13 Weeks Remaining- December 29, 2013

大家好

Here some things we did this past week - 

- We went to the Bishop’s house with a bunch of other members and celebrated his birthday. We ate a bunch of food and sang happy birthday to him. It always fun spending time with the members.

-On Christmas we went to the church by the temple and had a conference with the mission president and all of the Taipei area missionaries. They gave us some training and then we ate a big meal the mission president's wife put together - turkey, rolls, stuffing, etc. It was good stuff. Afterwards, they did a talent show and they gave us a present. The present was a copy of Doctrine and Covenants with 3 columns in it - English, Chinese characters, and the alphabetized pronunciation of the characters (Roman Pinyin). We have this same thing for the Book of Mormon. It was cool because last month I got to help proofread it & help correct it before they bound it into a book. After the Conference, we went back to our area and went to a subway. There we sang carols with the other elders in our district while we handed out gospel pamphlets.

-Later during the week, we went to go visit a less active the ward wanted us to visit. It was in the boonies. We had to take the subway, then a bus, and then we walked up a mountain for about an hour. We get there and there was 2 dogs barking at us. But they would just back up when we walked towards them. So we walked around looking for the house and the area is looking abandoned. But then we looked out into a rice field and see this guy. We asked if he knew the less active, but all he did was wave a machete at us. Eventually we find the house. We knock on the door and an older lady comes out. We tell her that we were the missionaries and she just starts yelling in our face - saying “Why the heck did you come here?! We aren’t Christian!” She was the wife of the less active. After a while though, she calmed down and we were able to sit down and talk to her and the son. She had no interest in the church but the son might start coming to our English class.

-This week, I ate some chicken foot and cow tongue. Also I got shocked walking into some restaurant’s bathroom that was a boy and girl bathroom together all in one. I guess it’s pretty common here but it was the first time I encountered it since being here lol.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas

Love,

Elder Chatman

14 Weeks Remaining- December 23, 2013

聖誕節快樂 (Merry Christmas)

Monday - So to start off the day, we went tracting. Literally, the first doorbell we pressed, a college kid came out. We talked about Christ and such for a few minutes and he was interested. But he was busy at that moment, so we setup another time later in the week to meet with him at our church. That was cool meeting him. However later in the week, he never showed up to our scheduled appointment. We tracted for about an hour and half that night and then went to a subway station exit and handed out flyers to our free English class for another hour.

Tuesday - It was pouring rain so went tracting for an hour in the morning. Then we had district meeting and then after that we tracted the rest of the day until 8pm. At 8:00, we did two baptismal interviews for some elders in our zone. Both of the investigators passed their interviews. One of the investigators was scheduled to get baptized on Sunday, but when Sunday rolled around she got cold feet and didn’t show up...

Wednesday - We tracted all day till 4:00. At 4:00, we met with Zhang Ren Kui, our new convert. He is going strong and doing good. Then at night, we had English class. My companion and I taught the beginner class. English class is one of our mission’s most effective tools for finding new investigators. A super nice lady from China came to our class this past week. She has only lived in Taiwan for 2 months. The sister missionaries are going to try and start teaching her. After English class, we met with our investigator Li Yun Zhong. He is a college student who came to English class about 6 months ago and started meeting with missionaries since. We are probably going to stop meeting with him though because he won’t do what we invite him to do - like read from the Book of Mormon and come to church. We've invited him to do these things almost every lesson but he never does. So it’s pointless to keep meeting with him because he'll never develop a testimony unless he does these things. He is a cool kid though.

Thursday - The Assistants to the President came to our apartment during studies and talked with us about our zone. They gave us some training on being better leaders. One of the AP’s is real smooth. He's from Singapore, already graduated from BYU, served a few years in the military, and is going to Harvard after his mission. Later that night, we did some street contacting, where we go around and talk to people on the road. Also that night, we had dinner with our ward missionaries and ward mission leader at a steak house. It wasn’t an American steak but I just drowned it in A-1 sauce so it was all good. haha

Friday - We did more tracting and street contacting. At night though, we met with the Yang Family. We taught them all about church and how it blesses our lives and then invited them to come. I thought we taught it well but they didn’t end up committing to come. The dad works on Sundays and the mom says their 1 year old daughter has to sleep in the morning when church is. So they are temporarily stuck until we can get them to come to church.

