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