10/30/16
Zone meeting is tomorrow, which means some pretty crazy changes as usual! Last week after Mission Leadership Conference, the Zone Leaders called us and informed us that to have more proselyting time during the more effective evening hours, President Jergensen moved the whole missionary schedule back a half hour! Yep, that means we normally get home at 9:30-10:00 if we are in a lesson. We go to bed at 11:00(!) and we get to sleep in until 7:00 now! It doesn't sound like a big change, but these last few days have been so weird. After over a year of going to bed and waking up at the exact same times, it has been a crazy and tiring last few days. Even so, we are all super excited and it is going to be so awesome having an extra half hour during the night instead of the afternoon when not as many people are out and about.
Zone meeting is tomorrow, which means some pretty crazy changes as usual! Last week after Mission Leadership Conference, the Zone Leaders called us and informed us that to have more proselyting time during the more effective evening hours, President Jergensen moved the whole missionary schedule back a half hour! Yep, that means we normally get home at 9:30-10:00 if we are in a lesson. We go to bed at 11:00(!) and we get to sleep in until 7:00 now! It doesn't sound like a big change, but these last few days have been so weird. After over a year of going to bed and waking up at the exact same times, it has been a crazy and tiring last few days. Even so, we are all super excited and it is going to be so awesome having an extra half hour during the night instead of the afternoon when not as many people are out and about.
I may or may not have learned how to say 'narwhal' in Chinese this lats week. 獨角鯨魚. I'm still trying to think of how I can include it in the first lesson or something, but it might just be one of those things I randomly write on notes and give to people (你是一個胖胖的獨角鯨魚!). On the disappointing side, we didn't have any investigators come to church yesterday so none of our current investigators can get baptized before the end of the transfer when I will likely be moving. Bummer! Even so, we still have our hopes up that we can find a part-member family or get a referral that has already been to church several times.
Yesterday I was studying for a talk on repentance that I gave in a new-member fireside, and I ran into something interesting that I didn't know before. It is in the Book of Jonah, chapter 1. I think most of us are pretty familiar with this story (thank you Veggie-Tales), and in my talk I used the part where the people of Nineveh repent to show how we need to hearken immediately to a call to repentance, confess our sins and humble ourselves to 'sackcloth and ashes', and forsake those sins. The part that intrigued me though was in chapter 1 verse 3 where Jonah does exactly the opposite of those people in Nineveh. Footnote 'a' of that verse takes us to the Topical Guide on procrastination. As portrayed by asparagus and cucumbers, Jonah goes to Tarshish because he doesn't want to go to Nineveh. What I never realized was that Jonah probably actually intended on going to Nineveh... eventually. I think that last word is why Jonah finds himself in the belly of a whale in the next chapter. The Lord has commanded Jonah to go to Nineveh because a whole city has been prepared to hear the call to repentance, and what is Jonah's response? Eventually. There is, of course, a lot more to learn from the subsequent events in the Book of Jonah, but it was a great reminder to me of how we all need to earnestly seek counsel from the Lord, and be prepared to act as soon as possible no matter where the guidance of the Lord leads us--be it Tarshish or Ninevah. I love all you guys and hope you have just a smashing-pumpkin good Halloween!
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Elder Hawkes's Semi-Annual Statistical Report
- Monday - super boring Preparation Day. Went home after emails because we got left by the rest of the zone, and did a little bit of cleaning, organization, and such. In the evening had a few really cool lessons though. One was with Mr. He 何先生 and his sister from Taipei. He had to bring his wife dinner, so we ended up just sitting down with his sister outside his home and having a super cool conversation with her about Christ and the Gospel. Their mother just died a few months ago and was a devout Catholic, but they aren't nearly as devout and mostly just sad that she passed away. They are really receptive, and hopefully the sister will meet with missionaries up in Taipei!
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Elder Hawkes's Semi-Annual Statistical Report
- Monday - super boring Preparation Day. Went home after emails because we got left by the rest of the zone, and did a little bit of cleaning, organization, and such. In the evening had a few really cool lessons though. One was with Mr. He 何先生 and his sister from Taipei. He had to bring his wife dinner, so we ended up just sitting down with his sister outside his home and having a super cool conversation with her about Christ and the Gospel. Their mother just died a few months ago and was a devout Catholic, but they aren't nearly as devout and mostly just sad that she passed away. They are really receptive, and hopefully the sister will meet with missionaries up in Taipei!
- Tuesday - district meeting was ok today, and then I went on exchanges with the zone leaders. I went with Elder Griffin, and we went to this one lady and her family's house for about an hour and a half, which was too long but it was a great lesson. The zone leaders call them coconut family because the dad sells coconuts and that is how they met them. Coconut grandma and coconut daughter came to English class, and Elder Dickson and I just happened to be substituting, so we taught them and they loved it. Ever since then, coconut daughter begs coconut wife and coconut grandma to take her to English class and to church! Super awesome!
- Wednesday - went to a government building in the morning to ask for service opportunities and ran into a less active that we hadn't seen in a very long time. We were super happy to see him, and even though it wasn't necessarily mutual, it was totally a miracle. Then had English boarding (passing out tons of flyers) and English Class.
- Thursday - decided that we are going to start doing a free car wash to find new investigators. Missionaries did it at our church 10 years ago, and even though nobody came we still run into people that ask us if our church is the one that used to do the free car wash. The rest of the day was visiting a bunch of different less actives and potential investigators. For dinner we ate hot pot with a guy named Jack from California that moved here to retire and enjoy the clear air. Not too much gospel interest, but hey, we got a free meal.
- Friday - we have started looking up when members' birthdays are and giving them a call or stopping by with a gift. Today we stopped by the Dai Family and dropped a small gift in their mailbox and sang happy birthday to their daughter because they were in RuiSui. Also stopped by and said hi to Jeffery, who has been sick lately. He said he was getting better, and though he has been super busy lately, he said he arranged it so that every Friday night he doesn't have anything so we can come over and have lessons with him. He also said that these last two weeks have been a lot better because he has been praying and he says it helps him overcome all the little day-to-day problems he runs into. Super awesome!
- Saturday - finding during the daytime without much success, halloween party in the evening. Waaaaaaay too long. 2 1/2 hours long, and we were forced to stay for the whole thing because I had to play the piano for a little activity. The single adults put a lot of work into it and made it really awesome, but it was a bummer because we couldn't get any investigators there.
- Sunday - biked clear over to YongXing to pick up an investigator named Fan Zhi Ming 范志明 for church, but he is involved in a program where college students tutor underprivileged youth and it just happened to be on Sunday at like 2:00. So we biked back to the church, and no other investigators came that had committed (like Jeffery). In the evening we had the new-member fireside where I got to give a talk. I was pretty nervous, especially about having to use Chinese, but after stuttering through the first few jokes to start out the talk I relaxed and it flowed a lot better than I was expecting. Still curious about whether anyone actually got anything out of it, but it was pretty cool to feel the gift of tongues working to make the words flow out smoothly.
us at the halloween party thing doing a relay race
we ate pancakes for breakfast yesterday
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