29 Weeks Remaining -September 29, 2013

29 Weeks Remaining

September 29, 2013

How are ya all? Next week we're having a baptism! Leggooooo!!!!!!!!!

What a week…. to start it off my companion was playing basketball on p-day and ended up tripping on himself. This resulted in what we thought was just a regular "walk it off" ankle sprain at first. But then Tuesday night, he took his shoe off and his foot was all purple. So we went to the doctor and got it looked at. They said he tore a ligament and has a tiny crack in his ankle. We had to buy a boot thing and then he isn’t supposed to walk for 3 weeks. We told the mission president’s wife about it, because she’s the mission nurse. But they were in Hong Kong for some mission president training, so she couldn’t really help us. So basically my companion had to just rest and ice his ankle for a few days. Saturday though, we had a lesson with the son of a family we are teaching. So we had to go on exchanges with the other elders in our apartment so that I could go out and teach the lesson. So I went with my last companion elder Anderson and his trainee elder Chen stayed with my trainee. I think elder Chen slept for most the day. But I don’t blame him because there really wasn’t anything he could do being stuck inside all day. Well, that made elder Anderson mad that elder Chen didn’t do anything. Last night, they started yelling at each other. Elder Anderson was like, let me talk! Then elder Chen was like, say please. Elder Anderson bangs the desk and yells, let me talk! Elder Chen again says, say please. This resulted in elder Anderson getting up and getting in elder Chen’s face saying I am going to punch you if you don’t let me talk! So me and my companion had to go break them up. It was pretty funny because elder Chen would speak in Chinese.  Elder Anderson would understand but then speak in English.  Elder Chen would understand his English and then speak Chinese back. I don’t know why it was just kind of funny to me.

On a good note, we met with Lawrence (son of the Chen family we are teaching). It was great because the Bao family, the family that referred the Chen Family to us, had us and Lawrence over to their house so we could teach him. The Bao family is loaded. They have a pool at the bottom of the apartment. I didn’t know such a nice place existed in Taiwan lol.  I thought I was back in America for a bit haha. Anyways, we shared the rest of the lessons with him. Then Sunday he passed his baptismal interview, so he's good to go for getting baptized next Sunday. Yes sir!

This week, we had met some foreigners. The first one was in the hospital. Some random guy from Seattle of all places was like "hey elders". He was like “you're from the Mormon church right?” “Do you have the title of saint in your church?”  We explained about us being latter day saints and he was “oh like followers of Christ right?” Then he was like thanks and leaves. Weird.

Then in the subway, some lady visiting from England, came up and start talking to us. She was Christian and just curious about why our church and other Christian churches are different. We shared about the restoration and gave her our mormon.org website pamphlet. We would've given her a Book of Mormon, but we only had them in Chinese. It was weird though because this lady straight up looked like a Utah Mormon. Funny!

Love,

Elder Chatman

30 Weeks Remaining -September 1, 2013

30 Weeks Remaining

September 1, 2013

你們好  

Rain, rain, and more rain….gotta love it.

On Monday, this super cool member took us to a barbecue restaurant. They bring you raw pork, beef, etc. and you barbeque it on this mini grill that’s in the middle of your table. It was super good!!

Later that night, we met with this super cool guy who met missionaries down on the southern part of the island, but lives up here. He is a cop and we had a super great lesson with him. We shared a good lesson about the restoration and he was asking us if we've really felt before that Christ lives.  We were able to bear strong testimonies that we know He lives. We've felt it and that if he'll pray and read the Book of Mormon, he'll be able to feel it too.

Later that night, we were getting ready for bed when a pipe or something under our kitchen sink broke and water came shooting out. It started to flood the apartment. We didn’t know what to do for like an hour because we couldn’t figure out how to shut the water off. But we called up our mission operations’ elder and he told us we could go to the top of the building and shut off the water from there. So that’s what we did. The only problem was that we didn’t have any water or gas until we got it fixed the next night.

This week, we also met again with an eighteen year old kid that we tracted into last week. He didn’t have a religious background and was really open to learning.  He is a good kid.

On Friday, we spent the afternoon helping some members paint their house. Then that night and Saturday, I got to do two baptismal interviews for two investigators of the sister missionaries in our ward. So they are going to have two baptisms this upcoming Sunday. That’ll be good for them because they've only had one baptism this year. We've had only two baptisms. We should be having another baptism the 15th though. Lawrence, the really cool son of a family we are teaching, told us yesterday that he was ready and the parents were fine with him getting baptized before them. So we're praying that everything works out with that.

