Skyping Willy Su

8/3/15

Hey there Family!

Quickly, I feel bad that you have to keep sending out emails every week so if you want to you can just log onto my account for me and put all the contacts that want an email in a group on my account, or send me all of their emails and I can do it. Either way, I just feel bad. And Derek wants on the list: 'derek.ashliman@myldsmail.net'. Sounds like a way fun trip to Yellowstone! I'm about to head out on my 22 month trip to Taiwan! A week from today I will be on a plane to Taiwan. My flight leaves at 11, so if it works for you all I will be calling around 10 on Monday the 10th. I have a 13.5 hour flight to Tokyo, Japan, a two hour layover, and then the final 3.5 hour flight to Taiwan!!! Today it was raining buckets so it really made me excited to get out there. I also got a haircut and boy did she cut it short. The Chinese is alright, not as well as I would hope, but it's going good! I don't think I need anything else before I leave. I'll try to send a package from Taiwan right after I get there! It's the middle of Monsoon season so it will be crazy in respect to rain. So after the experience with Willy Su in my big email, I'd like to say a little bit more about what happened. That night, I was looking for my wallet because I hadn't been able to find it for like half a week. I literally looked everywhere! I was starting to get scared, and then I was like, "Hey! I haven't even said a prayer yet! What kind of a missionary am I?" So I said a quick little prayer in my heart and the next place I looked had my wallet. Well, I guess I better start praying sooner. That night, a bunch of missionaries were keeping us up. They were up and talking after lights out, and it was making me pretty upset. I thought to myself, "Hey! Why not just go tell them to be quiet and be exactly obedient and maybe it will change their missions!" I thought it was some missionaries upstairs so I went out into the hall to find to my disappointment that it was the other room that had Elders in our district, so I knew them well. I figured I might as well tell them though, so I went and knocked on their door but they didn't hear. I walked back to my room, Elder Jensen walked out the door right before I walked in, and then guess who comes around the corner to find me alone in the hallway? MTC Security. They were doing the rounds to make sure everyone was in bed, and the only reason I was out of bed was because I was trying to enforce the rule he then promptly enforced on me. It was really ironic and pretty funny, but I slept well after. Teton pictures looked amazing! So jealous of you all floating down the river in the big yellow kayaks with beavers swimming alongside (and Mom I'm sorry you 'forgot' your swimsuit, what a shame you couldn't swim in that cold water)! Next email will be from Taiwan with a ton of pictures!!!! I love you all!!!

-Jordan

Brothers and Sisters,

First off, I was thinking that it is the start of a fresh month and the upcoming of new events. For many of you, school and college will be starting and life will get crazy again. For everyone else, I'm sure that the situation is very similar. The point is, I am not sure how many of you continue to read these emails home, and frankly I don't very much care. My hope is that every once in a while you will need a little uplifting thought, a little encouragement, and that you will take the time to read what one of thousands of missionaries in the world has to say before you click the delete button. And even if you do click the delete button before reading the rest of my emails, I hope you will remember these few simple things:

-God loves you

-Christ loves you

-The Holy Ghost loves you

-I love you

I am convinced that if you never forget those four things, you cannot go astray. You are always in my thoughts and prayers and I know that the other three are even more concerned with your eternal welfare. Of all the things I have learned in my life, it is that you are never alone.

This time next week, Monday the 10th, I will finally be on a plane towards my place of work and sacrifice for two years. I certainly am not perfect, I certainly am not prepared, but I am certainly excited. I hope that you will remember me in you prayers, but especially the other missionaries in the world who are laboring so hard for the salvation of everyone they come into contact with. By my next email, I will be facing enormous feelings of doubt, discouragement, and frustration. I hope we all remember that promise given to us from our Savior Jesus Christ that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. I know that if I whole-heartedly consecrate myself to His work, that those feelings will become easy to bear. I also know that if you do the same, you will receive the same, along with Heavenly Father's choicest of blessings.

As another matter of importance, I have had my first real 'mission experience'. We were skyping a Brother named Willy Su from the other mission in Taiwan. He is a recent convert to the church, and the day before we skyped him he told his family about his involvement in the church. As typical to Taiwanese culture, his family told him he was not welcome as part of their family until he abandoned his new found belief. It was at this time of doubt, discouragement, and frustration that we came into contact with him. We got to know him a little bit in what Chinese we could in a room full of other missionaries skyping, and then he told us of his current predicament. We tried to help him, and there was one point in the lesson where I asked him if he thought that if he displayed how happy the Gospel made him, would his family accept him again? To which he replied in the negative. I told him I knew his family loved him, to which he got uncomfortable and disagreed. "Well," I said, "I know that even if they don't love you now that they will." We talked a little more, and invited him to pray and study the scriptures to solve his problem. After the lesson, my companion Elder Facer sort of chastised me for telling him his family loved him, because in many of these situations their families don't actually love them. He told me that it was an ignorant thing to say. So I went on, feeling horrible about the lesson and the unnecessary

 pain I has caused Brother Willy Su. That night, I prayed for him, and that the hearts of his family would be opened. Two days later, our teacher had a message from him. He said a miracle had happened. That night, he too had prayed and had followed our commitment. The next morning, his family forgave him and let him continue to attend church, even if they didn't agree with it. My heart was filled with joy at the receiving of this news. I knew that the Spirit had helped us in that lesson. I don't know if what I said was good or bad, but I knew that because we have been exactly obedient here at the MTC, our companionship had the Spirit with us in that lesson. Even if we didn't know it at the time.

Well, I've watched many Elders from Viewmont come and go, and it's finally my turn. To the Elders that have yet to come, sorry, except not, because I am really sick of eating chicken burgers. Good luck. May we all have a few more spiritual experiences in our lives, a few more moments of charity, and a few less chicken burgers.

Love,

Elder Hawkes