Week 7- June 12, 2012

June 12, 2012

Hey everyone,

This week went great.

The language is progressing well and I’m learning tons about the gospel.

I don’t really know what to talk about because not much has changed or happened that I didn’t talk about in the previous weeks. So I guess I’ll just tell you a tiny bit about a filmed talk by Jeffrey R. Holland that I watched. He talked about how we should go out into the mission field and astonish somebody’s life. This church and gospel is sooo vital and will without a doubt change someone’s life for eternity. So we need to be sure to teach with that kind of conviction and power. The gospel is so important to us missionaries, so we need to be sure to convey that in our teaching. It was an incredible talk!  It is my favorite one that I have watched here.

So on Sunday, the MTC president was sitting by me and companion at dinner. He just sits in random places at dinner. So anyways, he was talking to me and was like “what’s your name?” I said “Elder Chatman.”  He was like, “Oh, there used to be a really great basketball player from BYU named Chatman.” I was like, “Yeah, that’s my dad.”  He was astonished and keeping saying how good dad was at basketball. So then today, I get a call to come to his office with my companions. We go there and he tells me that he wanted to hook me up because I was a son of a BYU basketball player. So anyways, in 2 Sundays (the one before I leave), the apostles orientate the new mission presidents and they have a sacrament meeting with just the new mission presidents and the apostles. So because it is sacrament meeting, there needs to be the passing of the sacrament. So 36 elders got chosen to pass and then stay for the sacrament meeting. So me and my companions get to do that.  So we are part of the 36 elders that get to go to the apostle led sacrament meeting! Pretty cool, huh?!

Anyways, hope everyone is doing well.

-Jordan Chatman

Week 6- June 5, 2012

Hey everyone!

Hope ya'll are doing well! I had another good week this week. I am really looking forward to getting out to Taiwan though! 3 weeks from today and I should be on the plane. I can’t wait! If I were to teach someone today in Mandarin I feel like I could give a pretty good first lesson (which is mainly about God, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon and prayer)! I probably wouldn’t be able to understand a lot of what they would say back though. LOL But like we were taught this week from President Uchtdorf (in a film), language doesn’t matter a whole lot. What matters is that you are teaching with the Spirit, that you have the light of Christ in you, and that they can feel your love for them!

Last Tuesday, Elder Zwick from the quorum of the seventy came and spoke to us. He gave a really powerful testimony about the Book of Mormon and how people can know this church is true or not by reading the Book of Mormon all the way through and sincerely praying about it. He gave a cool story about his mission. He said he went on his mission somewhere in South America (I forget where exactly.) But he said that while there he was hospitalized for a few days. When he left the hospital he said he left 20 Book of Mormons at the front desk. 20 years later, he had no idea what happened to the Book of Mormons he left at the hospital. But 20 years later, he went back down to his mission area. While there he was meeting with the local ward and the bishop came up to him and pulled out a Book of Mormon. It was one of the Book of Mormons that Elder Zwick had left in the hospital 20 years ago! The bishop said that 20 years ago he wasn’t Mormon and that he was in the hospital. He decided to pick up a Book of Mormon that he saw there. He took it home and never read it. He was about to throw it away one day but his little son was like no don’t throw away a nice book. So he kept it and ended up reading the whole thing and praying about it. After doing that he knew it was true and ended up joining the Mormon church. Crazy!

So I guess I’ll give you a rundown of a typical day...

I get up a 6:30, eat breakfast in the cafeteria at 7:20. Then at 8am, we teach a 30 minute lesson to a mock-investigator. At 9am, we have an hour of learning Chinese in the classroom, and then at 10am, an hour of learning how to teach better. At 11am, it is an hour of personal study where I study the Book of Mormon and other things. At noon is lunch and then 12:45 until 1:45 is an hour of personal Chinese language study. Then at 2pm, I and my companions prepare our next lesson. Then 3-5 is more classroom time. At 5pm is dinner, and then 5:45-6:45 is an hour a learning Chinese on the computers using a program called TALL. Then 7-8pm is gym and then 8:30 to 9:30 is another hour of study. Then after that we get ready for bed and go to bed by 10:30. So that’s the excitement here.

I hope everyone is doing good!

-Jordan

Week 5- May 29, 2012

Hey everyone,

 This week went good. Not much different has happened since last week so I don’t know what to say?

A kid in my district tore his ACL a while ago so he had to stay here while the rest of the elders, who he came in the same time he did, left for Taiwan. He has been here 15 weeks now and goes in twice a week for physical therapy. He has to have a companion go with him, so I went with him on Wednesday. He does rehab for around 3 hrs at the physical therapy center which is like 10 minutes away. They have a gym there, so I got to shoot around and do some studying while he did rehab. I talked to Noah Hartsock from the BYU basketball team, who was there doing rehab on his ankle he had surgery on.

