Mission Conference and Stuff

8/22/16

   So, one of the happiest things on my mission and one of the saddest things on my mission. Happy: I finally buckled down and bought Honey Bunches of Oat cereal to eat in the morning every day. Sad: I might be lactose intolerant. I am still hoping for correlation without causation. Still not 100% sure that I am lactose intolerant, so it might be until next week till I know for sure. Other pretty big news is that I might be training next transfer. Our mission has 26 new elders coming in, so virtually anyone that hasn't trained yet and isn't a zone leader (me) will be training. Even so, the transfer starts in two days and I haven't gotten a call.

     Yesterday, Elder David F Evans of the Seventy came and talked to our mission. Our zone woke up at 5:30, hopped on a train, started the meeting at 9:30, literally ran to the train station at 3 because he went over on time, and then got back to Hualien around 5:30. Pretty crazy day. Basically 12 hours of sitting and no time to eat food or anything. At least I learned how to solve a Rubix cube on the train ride up, and the meeting itself was awesome. He talked a lot about different rules and how we could become more obedient, and then talked a lot about finding. He talked about how we as missionaries need to be talking 'with' people when we are finding and not so much 'to' people. He also mentioned how we should always be asking everyone for referrals. The best part about yesterday was when we got home last night, we were able to go straight out and start applying the principles he talked about and saw a lot of miracles. We met this one recently married couple who we talked with about how the gospel can bless their marriage, and it went really well! I have never talked about anything like that in a contact before, and it really changed the whole dynamic of finding.

     The other thing I have been thinking about this last week is time. In our missionary handbook it says: "Time is one of the most precious resources Heavenly Father has given you. The period when you are able to serve the Lord with all your time and all your efforts is extremely short. Use it fully and wisely. Such an opportunity is a privilege." We were telling stories on the train ride back, and I realized something. I don't remember all those nights I stayed up late doing lots of homework. I don't remember all those chats I had in the lunchroom or all the driving I did. Not that those things aren't important, because they are, but probably because they were part of that 'auto-pilot' mode of life. Certainly life requires a lot of this auto-pilot mode to get things done, but we can't get so caught up in it that we forget the purpose of why we are doing the things we do or forget to take the wheel once in a while and enjoy life. I remember those moments well--stopping homework for 5 minutes near midnight and listening to Coldplay, training for hours on end for that big soccer game, jogging up Duel Creek canyon to escape the routine and catch the fog-line. I've realized that by taking moments to enjoy missionary work and always remembering my purpose out in the field, not only do I see miracles but I remember them. I love you all so much and hope you have a great week!

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BTW I have heard some awesome songs on the radio from 21 Pilots, is Mary just listening to them like crazy? I claim those songs when I get back. I also heard that Justin Beiber made a turn around, went Christian, repented, and wrote an album that everyone loves. It that even close to true? I just keep hearing this one song that is ok I guess. That is about all the pop culture that has come through the mission net lately. Thank you so much for that package!!!!! I have pretty much already eaten all the candy, and I absolutely loved reading through those pages of my baptismal book. The best part ever was the painting you sent me Sarah!!!! It is incredible!!!!! My companion and the zone leaders are incredibly jealous of me and all asked if they could commission something. My companion even said if you painted him something he would give you 500 kuai (and not to tell you how much that is in US dollars)!!!! Even though the last one was a joke, it really is incredible and I am so grateful for it! I hope all of you are doing good and getting excited for the new school year!!! I can't even believe that I come home at the end of this next school year, though it also feels like I have been out here for forever. I miss you all so much!!! Have a fantastic week!

Me loving what could be my last box of cereal

where the three kingdoms will be located

a pretty funny sticker sign

We found Lemuel's house!

 the most puzzling glue cap I have ever seen in my life (which way do you turn the cap so as to be able to use it??)

incredible buddhist temple up Taroko Gorge

my companion playing a prank on the zone leaders (they started it)

canyon in Taroko

dance party in a tunnel to Justin Beiber with guys we ran into from Utah who served in our mission

those same guys' $1000 quadcopter with a video camera that got some epic footage

cool staircase inside a tall buddhist pagoda thing

some Buddhist stuff 

a crazy big wasp

Ok so it didn't work as well as we had planned.

awesome little footbridge. In Taroko Gorge there are tons of footbridges that go over the deep canyons. So beautiful, even if we wasted a lot of time with traffic waiting

Mission Conference & Stuff

Letter 63 (8/22/16)

   So, one of the happiest things on my mission and one of the saddest things on my mission. Happy: I finally buckled down and bought Honey Bunches of Oat cereal to eat in the morning every day. Sad: I might be lactose intolerant. I am still hoping for correlation without causation. Still not 100% sure that I am lactose intolerant, so it might be until next week till I know for sure. Other pretty big news is that I might be training next transfer. Our mission has 26 new elders coming in, so virtually anyone that hasn't trained yet and isn't a zone leader (me) will be training. Even so, the transfer starts in two days and I haven't gotten a call.

