CALLED TO SERVE: Reese Witherspoon and Prayer

2/5/17

What a fun week! This week was the end of the Chinese New Year, so we didn't meet with any investigators the first part of the week and then were able to meet with a lot of investigators at the end. The end of the week was great for finding because everyone was pretty much done with celebrating but still hadn't gone back to work yet, so we went ham and found some super cool people to start meeting with!

So, the story begins like this: during a week-long scout camp many, many moons ago, a counselor for the kayaking class decided I looked like Bella from the Twilight series. For the rest of the week, I got called Bella. I told this to some members in my first area, and they thought it was so funny. When they pulled up a picture for comparison, however, they all stopped laughing. "Wow, he really does look like Bella..." Last week, I made the mistake of telling the members here both of the stories, and now everyone thinks I look like Bella. Maybe Asians just think white people all look the same, but there are actually quite a few other actors people here in Taiwan have said I look like. The best so far is probably that someone said that I look like the one and only (you guessed it) Reese Witherspoon. Well, at least it's not as bad as my companion getting called Mr. Bean by everyone we talk to....

This last week I was reading about prayer in True to the Faith, and came across the section "When you make a request through prayer, do all you can to assist in its being granted." Missionaries say millions of prayers, so sometimes I struggle to make every single one a meaningful and unique yearning of the heart. While reading this section, an interesting thought came across my mind--when you ask for any blessing, commit to some form of action. That seems simple enough, and it goes something like this: "Please bless this food" becomes "As I strive to better strengthen and protect my body by eating healthier foods and exercising better, please bless this food to give me energy to go about my work." Not long after that prayer, I had a prompting to drink more water. My prayers have been a lot better trying to apply this principle, and I don't find myself just robotically ordering blessings on Amazon.com.

Also interesting how I can now apply this to my investigators: "Sixde 黃子晏, will you ask Heavenly Father if this is true?" becomes "Sixde 黃子晏, as you diligently seek and ponder the scriptures and the things we share, will you ask Heavenly Father if this is true?" I think applying this principle will really help some of our investigators right now, and I'm excited to see them continue to progress towards baptism!! Love you guys!

another paper thing I did for the Liang Family

rag after I used it to clean the walls in our apartment. Our mission had a deep cleaning day on the start of GuoNian because proselyting outside wasn't really effective.

night view of the grand hotel and Taipei 101

went biking at the dirt track park again, my companion fell over right at the beginning, but I think in the end he thought it was fun

check out the sand being blown in the wind. The picture doesn't show it the best....

went to a freezing beach on the tip of danshui, I loved it but my companion didn't

really old forts in danshui

sunset pictures on a bikeride home from Danshui, beautiful!!

sara house or I think they just put the space in the wrong place and it is actually "sarah ouse". I'm pretty sure it's some French place, but I don't know what ouse is...