Week 44 -February 24, 2013

Week 44

February 24, 2013

Li ho! (Taiwanese for ni hao)

Quick recap of the week!

Monday, me and my companion went over to a member’s house and taught a lesson to one of the investigators, Mr. Huang. He has been meeting with missionaries for like one year now and has read the whole Book of Mormon all the way through.  But he says that he still didn’t know if it was true or not. So we went and taught him about the Spirit, how it works, and what kind of answer he might receive because he had no idea what answer he might get. He probably thought God was going to appear to him or light his pillow on fire (no joke, people have thought that before). So we helped him recognize how the Spirit might testify to him...

Tuesday, we had a training meeting with Elder Evans and Elder Watson with most of our mission in attendance (except for the missionaries on the south east coast which is like a 6 hour train ride away). It was a pretty good training meeting. They talked about faith and having joy in the work. Oh and on our way there, we were on the bus and a lady came a sat down in the seats facing us. She looked at our name tags and then started yelling at us. She said Jesus Christ is garbage but in stronger language lol. Then she went off in Taiwanese because she knew we probably couldn’t speak it. That’s was fun! Later that night, we met with a Mr. Wang. He's about 23 and we taught him about the restoration. He is pretty solid. He willingly listened and loved it all. My companion found him two weeks ago tracting with his last companion.

Thursday, we went on exchanges with the zone leaders (this is where you switch companions.) I went to Xi Zhi with Elder Gist from Nebraska. We taught the plan of salvation that night and then on Friday, we went to the library for an hour and did some service.  Then we walked around the streets of their area talking to the people. Not much success because it was raining, so not many people were out but we tried.

Then Saturday, we went and helped a member do some translating. He works for some labor organization that helps Philippine workers and their employers. So he needed our help talking with the Philippine sister who wanted to leave her current employer.  She said she was getting treated badly which is true. (The Philippines get treated really rudely here). So she spoke in English, then we'd translate to Chinese, and then the member brother would speak in Chinese and we would translate into English. We did that for about 2 hours. I’m proud of myself because most of it I could translate except for some weird words. I didn’t know like diaper or accumulate. lol

Sunday, we had to inform the bishop that an ordination (when they give the priesthood to a young man) that they did was done incorrectly. A young man was getting the Aaronic priesthood but they had kids in the office of teacher helping give it to him. (Bu xing)  Once the Bishop found out, he handled it.

Anyways, that’s pretty much what went on this week.

Take care!

Elder Chatman

This is when Elder David Evan's in the pink tie in the front. Elder Watson is in the blue tie.  He is the Asian Area President.

Week 43- February 17, 2013

Week 43

October 17, 2013

Hey everyone,

This was a crazy week. To start off on Monday night, I got a phone call from the assistants. They said on Thursday, I was moving to a new area in Taipei. So just like that, in the middle of the transfer, I got moved. The reason it happened was because my new companion’s previous companion was a local kid just helping out until he got his visa to Australia to go serve his mission. So he got his visa on Thursday and left for Australia, which is what sparked some of the moves. My previous companion got another Taiwanese to be with him to be in the English ward. Both of their English is isn’t too great, so that'll be fun for them trying to teach in English. My new companion is from Virginia, but born in Utah. We are the funniest looking companionship as he is about 5'7", weighs about a buck 15 and has glasses. Then I look like a giant to the locals. No wonder everyone stares at us wherever we go.

Then yesterday the head of the missionary department of the church (Elder David Evans) came and visited Taiwan and visited our ward! Elder Evans from the seventy (an important position in the church) and his wife and a member of the Asian area presidency, Elder Watson and his wife, all came to visit Taiwan for a few days. Not sure why they came to our ward of all wards but they came and stayed for the whole 3 hours. They talked in sacrament meeting and then Elder Evans taught the Sunday school and Aaronic priesthood lessons with the help of a translator. They are doing a mission wide meeting on Tuesday with all of us missionaries so that should be cool.

Have a good week!
Love, 
Jordan

A parade going on during Chinese New Year's week

More part of the parade going on....

A view of Taipei from a member's apartment, Bao Jiating.