     Yesterday, Elder David F Evans of the Seventy came and talked to our mission. Our zone woke up at 5:30, hopped on a train, started the meeting at 9:30, literally ran to the train station at 3 because he went over on time, and then got back to Hualien around 5:30. Pretty crazy day. Basically 12 hours of sitting and no time to eat food or anything. At least I learned how to solve a Rubix cube on the train ride up, and the meeting itself was awesome. He talked a lot about different rules and how we could become more obedient, and then talked a lot about finding. He talked about how we as missionaries need to be talking 'with' people when we are finding and not so much 'to' people. He also mentioned how we should always be asking everyone for referrals. The best part about yesterday was when we got home last night, we were able to go straight out and start applying the principles he talked about and saw a lot of miracles. We met this one recently married couple who we talked with about how the gospel can bless their marriage, and it went really well! I have never talked about anything like that in a contact before, and it really changed the whole dynamic of finding.

     The other thing I have been thinking about this last week is time. In our missionary handbook it says: "Time is one of the most precious resources Heavenly Father has given you. The period when you are able to serve the Lord with all your time and all your efforts is extremely short. Use it fully and wisely. Such an opportunity is a privilege." We were telling stories on the train ride back, and I realized something. I don't remember all those nights I stayed up late doing lots of homework. I don't remember all those chats I had in the lunchroom or all the driving I did. Not that those things aren't important, because they are, but probably because they were part of that 'auto-pilot' mode of life. Certainly life requires a lot of this auto-pilot mode to get things done, but we can't get so caught up in it that we forget the purpose of why we are doing the things we do or forget to take the wheel once in a while and enjoy life. I remember those moments well--stopping homework for 5 minutes near midnight and listening to Coldplay, training for hours on end for that big soccer game, jogging up Duel Creek canyon to escape the routine and catch the fog-line. I've realized that by taking moments to enjoy missionary work and always remembering my purpose out in the field, not only do I see miracles but I remember them. I love you all so much and hope you have a great week!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BTW I have heard some awesome songs on the radio from 21 Pilots, is Mary just listening to them like crazy? I claim those songs when I get back. I also heard that Justin Beiber made a turn around, went Christian, repented, and wrote an album that everyone loves. It that even close to true? I just keep hearing this one song that is ok I guess. That is about all the pop culture that has come through the mission net lately. Thank you so much for that package!!!!! I have pretty much already eaten all the candy, and I absolutely loved reading through those pages of my baptismal book. The best part ever was the painting you sent me Sarah!!!! It is incredible!!!!! My companion and the zone leaders are incredibly jealous of me and all asked if they could commission something. My companion even said if you painted him something he would give you 500 kuai (and not to tell you how much that is in US dollars)!!!! Even though the last one was a joke, it really is incredible and I am so grateful for it! I hope all of you are doing good and getting excited for the new school year!!! I can't even believe that I come home at the end of this next school year, though it also feels like I have been out here for forever. I miss you all so much!!! Have a fantastic week!

Me loving what could be my last box of cereal

where the three kingdoms will be located

a pretty funny sticker sign

We found Lemuel's house!

 the most puzzling glue cap I have ever seen in my life (which way do you turn the cap so as to be able to use it??)

incredible buddhist temple up Taroko Gorge

my companion playing a prank on the zone leaders (they started it)

canyon in Taroko

dance party in a tunnel to Justin Beiber with guys we ran into from Utah who served in our mission

those same guys' $1000 quadcopter with a video camera that got some epic footage

cool staircase inside a tall buddhist pagoda thing

some Buddhist stuff 

a crazy big wasp

Ok so it didn't work as well as we had planned.

awesome little footbridge. In Taroko Gorge there are tons of footbridges that go over the deep canyons. So beautiful, even if we wasted a lot of time with traffic waiting

Pokemon and Sweet Potato

8/14/16

 Got some pretty awesome stories from last week. We were serving an elderly member by bringing lots of junk from her attic on the fourth floor to the main floor to be thrown out when we saw one of those old-fashioned telephones like the one Cruela Devil uses in 101 Dalmations (how do you even spell Cruela Devil and Dalmations???). Being the Elders that we are and seeing that it was going to waste, we asked her if we could have it. She said it didn't work, but gave it to the crazy white missionaries anyway. A little bit of TLC, and we are now calling everyone in the zone to brag about the phone we are using to call them (picture of the phone attached).