But yeah that’s everything going on here. The Church is true.

Love,

Elder Chatman

31 Weeks Remaining- August 25, 2013

31 Weeks Remaining

August 25, 2013

你們好  

To start off this week, we went tracting in a typhoon. That was fun!! It was nothing serious, just a lot of rain. No one let us in, but that’s okay. The next day, we had to stay inside though because of the typhoon. I don’t know why but they freak out about typhoons over here. If you were just visiting and there was a typhoon, but no one told you, you would probably just think it was a rainy day.

Also this week, some Mormon teenagers that started a band called Beyond 5, came to the church building and did a concert. Tons of missionaries came with their investigators, so it was cool to see a lot of my buddies.

This week, we saw some great miracles with member referrals. One member brought his friend to church and we met with him afterwards. We shared the restoration and set a baptismal date with him. He is a cool guy. Then last night, another member introduced us to his friend who committed to come to church next week. He is another great guy. Member referrals are super cool, especially because recently during tracting and street contacting we haven’t really been able to find anyone who’s that interested. We did however while tracting, Saturday night, give out two copies of the Book of Mormon. So for tracting in Taiwan, there are these big boxes with everyone’s door bell on it. You press it and then speak into a speaker to them. If they are interested, they press a button that opens the door to let you into the building. Well, I pressed on a doorbell, this lady answered and I asked if we could share a message. She was like,”yeah but over the speaker.” So I pretty much had a 5 minute lesson over the speaker about the restoration and the Book of Mormon. In the end, the lady sounded interested and told us to leave her a Book of Mormon in her mailbox.  It was pretty cool stuff.

That’s pretty much a rap from this past week.

Love,
Elder Chatman

While waiting for a bus, they saw this guy carrying around these iguanas.... Crazy!! The guy took them onto the bus! In the picture also, is Elder Gerrard.

32 Weeks Remaining -August 18, 2013

32 weeks remaining

August 18, 2013

你好 ya'll

All heat & rain over here..... it is super weird when it rains because I always kind of  expect it to be cold outside like it gets in WA when it rains. But nope, the heat level stays the same...

This past week we met some cool people. We visited a less active family with the Bishop. They have a daughter serving a mission in the south part of Taiwan. The less active family had a son that never got baptized, but instead went and joined this different type church. It was started by this guy that is preparing people for the 2nd coming and teaches all these different things. We taught him about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and such. He was like,"yeah I believe in that, I just don't believe that Joseph Smith passed on his authority and that we have living prophets." It's super hard to teach him because he has different theories due to this other church.

The family we are teaching is doing really good. The son is ready to go, and the dad is almost there. Its just the mom, who didn't grow up Christian like the dad, that is having a hard time. She, like most Taiwanese people, have no real understanding of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ just hasn't clicked for her yet. It super fun teaching them though.

We went and visited tons of less actives this week. We couldn't find very many because they either didn't live there because they wrote a fake address on their baptismal record or they had already moved and changed phones. We met with one lady though but it was weird.  A grandpa let us in, then the less active lady and her mom literally only said hi, please sit, then left us by ourselves for like 10 minutes. She later came back and we were able to teach her about the Atonement. We got a 20 year old less active kid to attend church with us yesterday.

Other things going on - Jeremy Lin is here visiting. He is in our area too doing some speech. We are gonna go proselyte where he's at, might see him.....  Also the Taiwanese pro basketball team beat China's pro team for the first time in forever. The Taiwanese people loved that. lol

 A member our ward was illegal proselyting in China. She is a teacher there or something and I guess started talking about the Book of Mormon and our church and stuff with her class. The students and staff were cool with it and loving it. But when she was telling the ward about it, one of them members who came from China was telling her how you're not allowed to do that in China. He told her that she could've been locked up if the government found out about that.

Love,

Elder Chatman

33 Weeks Remaining -August 11, 2013

33 Weeks Remaining

August 11, 2013

你們好

This week we had zone training meeting. Usually it’s just our zone members and the zone leaders getting together and doing some training.  As the district leader, I had to do a training about using the Book of Mormon on the street. Our mission goal for the month is for every companionship to hand out one Book of Mormon each day. When the time for the training meeting came, the President came and gave us an awesome training. He was understandably upset because our whole mission only had two baptisms last week. Our goal is 80 this month. We usually get around 30 a month and we have around 160 missionaries in our mission. So he came and gave a great training about inviting people on the street to be baptized. He told us how we need to "cut off the chicken head" and be more bold with people. I loved it! We went out and invited 3 people on the street to be baptized this week. They all nicely rejected the invite but its cool doing it.  I think it weeds out the prepared people from the people that still need a little seasoning. It was kind of a tough week success wise. We had a baptismal interview setup with our 13 year old investigator for after church but he didn’t show up. Our recent convert that usually brings him, couldn’t find him at his house in the morning.  So we are going to try and go find him this week. Other than that we're just outside all day talking to people.  We are tracting and just trying to find someone that we can teach and baptize. Enjoy your summer! It’s cooking out here. Thursday was the hottest it’s ever been in Taiwan in 100 years + you add in that killer humidity…….

