36 Weeks Remaining-July 21, 2013

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What is going on?! Friday, I got my son (the lingo for a new missionary that he is going

to be training.) He's from Bountiful Utah, is almost as tall as me, and loves basketball!!

So it'll be a good two transfers! My last companion who is staying here as well is

training a Taiwanese elder...it's a packed house though. The mission office brought

them a bunk bed though, so that saves us some space. We and the other elders work in

exactly the same area and the president wouldn't let us split the area. So we have to

split the investigators between ourselves and we've got to battle over referrals lol. For

example, yesterday, for the first time in my mission, a member brought a friend to

church and not only that, the whole family came. So it was a mad scramble over to the

family between us, the other elders, and the sisters. The battle was on to be the first

missionaries to talk to the family to see who would teach them. We athletes won that

battle haha. The dad was from Hong Kong, but married here and then they have a 13

year old son. They stayed for all of church and loved it. We are going to hopefully teach

them this week. They seem like a great family.....super prepared. It just shows you that

member-missionary work is the better way. Hopefully the success of this family will

inspire the other members.

What else went on over here? On Thursday night, we "babysat" the new missionaries.

They paired us up with one of the new missionaries and then sent us out for 2 hours.

Another elder from Utah and I, went back to my area really quick to teach a less active

family. Besides being given free pizza from some people on the street, nothing was

going good. No one was interested and the family cancelled right when we got there (it

took us 45 minutes to get there). So we decided to head back but first said a prayer. We

asked that before getting back to the mission home that we would be able to give out 1

Book of Mormon to someone. Literally right when we opened our eyes, there was a guy

walking towards us on the sidewalk. I said hi to him, he kind of brushed me off, and kept

walking. I turned and asked him if I could give him something. Surprisingly he stopped. I

pulled out a restoration pamphlet that we use here and started talking to him. We

started teaching about the restoration. It turns out that he grew up Christian. He was

super interested in the Book of Mormon. We gave him one and he committed to read it.

Miracle city baby....

That is the what went in this week.

Love,

Elder Chatman

Jordan with some of the mission homies and a cool member - Jordan, Elder K, Elder Bowcutt, Elder Davidson, cool member from YiLan.

This is Elder Bennion, who Jordan is going to be training.

37 Weeks Remaining- July 14, 2012

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The excitement this week was the crazy typhoon that came through here.  I was on exchanges with Elder K, a Hawaiian elder in the group that is older than me from the MTC. He is going play football at BYU. We were together when the typhoon came through. The mission called everyone and told us we had to be home by 5:00 p.m. I was supposed to do a baptismal interview for their investigator but he never showed up. So we went and bought some food then went back to the apartment for the night. We just chatted and called some referrals for the night, although not much was happening with the typhoon. Then late that night it was crazy, because that's when the typhoon really hit hard. It was so loud that we couldn't sleep. The wind was blowing super hard. Then when we went out the next day, there were signs, trees, and stuff blown everywhere. But it is fine now.

Then I came back from exchanges and I'm usually the one leading what we do everyday. But when I got back from exchanges,  I let my companion lead us around because he's been on his mission longer than me. So we started street contacting and my companion started talking to this guy from Vietnam who invited us to his massage shop for dinner. But my companion didn't understand the word massage in Chinese and so we followed him. I thought my companion understood.  I was determined to not control everything and let me companion lead for a change. So we walked up the street there and we sat down.  Then the Vietnam guy came out with beers so we got out of there asap but invited him to church lol.

Transfers are coming up this Friday. I wanted to move areas because I've been here since February, but my companion and I each got the call to train a new missionary. So we are both staying here but we'll each train a new missionary. So there will be 4 of us in our tiny apartment and then 6 of us in the ward because of the sisters too. I am not sure why they are adding more missionaries to the ward.... but its going to be a crazy few transfers.

In sacrament meeting (church time) it was a little weird as a member got up and start preaching false doctrine. He was saying that if we pray to Jesus we have to close in the name of Thomas S. Monson. I was shaking my head and tried to help our investigators to know the true doctrine. They were were super confused.

That is what is going on out here.

Love,

Elder Chatman

38 Weeks Remaining -July 7, 2013

July 7, 2013

38 Weeks Remaining

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The weather was crazy this week. There was tons of lightning storms yet it’s super hot outside. Sometimes we'll go out to a perfectly sunny day, no clouds in the air, and by the afternoon we'll be out in the middle of a lightning storm...