Saturday - We met with one of our newer investigators named Liam. We met him a month ago on the subway. He wasn’t too interested in meeting then but as he was leaving we gave him a flyer to our English class. Then 2 weeks ago, to our surprise, he showed up to our free English class and has started meeting with us since. We taught him the Restoration this week and it went really good. He committed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. Believe it or not, he actually lived in Portland, Oregon for a couple of years.

Sunday - We had church, studies and then met with another one of investigators named Chen. He is a college student. We met him one day while tracting. He was riding by on his bike and we stopped him. We reviewed the Restoration with him this week. We taught it to him 2 weeks ago but he forgot most of it.

My companion and I almost got in TV this past week. This lady who lives in our apartment community works for a TV station and they were getting a couple foreigners to come on the station. They wanted to ask them questions about Chinese culture and the Chinese New Year. We were supposed to go on this weekend. My companion and I were super pumped but we asked the mission president and he said he didn’t want us to do it. So it’s a no go….oh well.

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas. 

Remember the Savior this Christmas and feel his love for you!

Love,

Elder Chatman

15 Weeks Remaining- December 15, 2013

December 15, 2013

 大家好

The highlight of the week was being able to meet a General Authority.

Elder Packe,r from the Quorum of the Seventy, came to Taiwan. He did a two hour devotional with us (all the missionaries.) lt was cool being able to shake his hand and feel Christ’s love emulating from God's servant. He talked to us a lot about family history and how we can help our investigators and converts prepare to help their ancestors receive salvation. That’s something that’s a really special treat over here.  If you go back a few generations with the Taiwanese people, their ancestors are all from China, where no one had the gospel. So it’s super cool to be able to be a part of helping the ancient Chinese receive salvation. Family history work is great too in that it helps our converts stay active in the church, which is a huge problem over here. 

What else is new? It is kind of like the weeks in the past..... we've just been tracting and street contacting most of the day. It’s been sad to see some of our investigators lose interest or just not see why the gospel is so important in their lives. That’s probably one of the toughest things to see as a missionary. You develop so much love for your investigators but then seeing them lose desire in your message is tough. But it’s all good. We are excited to go out and try to find some more prepared souls this week.

Love,

Elder Chatman

16 Weeks Remaining- December 18, 2013

December 8, 2013

What’s up everyone?

This week we spent almost every day out tracting and street contacting people. We just couldn’t find anyone that was interested. It feels good doing the Lord’s work and it is just funny when we get rejected. Some guy smoking a cigarette tried to kick us out of a neighborhood. He was saying, “Everyone is Buddhist! Don’t waste your time! Just leave!” We said, “Thanks, yeah we know everyone’s Buddhist. That’s why we are here!” Then we just kept knocking doors which made him mad. He cussed at us in Taiyu and then left. What a funny guy!

Then to top off our wonderful success in finding people to teach, members of our zone aren’t getting along. One companionship - two New Yorkers (one from the nice area, one from Brooklyn) are fighting. So we have a lot of work there, but it’s all good.

This Saturday, Elder Packer (a man in the leadership of our church) from the seventy is coming. Then also Saturday night is a huge nativity activity that the English speaking ward puts on every year. That should be fun!

Zai Jian

Love,

Elder Chatman

17 Weeks Remaining -December 1, 2013

大家好

December 1, 2013

Right now we only have a few investigators that are making any real progress.

We have family that we are working with (mom, dad, and 1 year old daughter) that are coming along really good. They are reading from the Book of Mormon but their biggest problem right now is coming church. They haven’t come at all yet. We had a ward activity this week though that they came too. They met tons of members and got to get a good feel of the family atmosphere our church has that you can’t find anywhere else. So we are hoping this will help them to get to church next week.

This week we probably spent around seven hours tracting. It’s weird how it works. We'll get nothing for the first few hours, then the last house we always find someone. We found two high school kids that were pretty interested. We also found like a sixty-ish year old guy that researches religions but said he hasn’t found one that he feels like he believes. He doesn’t believe the Buddhist stuff. He says he doesn’t believe in Christianity because he says he didn’t believe that someone could be bad, confess their sins, and then go to heaven. We didn’t get a lot of time to meet with him this week. So hopefully next week we are going to meet with him again and explain true repentance, Christ, etc. to him and answer that question. He was a super friendly guy.

It’s getting super cold over here. Temperature-wise it’s probably not very cold but the humidity makes it feel a lot colder than it actually is. I love it though. So much better than the killer heat.

Zai Jian

Elder Chatman