Chinese has been going well. It’s still really tough, but I’ve been learning a ton.

Sunday, we listened to a great talk from Elder Bednar called "Recognizing the Spirit". It was a film of a speech he gave at the MTC a while ago. It was about how to recognize the Spirit and he gave us three great stories relating to it. One was about when he was a missionary in Germany, another about him as a stake president, and another about him preparing a talk for General Conference.

Not much else going on that was different from last week. For gym, I still do my workouts and basketball drills. I almost got a windmill dunk down so that was cool.

Ping'an! (which means peace)

-Jordan Chatman

Week 4- May 22, 2012

What’s good everyone!

Another week down, 5 more to go before I take off for Taiwan!
The language has been getting a lot better. The teacher said that after a month your learning and understanding of the language skyrockets and this definitely has been true. When we go teach the investigator I can understand like 75% of what he is saying. So yeah it’s gotten so much better. They don’t teach you the Chinese characters during class time, but we have an hour a day of doing language software stuff. So for about 15 min a day I’ve been learning the Chinese characters on that! It’s so cool. I can read the Book of Mormon table of contents in just Chinese characters (like I can read the characters in the table of contents that say the book of 1st Nephi, 2nd Nephi, and so on for all of the books in the Book of Mormon).  It’s crazy though how Chinese is. Like if you say - zhidao. If you say zhidao in a high voice during zhi and then an angry voice during dao, it means “to know.”  But if you say zhidao going low voice to high voice during zhi and then with and angry voice on dao it means “guidance.”  So yeah it’s crazy. The same word spoken with different pitches means something totally different. So it’s good that I’m learning to talk with these different pitches, it'll help me to speak louder and to pronunciate more!
We got a new teacher this week. Our old teacher was a Brother that served his mission in Taichung, Taiwan last year. But our new teacher is this Sister that moved here from Beijing, China and served her mission on temple square in Salt Lake City, Utah. So starting yesterday she has been teaching us Chinese during classroom time. She is really good because this is her native language.
Tomorrow around 30 new mandarin missionaries (mainly going to Taiwan) are all coming in. They will be in our zone. This means we live at the same place, have classrooms in the same building, have sacrament together, and have pretty much the same schedule, so it'll be interesting to see how they are.
We take off on June 26th for Taiwan, but then our brand new mission president flies in on July 3^rd.  So it'll be interesting to see how that goes and how the transition is.
Last Tuesday, Elder L. Tom Perry came and spoke to us about the importance of the Book of Mormon. He talked about helping people know how they can find out for themselves if it is true. It was a pretty cool talk. The Provo temple president spoke on Sunday to us.  It was really good too.

Love you guys,

Jordan

Week 3- May 15, 2012

Wassup everyone,

This week was good and went by pretty fast.

Last week on Saturday, we had TRC which stand for training resource center. We basically went there and got to teach people that are Taiwan natives. They are members of the church and they help us with our Chinese. First, we taught an older man from the states and his wife from Taiwan. Then we talked to a dad and his 15 year old son that are living here. They said they go back to Taiwan every summer so they were excited that they're going to be there when we we're there. I told them I played basketball and their faces lit up and they were really excited about that.

The older generation of mandarin missionaries all left today. Most of them went to Taiwan but some went to the states and others went to Singapore and Australia. All of the Taiwan missionaries are really excited to leave. They said they were flying to Detroit first and then all the way to Taiwan. I wish it was me leaving right now!

Since all of the older kids left, the 30 or so of us mandarin missionaries left have to do a lot more work such as give sacrament talks and stuff like that. I got released as district leader on Sunday because they make changes every 3 weeks so different people get a chance to experience leadership.

Last Tuesday at the devotional, Elder Christofferson spoke to us. He just talked about how our main role as missionaries is to teach people about repentance which brings them closer to Jesus Christ their Savior.

one of the kids in my district is really good at singing so he is gonna sing at a Tuesday night devotional in front of everyone and a girl from the district is gonna accompany him on the piano so that'll be cool.

Not much else is going on. We get like 30 more mandarin speaking missionaries coming in next Wednesday so that'll be cool to have them in our branch. Now a little Chinese for you...

wo zhidao zhege jiao hui shi zhen shi de. Wo zhidao Moermenjing shi shen de hua. Wo ganxie shen cigie wo zhege chuanjiao de jihui.

wo ai nimen! ping'an!

In essence it means: I know this church is true. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God. I am grateful for this opportunity to spread the gospel. I love you guys. Peace.

Jordan, our new missionary

This is Jordan's MTC district. This is on a pday when they get to go to the Provo temple

Jordan wishing mom a Happy Mother's Day

Here is his nametag in Mandarin Chinese.  It is so cool!

This is Jordan with a guy in his district at the MTC. His name is Elder Bian.  He went to Canada on his mission.