We had a 17 year old local young man from a different stake with us for 4 days this week.  (This is when younger young men come out with the missionaries for a few days to see what it is like going on a mission and to get them excited about going.) This was the 3^rd time that he has been a “temporary missionary.” So that was cool!

We had a leadership training meeting this week. All of the district, zone, and sister leaders got together for a 9-hour meeting on both Thursday and Friday. It was cool to see some of the old buddies again. My companion stayed in our area with the temporary companion and another missionary whose companion went to the training meeting. Then that night, I went on exchanges with a zone leader. So it was an adventure having 5 people in our tiny apartment that night. The elder I went on exchanges with was elder Hall who has about 2 weeks left in his mission. He was cool to learn from. His Chinese was super good and I loved how he did street contacting. Most missionaries run up to people and are like, “can we share a message with you about Jesus Christ?” which rarely works. Elder Hall would just start chatting with people and then based on their needs, he'll bring up the gospel. It works pretty well. He never served in Taipei at all during his mission and it shocked him how tough the street contacting was here. Outside of Taipei, the people in other areas are a lot more willing to talk. He wasn’t used to the rejection you get up here in Taipei!!  But we did find a cool guy that said a prayer with us on the street and setup to meet with us.

On a side note, something I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned is that there are a lot of mentally crazy people in Taiwan haha. I love the Taiwanese people but it’s interesting how many people that we meet that are a little crazy. We have a member that calls us every day telling us to pray for him. Another one asks for a priesthood blessing every week and we aren’t really suppose too.  So we tell her to talk to her family home teachers and then she'll be like, “oh never mind.” There is so many times when we'll meet someone and I’ll be like I don’t know if we should be teaching this person because he or she might be mentally crazy.  Therefore he or she would already be saved in the kingdom lol.

That is what went on this week.  Have a great week.

Love,

Elder Chatman

This is when Elder Watson came and visited. He is the Asian Area President

39 Weeks Remaining- July 2, 2013

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Good week. Some cool things that went on.
Last week this man from Vegas came through Taiwan.  He was a pilot and was doing some Asian flights. His hotel was near our area so we got to go eat with him. We went to this high end Chinese barbecue and hot pot restaurant. For him it was probably just average, but for us out here (we never eat at high in places like that) we were loving life. He was just stopping by and his brother had gone on a mission here. So he wanted some missionaries to take him to a place to eat. He was a cool guy. I guess his daughter was a track star at BYU and won a national title in some event or something - last name was Cramer.
Our investigators are progressing really slowly right now. Wang has a million of questions. The more we teach, the more questions he has. He keeps asking why we can't drink coffee, alcohol, tea, etc. He wants like scientifically evidence, etc. I was just like, "Look, bottom line... God gave us this law, so we keep it. Pray and see if this law is from God. If it is, then you don't need to know every reason why, just follow it because God said so." He's going to China this week, so we'll see how that goes. He's really scared to go over there because he says all they do is drink tea.
Our golden investigator, Zheng, had a falling out. He called me last night and said his parents don't like Christians.  So he doesn't know if he can come to church anymore. He is like 30+ years old and his parents are in their late 60s. I was like, "Zheng, your are an adult man.  Obviously you need to respect your parents, but you got to make the right decision here. What does God want you to do?" He's gonna go pray about it but he didn't sound too willing to do anything against his parents' will. Chinese people respect their parents tons here. For some people what their parents say goes even when you are a full grown adult with your own family.
Pretty funny! Yesterday this older member who grew up in Hong Kong, but has lived here for a while, took us to this restaurant and trained us on table manners haha. For example, he poured some water into my cup and then was like, "I'm okay with it but other Chinese might be offended by that."  I laughed, "I was like what did I do?" He like stands up and then bows down to me and says how in old days servants had to bow down and then pour the water. But now days the receiver just faces their palm up, bends 2 fingers and knocks on the table while they pour the water. So whenever he poured us water we had to knock on the table. I had never heard of that before. the younger generation of Taiwanese people do not do any of that. Pretty funny!
That is what is going on for this week. We are going to the temple today. Oh yeah,  we are getting a temporary companion for 1 week. They send out the YSA's (young single adults- which are young men preparing to go on a mission) to practice being missionaries. So we are getting some young man today who will be with us for a week. Yeah! we can speak Chinese all day! I love it.

Elder Chatman