan of salvation (which is about where we came from and where we go after we die.) He wants to meet with us but said that he's gay and not too interested in changing. We’re probably going to meet with him this week though and just focus on helping him feel the Spirit. We will see what happens.

On Tuesday, we had a zone meeting at the chapel by the temple. Another district leader and I trained on developing Christ like attributes. Then the zone leaders trained us and gave us some announcements.  One such announcement was that the area seventy (one of the leaders in the church) is coming here this upcoming Thursday. We all have to prepare three minute talks in Chinese and discuss a memorized scripture in Chinese that relates to our topic. They are only going to choose a few of us to give the talks though. My assigned topic is enduring to the end.  So if I get chosen I am going to talk about that and use the scripture "oh be wise, what can I say more?" haha

Right now we have three investigators that are making great progress.

Wang right now has a Word of Wisdom problem. He has given up coffee, tea, alcohol and is almost done with cigarettes. He came to church, has some good church friends, reads the Book of Mormon, etc.  He's on a roll.

Then there is Zheng. He’s been golden. We met him last Sunday and he's planning on being baptized in 2 Sundays. Ever since we started meeting with him, he's accepted everything we've taught...

Then there’s Li. He is about 35 and was a member referral from a different ward. He has been solid. We set a baptismal date with him for the end of the month.

What else...oh a less-active new member called us and wanted help moving stuff. We were like cool, no problem. Then we got to where he said was his house and there were three guys chilling & smoking. One guy had like part of his head shaved off, one had a fake eye, and some other sketchy stuff. They wanted help moving some super nice antique Chinese stuff into a truck. We moved a few things and then left because it was just sketchy. The guys were ghetto and there is no telling whose stuff it actually was. It was "his family’s" the less active said.... we keep seeming to run into sketchy situations...

Anyways, that’s the scoop for this week.

Love,

Elder Chatman

This is the zone at a Dedicatory Site in Taiwan.  Behind them is a hotel.

43 Weeks Remaining -June 2, 2103

Week 43 Remaining

June 2, 2013

Hey everyone,

We had a great week this week, besides the heat that came in. Its killer!! Then, of course, yesterday out AC broke so our house is an oven!  I thinks it’s in the 90's but its feels like 120 with humidity. I just carry around a bath towel with me because I just get drenched with sweat the minute I step outside. Other news, we had a small earthquake here. I am not sure how big it actually was but nothing happen beside our water filter falling over into our sink and breaking a cup. Haha Also Taiwan and the Philippines had some military conflicts going on or something that just caused some small drama here.

This week went pretty good in that we got referred this super golden guy - Zheng. He came to church yesterday and even took notes. He just really wants to learn and loved coming to church. I could see him getting baptized this month.

We thought our member referral investigator from last week was gone because he didn’t answer any of our calls this week. But then he called us last night and wants to meet again.

We are also trying to work with the wife of our recent convert - Brother Luo. She is from Burma and can’t read Chinese or Mian3Dian4Hua4 (Burmanese, if that’s even a language) I am not sure how to say it in English. She can only read a super rare dialect language which I don’t even think they have a Book of Mormon in. We'll see what we can do.

I met this funny student from BYU yesterday. He is like interning for Google, so he came here to work for a bit. He knew some members in our ward and came and had dinner with us yesterday. He served his mission in Canada (speaking Mandarin Chinese) where he said he mainly interacted with people from China. The member here said he has a mainland accent and acted like a mainlander. It was funny because you could tell that they didn’t like that. They can’t stand the mainland accent or the way mainlanders act lol...

Our investigator thinks my companion looks like Birdman from the Heat lol There has also been a lot of missionaries getting hurt out here. Some elder was biking, ran into a tree, and broke his wrist; another riding his bike, got his leg hit by a car; some elder got this lung infection and went to the hospital, and the list goes on...but anyways I’ve been good. No problems!!  Transfers are going to be this week. I’m hoping I stay here.

Love,

Elder Chatman

Jordan's district

44 Weeks Remaining -May 26, 2013

44 Weeks Remaining

May 26, 2013

Dajia hao,

We saw some good things go down this past week out here. Quick Recap - Monday night, we went out and talked to people at this big park in our area. But we didn’t see any success from that.  Then Tuesday, we had a district meeting and then afterwards, we went and handed out English class flyers for an hour. Later that night, we had a lesson with this guy that met missionaries down on the southern part of the island, but he wasn’t very interested. I don’t know why he wanted to meet with us. We shared the restoration and asked him if we wanted to know if God and Jesus really appeared to Joseph Smith and he said “no.” Then we tried to give him a Book of Mormon and he was like, "you don’t want me to read that do you? Come on, I have no time." Then we tried to invite him church and he was like "I’m busy Sunday mornings, I got to walk my dog." I finally lost it and was like "Are you kidding me…..walk your dog over salvation!" Needless to say he just isn’t ready yet……

But we did get a referral from a member in a different ward and he was pretty solid. He had been to other Christian churches before and was really interested in what our church believes. We met with him earlier this past week and then he came to church.

Unfortunately, the really golden kid we found last week has disappeared. He hasn’t answered any of our calls! Not sure what happened?!! Then the less active family that came to church last week said they were too busy to meet with us and then didn’t come to church. Not sure what happened there either...we did our part though and that’s all the Lord asks.

This week a less active member fed us at this local restaurant. I felt really bad for one of the new sister missionaries that just got on the island. The Chinese people are super blunt. For example, they tell people all the time,” hey you've gotten really fat” and they don’t take it as rude here. It’s just their culture. Anyways the less active said hi to the sister and then was like you have a bunch of pimples on your face.  She didn’t understand what he said so her companion translated for her and told her. That shocked her a bit. lol That’s how they are out here. They tell you how it is, without even thinking about what they just said.

I had some pig foots and poppy seed soup this week. It was nasty stuff. We also found this place that sells turtles and snakes to eat by our house.  I didn’t mess with it though. haha

That’s pretty much what’s up out here.  We are going as hard as we can.

Love,

Elder Chatman 

This is the first convert that Jordan found, taught, and baptized on his mission. Luo2 Dixiong was his name. He was a former investigator from like 2005, This is with his companion, Elder Anderson.

Jordan's neighborhood