Jordan eating at a member's home with the other missionary's in the ward (Jin Hua ward) - Sister Taylor, Sister Chen, Jordan, Elder Kang (his favorite companion), and Elder Graves

Jordan talking to Elder Watson, Asia Area president who visited their ward (Song Shan)

Sacrament meeting in SongShan ward with the head of the missionary department Elder Evans and Asia area president Elder Watson and their wives. On the front left is Elder and Sister Hill (senior couples in the mission), third from left Taipei Central Stake President, third from the right President Chiles from the stake presidency who was in the English Ward with Jordan, 2nd from right Bishop Shen3, far right President Hu also from the stake presidency

Week 42- February 11, 2013

Week 42 February 11, 2013

新年快樂

Happy Chinese New Year!

Chinese New Year is nothing like I expected it to be. I thought there was going to be crazy things going on - parades, fireworks, celebrations, etc – but not so.  All that really happens is just that everyone in Taipei leaves and reconnects with their families in the southern part of the island. It is about a week long Christmas day where absolutely nothing is open at all and hardly anyone is out on the streets. One tradition they have though is to eat! For this upcoming week, the members are feeding us every day. We have meals scheduled for lunch and dinner with members’ everyday for the next week. And it’s crazy how much food they bring out. I’m not a bigger eater.  I prefer to eat small sized meals every 2-3 hours, but the members meals are not small. They feed you until you literally can’t eat anymore. I’ll finish like 1 bowl of rice, but then they'll be like, "keep eating!" or "What? You are already full?" haha So I try to force a couple more bowls of rice and meat down! The meals are great though. Meat and rice is a great combo!   Don’t get me wrong, they'll bring some weird stuff out every now and then. I don’t even ask what it is anymore. I just eat and try to mix it in with the good tasting meat. This past Saturday, we had Miguel De Vinchi's baptism. It went really well and I was so happy to see him get baptized. He faced a couple of trials this week leading up to the baptism, but his faith was like a rock and nothing was going to stop him from getting baptized. My testimony in the converting power of the gospel was strengthened after seeing him get baptized. He had so many setbacks keeping him from baptism which I kind of expected would knock hold him back like it had for a bunch of our investigators. A bunch of our investigators are unwilling to keep the commandments or other things. But after reading, praying, coming to church, and actually living the commandments, he saw the power it had in his life and he wanted that change. Now I know the converting power of the gospel can have this effect on anyone.

Hope everyone is doing well!

莊長老

Elder Chatman

Escalator in Taiwan. The middle allows carts to go up to the next level of the building.

Elder Phelps, Miguel, and Jordan at Miguel's baptism

Some gangsters in Jordan's English class that he teaches on Wednesday nights.

Jordan tracting in the city of Taipei.

Jordan looking for investigators to teach.

Jordan knocking on doors.

Week 41 -February 3, 2013

大家好,

This past week my companion had to attend 2 training meetings because he is a new district leader which meant lots of study time for me. This is cool because now I’m almost done with this language program. We have to memorize 2000 words. I’m taking the test this week and if I pass it I can start learning Chinese characters. I already know around a hundred but I’ll start to learn more so that I’ll be able to read the Book of Mormon in Chinese. I also met this cool missionary from Utah that played HS football. This is his first week on the island and his companion is also a new district leader so we chatted while our companions attend their training meetings. It was cool to finally talk sports with someone again!

We met with Miguel a couple times this week and then he had his baptismal interview this week. It was really crazy actual. He had been living in this apartment thing with other people, but he hated living there. Then after teaching him the law of chastity he was like alright I’ll move out asap. So he had been looking to find a place to move to and we had been praying that it would work out. Then low and behold, earlier this week there was a disputation between him and the land lord and he had to move out. So now he's staying at a hotel while he looks for a place to live. 奇蹟! God works in mysterious ways! I am glad it worked out so now he's going to be getting baptized next Saturday! What is his last name? De Vincci! You can’t get more Italian than that.

Yesterday, we were at the church for almost 12 hours! We had ward council at 9am, a ward mission meeting at 10:30, English ward church meeting from 11-2, Chinese ward church meeting from 1:30-430, dinner at the church from about 5-6pm, and then there was a new member/investigator fireside from 7pm-8:15pm!  So we were there all day, but it was all good. Sundays is actually one of my favorite days!