Week 2- May 8, 2012

What’s good!

This week went by fast. The days are really really long but at the same time the days seem to blur together. Not much changes from week to week haha. My Chinese has slowly been getting better and better. We finished teaching our investigator at the end of last week and we just got a new one yesterday. The investigators are actually our teachers but they take it very seriously and act like real investigators. They change into street clothes and go into rooms. We have to knock and then go teach them using only Chinese. Me and my companions can teach in Chinese a lot better and can understand more of what the investigator is saying. By next week the teacher has challenged us to teach the investigators without using note cards so that will be tough.

Sundays are probably my favorite days. After going through a long week of classroom and study all week you get really tired. But then on Sundays, a member of the quorum of the 70 comes and does a devotional. That usually rekindles my fire and motivates me to be a good missionary.

I can’t wait till I can get out of here and out to Taiwan. I definitely have learned a lot while being here but it gets tedious and boring at times so I’ll be excited when I can get out and to do some work. The older generation of Mandarin missionaries are all leaving next week. They have been here for around 9 weeks and they all got their travel papers a few days ago. So since they are taking off, that means that my generation of mandarin speaking missionaries have to step our Chinese up. We now will have to give talks and do sacrament prayers all in Chinese. We normally don’t do those things because we don’t have enough experience and can’t pronuciate effectively but since they are leaving that will all change.

I met a cool elder going to Taiwan the same time that I am, except he is going to the Southern area, called Taichung (I think that’s how you spell it). Anyways, his name is Elder Edwards and he has a scholarship on BYU's football for when he gets back. We're good friends and we lovin talkin about sports at night before bed.

The Lord has blessed me. I've asked to be comforted because it gets boring and frustrating at times when learning teaching principals and Chinese all day long and my comps get me annoyed at times but the Lord has given me peace and the ability to work through it with a positive attitude. I was dying to watch some basketball and to play in a basketball game and while I still really want to do those things, the Lord has helped me to be at peace with those things.

The food here is actually pretty good. I think it is BYU that makes the food and they actually make some good food. Like they made fried chicken one day and burgers another day. Then they also brought in Papa Johns pizza and BYU creamery ice cream one day so that was nice after a long day of classroom work.

I love you all and miss you tons

Wo ai nimen! zai jian. (aka - I love you guys! bye.)

-Jordan

Week 1- May 1, 2012

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Wassup family!

I miss you guys a lot. I hope you doing well! The MTC is crazy. So much as happened in the short time I've been here. To me it feels like I’ve been here forever! The first couple of days at the MTC were a struggle. It’s hard to put everything behind and just do missionary stuff all day long, but I am use to it now and it has been going well. I have 2 companions; it just worked out that way. Elder Relyea is from Farmington, Utah and he is pretty cool. Elder Norris is from Seattle. My district is awesome. It is 4 sisters and us 5 elders. We are all going to Taiwan, Taipei and we are supposed to leave June 26th. That is faster than I expected but that is good because I can’t wait to get into the field.

Learning Chinese has been really hard but it has slowly been getting better. The teacher is from Utah but his parents are from Taiwan so he speaks Chinese fluently. Then there is an assistant lady who is from china. They only talk in Chinese the entire time that we are in class (which is about 6 hours a day!), so it is really hard to understand. Right now I can bear my testimony and say a basic pray in Chinese but is tough because there are different tones on the words that you say. So like you have to either say the word getting higher, getting deeper, high to deep to high, or quickly. We had to teach our first investigator on Saturday. I think he is an actor investigator. It is so hard to teach because we don’t understand barely anything that he says. We write some things we are going to say in Chinese on paper and then go in and say them to him. Half the times we sit there in silence trying to decipher what he says. We have slowly been understanding him more and more with each visit. We have visited him 3 times now.

We are supposed to get up every day at 6:30am. I get up and 6 am and stretch, do yoga, and do push-up and pull-ups. Then we have gym 5 times a week for about an hour. I either do full-court ball handling drills or go upstairs and do sprints and other exercises that I have on my routine that I brought.

The food has been pretty good. I’m missing dad’s barbequing though!

Thanks for the dear elders. When you submit them they put them in the mail for our district each day. I just wrote some responses to your letters so you should get them soon.

I'm going to get on later today to put on some photos and videos if I can.

Also, look up Character of Christ devotional by Elder Bednar. It was excellent. We watched it on Sunday night.

Love, Jordan

P.S. I’m district leader. The branch pres interviewed everyone and then chose me to be the DL of our district which is use 5 elders and 4 sisters going to Taipei on June 26th. There is another district of missionaries going to Taipei the same time that we are.

I basically just conduct meetings, chose hymns and who says prayers, lead our district meeting, interview our district's senior companions and get interviewed by the 2 zone leaders which are 2 elders going to Taiwan in a couple of weeks.