1 Week Remaining -March 23, 2014

March 23, 2014

LAST EMAIL!!!

Well this is it!! The last email home!! I can’t believe it’s here. The time has flown. I still don't feel like I’m going home this week. 

Well, we had pretty good week this past week.

Sister He got baptized and it went really well. We also had a zone conference. We received some training from the mission president. We also had stake conference. Another cool thing that happened is that two weeks ago, we ran into Zhang Ren Kui outside of the subway. He is a recent convert that we baptized back in November, but since has gone less active. We hadn’t been able to get a hold of him, so I was happy to run into him. We met with him this past week and are trying to help him get active again.

Lastly, I just want to say that I have loved my mission and I’m so sad to be leaving these wonderful Taiwanese people. I'm so grateful that through serving a mission & focusing on others, God has sculpted me more and more into the person that he wants me to be. This is only a start in an eternal process. I love my mission! It has influenced me in such a way that I’m changed forever!

God is love! See everyone really soon.

Love,

Elder Chatman

People put red stuff around their doors to try and bless their house and bring themselves good luck.  It is like the symbolism of the blood that they put around at the time of Moses.

This is Jordan playing a Taiwanese game at a mental hospital.  It was a service thing that he was doing while on exchanges in Sanxia.

This is under the basement at some of the other elders' apartment.  It is full of scooters. On exchanges in SanXia. In the far middle is a hilarious, Elder Martin. Jordan went on exchanges with the Sanxia Elders once a week his last transfer per instructions from the illustrious ex-AP Elder Tay

This is a family that Jordan went to for dinner - Xu2 Jia1ting.  Dixiong (Ivan) served his mission in Texas perfect English and loved basketball. His wife served in the Taizhong mission.  Jordan thought they were super cool.

This is Jordan at the Ding Family's house for dinner. They had the missionaries over a lot when Jordan served in the ward, TuCheng ward. They had all six missionaries from the ward over - Sister Gummow, Sister Gruwell, Elder Martin, Elder Hawkins, Jordan, and his companion Elder Miller

This is a place along side of the road where the lady is doing eyebrows with a string.

She is using her mouth to hold the string as she does the girl's eyebrows.  

This is a haircutting spot along the side of a road.

This is Sister He.  She got baptized by Jordan right before he came home off his mission.  He was happy about that.

This is a view from Jordan's apartment in Taipei.  He could see 7-11 from his window.  7-11 were on almost every street corner in Taiwan. A one mile radius in Taipei would likely include five 7-11s.

2 Weeks Remaining- March 16, 2014

March 16, 2014

Hey, what it is up?  I’m so sorry. Today we had some really important stuff going on so I have no time to write. 

But I am okay and safe. I may or may not have a baptism this upcoming week. 

I am looking forward to seeing you soon!

Love you guys! 

Jordan

3 Weeks Remaining- March 9, 2014

March 9, 2014

大家好．

It was a really good week this past week. God worked a lot of miracles for us.

On Monday, we met with Sister Xu. She has been reading the Book of Mormon and praying. She has felt that what we are teaching is true. We showed her the baptismal font and she said she just felt really good when we showed her it and talked about baptism. She committed to be baptized at the end of this month.

On Tuesday, we met with Brother Chen, who is a college student. He committed to be baptized the end of this month as well and we gave him a permission slip for baptism to give to his mom. She is Daoist, so she may not be cool with it, but we're praying for a miracle.

This week, we also started meeting with Sister He. She works by the temple area so she had been meeting with the temple sisters.  But she actually lives in our area, so she can only get baptized if she comes to our ward. She's super...spiritual, I guess you could say. This week, she came to 9:00 am sacrament in our ward and then went to the 11:00 English ward church meeting as well. That is like 45 minutes from our chapel. She can’t speak English very well, but she likes going to the English ward because she says she can understand from the speakers what God wants her to understand. She has a special situation. She really wants to get baptized but she won’t commit to come to our ward..... 

Also this week, the less active I’ve mention before - Brother Chen, he committed to come to church March 23rd and to bring his non member daughter and wife with him...leggo.

That’s pretty much the scoop. 

Love,

Elder Chatman

4 Weeks Remaining -March 2, 2104

March 2, 2014

帥哥門好

So this week went pretty good.

We've recently started meeting with a Sister Xu. She met missionaries on the street in a different part of Taipei. Then the sister missionaries here called her at like 10:00 pm one night and tried to setup a time to meet her. At first, she was going to say no and then was like, “Wow, you guys have it rough…. 10:00 at night and you’re still calling people. Then the sisters were like, “No, this makes us happy doing this stuff.” She was like, “Wow I want that kind of happiness.” So she set up a time to meet. Since she lives in our area, we've been meeting with her (at a 2 story Mcdonalds...) She's really good - prays and reads and has a strong desire to get an answer. Plus she already believes in God, so that makes it a million times easier.

We also met again with the less active that used to be really solid in the church. He wants to come back, but just needs some friends in the ward. So this week we brought the elders’ quorum president and that went good. We couldn't understand part of it though because they started talking in Taiwanese to each other. But they are friends now and he promised to come to church at least once before I go home. 

This week we got two less actives to come to church and a guy we met on the street 2 transfers ago came as well.

We've also recently been setting up lots of less actives and then inviting the home teachers to accompany us with the lesson. This has helped a lot. Almost no one in Taiwan does home teaching except like the leaders. (home teaching is when each person is assigned to visit certain families or individuals each month to make sure they are doing ok. Then if there is any problems or needs that can get help from the people in the ward.) You know how like every month the ward has a percentage of how much home teaching they do? Our ward had been getting 5% percent month...yep not too great huh? After we've started to help, it got up to 12% last month. So yeah lots of work to do…. so many problems could be solved with less actives and lots of baptisms would be a result if home teaching got done.

But yeah anyways that’s what’s up out here.

Love,

Elder Chatman