Recently the mission has let us go on to Mormon.org to think about how we can use it to help our members and I came across this cool one that they did in Taipei. You should watch it - http://mormon.org/shi/ . The cool building and stuff right at the start are actually in my area.

Anyways, hope everyone is doing well! God lives and loves you. Do what he asks you to do and you'll be happy!

Elder Chatman

莊長老

Week 40- January 28, 2013

Week 40

January 29, 2013

nimen hao,

This week we had transfers.  My companion and I both stayed though.  I’m happy about that because my companion is pretty cool and I love this area. A lot of new missionaries came in too and a lot went home….. like 20 left and 15 came in - so a ton of people are training now.  (That is when the missionaries who have been out a while teach the brand new ones coming in.)

Our investigator, Miguel is still going strong. We taught him some commandments this week and he accepted those no problem. We are stilling aiming on him getting baptized in 2 weeks. He is really a miracle investigator. When we first met him, he was friendly but just not willing to listen to us and was deep in his Catholic faith. But then my old companion left and took Miguel’s phone number with him.  So we had no way to get in contact with him. Then two months later, a sister missionary met him on the road and from that we were able to start meeting with him again. Since then he has been super willing to listen and accepting of our message.

Besides Miguel though, we don’t really have any investigators that are progressing. All of them always seem to come up with some excuse of why they can’t meet with us or why they can’t come to church. So this week, we really need to go out find some prepared people to teach.

People always ask about how my Chinese is coming along and if I have any mess up stories. Well this week, I have two mess up stories. The first is when I called 2nd Nephi (that is a book in the Book of Mormon) ugly. In Chinese the word for read and look is the same (kan). During a lesson an investigator was commenting on how 2 Nephi was hard to understand and I said yeah 2nd Nephi is difficult to read (nan kan). But sometimes when you say nan kan it means ugly so I said yeah 2nd Nephi is ugly. haha

Another one is when I asked a kid if he had mental problems. The word for question and problem is the same. The kid raised his hand during the lesson so I asked if he had a question.  But I guess somehow I said it like I asked if he had a mental problem. J Sometimes when you think of something in English, translate it directly to Chinese in your mind, then say it, it has a different meaning. Sometimes a word has two different meanings also. Also you have tones and if you say a tone wrong, you can totally mess up the meaning. A guy in the English ward served his mission here and said one time on his mission he gave a talk about pig’s feet accidently. This is because when you say zhu1 jiao4, it means pig foot.  But what he was really trying to say was zhu3 jiao4 which means bishop. It is funny stuff!

Anyways that’s the excitement of this week. Jesus Christ lives. Follow Him and you will have happiness and peace in your life.

-Elder Chatman

Week 39- January 21, 2013

你們好,

I'll give you a quick recap of the week:

Tuesday - We went on exchanges. The district leader, Elder Lin, came to my area with me and my companion went to the district leader's area with the his companion. Elder Lin is from Gaoxiong and is going home this Friday. He is the like nicest guy! We've been in the Chinese ward together for the past 3 months, so I'll miss him. Anyways, together we visited a former investigator - Zhong mama and baba. They are probably in their 70's and their son is a temple worker. They stopped meeting with missionaries before, because they are devout Buddhist  But we are gonna try and start teaching them again and see if we can make any progress. This week we just got to know them and invited them to pray every day. We also had a district meeting today and then went English boarding. That is where we go handout English class flyers and talk to people about our free English class for an hour.

 Wednesday - We met with Miguel and taught him the Word of Wisdom (our health code.) He said he drinks coffee or tea every day. "It's an Italian thing," he says, ha ha, but he is totally willing to give it up to follow Christ! He went to Hong Kong later that night and doesn't get back until today. So I'm not sure how it's actually going for him though. Later that day, we had English class. Elder Baxter (from Utah) and I taught a group of about 20 people some English things out of a textbook they give us.

Thursday - We went out to Tianmu (about a 30 minute subway travel, and a 20 min bus travel) to go find a less-active family. The English ward council asked us to go visit. We tried to stop by and see what was going on with them (because if you call them they will be like -hey yeah maybe next week and then never actually setup with you. Then you call them again and they won't answer.) Anyway the family had moved addresses -so no luck there. The other family we tried to visit out in that area had moved as well...