Love, 

Elder Chatman

A gross looking spider Jordan took a picture of in Taiwan.

34 Weeks Remaining- August 4, 2013

34 Weeks Remaining

August 4, 2013

Whattup ya'll…..

We saw some cool miracles this week. On Monday and Tuesday, we didn’t teach a single person because we got rejected by everyone. Then Wednesday, when we were walking to go visit Luo, our new convert, we stopped this 16 year old kid who was riding on his bike past us. We invited him to come to English class and later that night, he came. After English class, we met with him and shared about God and prayer. Then Saturday, we met with him again and shared about the restoration, gave him a Book of Mormon and invited him to be baptized. He set a date for the end of this month. He also came to church yesterday. So he's doing well.

Yesterday at church, the family who the ward member has been bringing for the past two weeks came again. Last week we asked if we could visit them during the week to start having lessons with them, but they nicely said no. But then this week, the member suggested that we meet with them right after church. Genius!!  We asked the family if they were good with that and they said yes. So we taught the family of 3 and the member helped us teach too. We taught the restoration and it went really good. They are going to be a little tough to teach because the dad grew up Christian so he understands most of what we were saying (he grew up in Hong Kong.) But the wife had no religious background, so she isn’t familiar with Jesus, prayer, etc. The great thing is that the member is her good friend, so she'll be able to help her every step of the way. I love member referrals!! They are so much easier than banging your head on the wall trying to tract and contact to people on the streets. But one thing I’ve learned is that if you have just faith in Christ you can see success in whatever you do. If you go out contacting people, just to contact people and don’t really believe that you are going find some prepared soul, you really won’t find anyone. You got first have that faith, and then you'll see a miracle.

That’s what is going on out here.

Love,

Elder Chatman

This was a greats ward activity the SongShan ward took up to a mountain in Yilan about 2 hours from Taipei on the east coast. This is the furthest Jordan ever got from Taipei on his mission. Most missionaries got opportunities to serve on the east coast 4-6 hours away from Taipei. Jordan wanted to go there badly but never left Taipei.

Dinner at the ward activity.

This was going up to the mountains for a ward activity.

This is going up the stairs to the ward activity.

Jordan with Jeff Wu.  Jeff Wu played basketball this past year for Union High School as a foreign exchange student.  This is the school that Jordan played at the year before so it was fun for them to meet each other after both of them hearing so much about each other.  They met at Jeff Wu's parents'restaurant and had lunch.  

35 Weeks Remaining-July 28, 2013

你們好
The highlight of this week was probably when we went out to the east coast of Taiwan.
It was so weird because I haven't left Taipei since last September when I got transferred
here. I felt like I was in Idaho or something! There were fields, trees, and I could
actually see the sky lol. The ward activity was cool. They bused us up to a mountain
where we walked around and boiled eggs in a hot spring. We had 2 investigators come
with us...
Other stuff that went on this week:
We were tracting and met this 15 year old young man who we taught at his front door
and gave him a Book of Mormon.
We had a crazy visit with an active member. We walked into his house and he's like,
"hey you are probably thirsty, so I bought you some coffee." I laughed and thought he
was kidding but he was for real and pulled us out some coffee. We were like, "huh?"
"We don't drink coffee remember?" He was like, "Oh yeah." Then he puts it away. I am
not sure what was up there...
Also this week, we had a training meeting with a few zones. Before the meeting at our
apartment, we were getting ready to go, when I got a text from President saying that he
was really sick. He couldn't barely speak or get out of bed. So he wanted me to run the
meeting - get elders to setup tables and chairs, to pick the hymns and people to do
prayers, lead music, play piano, and then he wanted me conduct the training meeting. It
end up going smoothly. His wife came and did most of the training so it was all good...
That is the scoop out here. My son (the missionary I am training) is doing good. He is
just about as lost and confused as I was when I got here... haha

Love,
Elder Chatman