5 Weeks Remaining -February 23, 2014

Well, it was an eventful week. We had an earthquake, our apartment flooded, and Elder Holland visited.

So on Saturday, Elder Holland and a Seventy came and did a missionary devotional. We all got to shake his hand which was cool.

Then he spoke to us for about an hour. His talk so great!! He definitely lived up to the hype. Here are some of the things he talked about:

>One of the few things left that the Quorum of the Twelve don’t delegate is assigning missionaries where they serve.

>You don’t have any idea what the Lord has prepared for you. We (Elder Holland and the leaders on the stand) were once where you are.

>We (Elder Holland and the leaders on the stand) don’t sacrifice our time, efforts, leave family and home to get up and do this every day for a "cunningly devised fable" (2 Peter 1:16).  If you don’t get anything else from my words, just get this - know that we know that this is true, and don’t you forget it!

>That no man in the history of the world was changed more by his mission than me. We fight about that amongst ourselves in the Quorum of the Twelve even to fists. Can you imagine me and Richard Scott duking it out? (He raises his fist) hahaha

>Put it all on the line on your mission. The results might be big or small, but God only measures your effort.

>From your mission we just want one convert. Yourself! You are the cake and any more converts are the icing and we want lots of icing!

>Would you want your converts to crash and burn after you get home? Then I really hope you won’t.

>You are God's investigators. He is teaching you right now. You want your investigators to repent, he wants you to repent! You want your investigators to pray more mightily, he wants you to pray more mightily! The habits you learn on your mission, are habits for the rest of your life.

>Your mission is the ascending curve in your eternal progression

>When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child (but when I went on my mission and came home), I put away childish things. (Corinthians)

>You've got to be a little bit more persistent. My wife has an Avon makeup lady that is more persistent than some of you. It seems like she is at our house every day. Some things are worth being persistent over. not obnoxious, but bold.

>KNOW the gospel. With preach my gospel, it’s different than the discussions. We give you the gospel and some outlines and scriptures, and then you have to do something with it. With the discussions, we taught them and had them come to us. With preach my gospel, we go to them and we take them with us through the Sacred Grove and to the Garden of Gethsemane.

>Why are missions so hard? My mission was the hardest work in my entire life (and I worked construction before my mission). Salvation is not a cheap experience. The gospel isn’t easy, repentance isn’t easy, and the decision to be baptized isn’t easy, so why would your mission be easy?

This is so hard because it was never easy for the Savior. You are going to have to go where the Savior went and do what He did. We are atoners like He was, a little bit on your mission. You are going to have to drag the cross for a bit like He did and shed some of the tears like He did. Then you'll know a little bit more about what He went through. Don’t plan on having a picnic here in Taiwan. The perfect situation doesn’t happen. It didn’t happen for the Savior and can’t for you, if you want to be his disciple. No, I’m not saying seek suffering, it will find you. Don’t whimper. Embrace it and know that it is the path to salvation.

>People at home don’t have a ghost of what a mission is, but they are proud of you and have you on a pedestal. So be your best self.

>Promise me you'll be faithful the rest of your lives. Promise me that and we'll change the world. We'll absolutely change the world!

Love,

Elder Chatman

As a side note, Jordan said he got to shake Elder Holland’s hand which he was excited about.  Jordan asked him if he knew his dad (Jeff) which he did. (He used to be the president of BYU when Jeff played basketball there.)  Then he said he grabbed his collar and said, “you’re my ball player!  You’re my player!  Then he asked if he was keeping in shape.  Lol  Jordan got a kick out of that!   

A picture of Jordan with his mission when Elder Holland came and spoke.  He is on the far right by the wall and curtain.

6 Weeks Remaining -February 16, 2014

February 16, 2014

各位好 ,

So this week we changed up our approach a little bit and spent a lot of time identifying less actives members. Then we tried getting in contact with them because:

 A. there are so many of them (our ward was the highest baptizing ward in all of Taiwan 2 years ago, but only a few of them are still active today) and

B.  we've been street contacting and tracting like crazy but getting nothing. So we feel like this will be a more effective approach to finding people to teach and baptize.

So last week, we met with a less active member who has been a member for 20+ years and has the Melchizedek priesthood and everything. He got offended a while back in his previous ward and has never been back since. So we called him up this past week and he said that he usually rejects missionaries and members that try to call him. He said that for some reason this time he felt ready to come back and ended up meeting with us. We had a good lesson with him and he's going to start coming back to church soon. Also his wife and daughter aren’t members and he's going to start bringing them to church too.

An interesting fact of the week.... this could be wrong but there is a city in our stake where we hold zone meetings and stuff at that is supposedly the highest populated per square foot area in the world. Crazy!

Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Chatman

7 Weeks Remaining- February 9, 2014

February 9, 2014

大家好

The big news of this week is that we figured out which apostle is coming to Taiwan....the man himself..... Elder Holland. That will be great!!

This past week, I went to a mission wide leadership meeting for all the district, zone, and sister leaders. It went all day for two days. It was a lot like the meeting I went to last year. It was cool to see missionaries that I haven’t seen in forever! All of the leaders had to give a training of some sort. Another elder and I had to do a mock lesson teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. Since everyone needed a little bit of energy by the time we started our training, we decided to mix it up. We got my MTC companion and some other funny elders to be the investigators and members. It spiced it up a bit and made it a bit humorous. It seemed like it went well. The best part of the meeting was when they sent all 50+ of us missionaries out to go street contacting around the temple area for an hour. Another elder and I met some cool people. We talked to this lady and her son for like 20 minutes and it was all over the place. We talked about English class, families, temple square tours, the Book of Mormon, Christ, prayer, and all in 20 minutes. In the end though, she wanted to stick with her Buddhist beliefs.

One time this week, when we were contacting, I go up to a guy and say hi. He thought we were the police. He pulls out a Republic of China passport and tries to give it to us. We were like, “No we are missionaries, here take our pamphlet.” But he just kept insisting that we take his passport. We didn’t, of course, and just left. That was weird. But outside of that, we saw some cool miracles. We gave out 4 Book of Mormons and met a cool family. The wife was from Chile and the husband was Taiwanese.

Anyways, that’s the scoop.

Much Love,

Elder Chatman

This is QinKe at the Ding family home

This is in the TuCheng Ward

This is QingKe with the Bishop during Chinese New Year

This is the TuCheng Ward

This is the leadership meeting with the whole mission

8 Weeks Remaining -February 2, 2014

新年快樂! (Happy Chinese New Year)

It’s like Washington's July weather over here. It is sunny but not crazy hot. Chinese New Year is really nice. We basically have lunch and dinner with members. Then we go out and tract because none of our investigators can meet (because of celebration stuff). 

Whats new?

Recently our mission president changed things up. Previously, in wards with 2 elders and 2 sisters - the elders would teach the males and the sisters would teach the female investigators in the ward. Now it got changed up, so that the ward is split into two areas - 1 for the elders and 1 for the sisters. All the investigators in your area, you get to teach, male and female. So now we get to teach the females again which will be a changeup. I am kind of used to it though because in the English ward and my first area, we didn’t have sister missionaries. 

We also learned when the Apostle comes, he'll be coming to our stake's member conference and our ward is singing in it...

Much love,

Elder Chatman

This is Chinese New Year Qing te Xu Jiemei  Tucheng Ward

This is Chinese New Year Qingte in the TuCheng Ward

Liang family