     So one thing I gotta know, is this whole Pokemon thing as crazy in America as it is here? Like, is everyone playing it? The streets are PACKED with people playing that Pokemon game that is synced with google maps (another picture attached). I looks pretty lame honestly, but us missionaries have never been more excited about a video game. The streets have been loaded with people pulling off to the side of the road on their motorscooters to catch a Pokemon or two on the way to work, and when they do that they enter the 'probably-will-be-contacted-by-missionaries zone'. Even public parks are loaded with people walking aimlessly in circles catching Pokemon. They are literally the perfect people to contact, because every single one of them has loads of time. The cherry on the banana split, though, is that our chapel is a Pokemon gym--meaning people from all around come to stand outside our chapel and play Pokemon. I never thought I would see the day when Pokemon became one of our most effective missionary tools.

      Last and coolest experience came when we visited a less active recent convert. He lives on his own in a very rundown house about a 35 minute bike ride from downtown Hualien. There is not much out there at all, and you can tell he is a pretty lonely man. Elder Miner and I were on exchanges, and we decided to go visit him at around 7 o'clock at night. It was dark, and it just so happened that he got home from work the same time we went to go visit him. He invited us into the gloomy backyard lit with a single bulb (there wasn't enough space in his house to sit down), and sat us down on two little stools he found in the rubbish of his backyard. Then he brought out a sort of grass tea that is supposed to be good for your eyes (and not against the word of wisdom), what he told us was an 'apple-banana', and a small pot of steamed sweet potato, all three of which he had grown or made from ingredients he grew himself. 

     As he served us the grass tea and handed us steamed sweet potato on big leaves he had found on the way home, my heart was touched. You could tell that this was his dinner after a long hard day: a very small dinner that he was completely willing to share. As we sat in the gloomy backyard enjoying the meager meal and getting eaten by mosquitoes, a voice came to my mind saying: "Elder Hawkes, enjoy these moments--they don't come often." There wasn't anything grand or eloquent about tea, bananas, steamed sweet potatoes on a leaf, a lonely old man, dark trees, a dilapidated house from 60 years ago, mosquitoes, and a small message about church, but boy did it have a powerful effect on my mind and spirit. Isn't that life? Living the small moments, developing relationships, and learning about God. All of which can be found in the smallest of moments. I love you all, and I hope you all have a wonderful week!!!

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Sorry, yet another short letter. In fairness to me, I only sent one email not to you guys today. So you know that it isn't just me 'emailing girls all the time' but rather a lack of speed and time. Today we are going to Taroko Gorge, so we woke up pretty early to get going. I hope everything is going well at home! One quick question I had for you guys though, so our apartment sometimes gets pretty distracted and Elder Stevenson gets distracted pretty often as well. I know there probably isn't too much I can do on that front, but is there anything I can do to stay laser focused and maybe influence my companion and the others to be more focused? I love you!! Transfers are next week and we have a mission conference next Monday, so next week will be super interesting and I may or may not be training! Haha my companion might need a few of your prayers if I am. Thanks for your letters! And Sarah, don't hold back an email because you think I am too busy, I am willing to wake up 20 minutes early to read an email on my camera from you guys!

Did you get your package before your actually birthday (it ended up coming the day of)? The card was fun. Elder Miner told me how if you blew on the tip of a permanent marker it would make really cool splotches on the paper. First though, you have to shake the marker so that all the ink goes to the tip. The problem is when you shake the marker and forget to keep the cap on. So he shook the marker, and lets just say that my desk, my shorts, my arms, my face, the floor, the wall, my language learning cards, and pretty much everything else within a 10 ft arc got covered in green speckles. Well, it made for a pretty good laugh.

Happy Birthday Mom!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry I didn't mention it before your birthday, but at least I can mention it afterwards!!!! I love you!!!

 what somebody creepily wrote on their door. It says 'please knock'. 

Yep, his name is Jordan. 

 awesome sunsets.

happy farmer we met who grew flowers

  what happens when you go to the judgement bar without baptism.

what happens when it is really hot and we are riding bikes

Elder Stevenson instructing Elder Miner on how to work his diabetes stuff while Elder Griffin takes pictures

we went up to Mugumuyu last week and had an absolute blast

So tempting to swim!!!! My shoe broke but that is ok because I have that other pair.

This is probably the most funniest sequence of photos ever. His name is Arvin. Notice what happens to the glasses as the sequence goes on.

What happens when you have an underwater camera on hand

sparkly sidewalks!