Friday - We had a training meeting with some of the Taipei zones and the mission president. We learned about how to find more people to teach and some family history stuff. Then we went to a park and did an hour or so of just talking to people about the gospel. Later that night, we met with Ashutosh and start teaching him the new member lessons.

Saturday - We met with this man from Ireland named Tom. One of the weirdest lessons I've ever taught. He was going off about numerology, the 12 deadly sins, and some other stuff. He was a nice guy but it was a little different. Later that night, we had a correlation meeting and had a ward activity where we watched a movie called 17 miracles with some members and investigators.

Sunday - We were at the church from 10:30am - 6:00pm. That was a long day. We had an English ward correlation meeting, then a 3 hour English ward church meeting, then a 3 hour Chinese ward meeting. We had an investigator (which is person interested in the church) randomly show up in the Chinese ward. We haven't taught him in a while because he wasn't willing to do anything we invited him to do. So it was a miracle to see him there. He 復活ed (Resurrected) as we say....... Then later that night, we subway-ed 45 minutes out to Xin Zhuang and gave Michelle a priesthood blessing. She was hospitalized earlier this week and just feeling really sick (not sure from what though). I think it's because she hasn't had a day off of work in like 3 weeks, but that's just me lol  Anyways, we gave her a priesthood blessing last night, so hopefully she'll start feeling better.

Anyways that's the excitement of this week! God is love! And remember "without charity ye are nothing."

我愛你們

莊長老

Elder Jordan Chatman

A random photo at the park....

People in the park

A guy on the subway with a cool flat top.

Jordan and Ashutosh, a recent convert they taught and baptized from India

Week 38- January 13, 2013

Hey everyone,

The work went great this week. First off we had a miracle with Michelle, the sister from Germany. She wants to be baptized and do everything else to follow God, but has to work every single day. Last week, she had one day off for the first time in a month and so we were able to meet with her. We invited her to pray and ask God for an opportunity to come to church. We also prayed every day for her last week. Then this week, I talked to her on the phone and she said that her boss hired another person to start working there next month. This means she'll get 3 days off of work each week. Miracle! Prayer is real! She was really excited because now she'll be able to come to church on a weekly basis and prepare to get baptized!

This week, we also had some great success with Miguel. We met with him at the church and also at that time, we had a Taiwanese man and his son coming to meet with us. So me and my companion went on splits (this is where you go out to teach with someone besides your companion.) I went with the new convert, Ashutosh and we taught Miguel. The lesson went great and he said wants to be baptized and that he knows the Book of Mormon is true. His date is February 10th, so I'm excited for that. We still have to teach him the Word of Wisdom though and I know he has some problems with that. So we'll see how deep his faith runs this week. It'll be good though.

This week, I went to Taipei 101 for the first time. I didn't actually go up to the top or anything, but we passed by it as we were biking out to visit a potential investigator. Taipei 101 isn't in our Chinese Ward area but because we are in the English ward, all of Taipei counts as our area. So as we passed by, we stopped to take some pictures real quick.

Some other things we did this week - Yesterday we went with an Indonesian sister and visited a less-active Indonesian sister. She was baptized in Indonesia like 10 years ago but hasn't been to church since being here. So we stopped by her store and had a small lesson with her. On a side note, we learned some Indonesian. Then when we were leaving to go back to go to the MRT there was this huge march, mini protest parade thing where there were thousands of people walking down the road waving flags that said huo3 da4 (which means like big fire or angry) and holding up signs for this political party or something.

Also yesterday, Benjamin got confirmed during sacrament and received the gift of the Holy Ghost. His wife came to church as well, so we're going to try and start working with her. Oh and I forgot to mention that he is going to become his country's ambassador starting in March. I also learned that parts of the Pirates of the Carribean were filmed in the St. Lucia island where he's from...

That is pretty much a rap for this week. Again, I know this God's true Church restored to the earth. Anyone that will turn to Christ and follow his restored gospel will find peace and happiness.

Elder Chatman

Jordan by Taipei 101

Jordan from the tall angle....

 Taipei 101

Taipei 101 district

Jordan in an alley in the city where he teaches. They were out looking for a Filipino referral but she wasn't home so they left her a note. These are typical homes/apartments where people live in Taipei .