Prayer and Bob

3/5/17

 Great week here in "Dirt City" (土城) last week! We have a baptism this Saturday! His name is Wang Jun Xian 王俊賢 (King Handsome Virtuous)! He was originally going to get baptized last Saturday, but then we figured out he had been drinking tea so we switched it to this week. Pictures to come if I can find my camera's battery charger.........

     Really great week with an investigator named Bob Xie 謝長恩. He is 15, and we met him at English class after he had come for a few weeks. We started sharing the gospel with him, and he is pretty interested. His other interests include watching horror films and drawing bleeding people (he loves the movie Chucky and wants to be a blood makeup artist for a living). This week we were able to set up and meet with him at his house (very rare thing in Taiwan), and we got to meet his Mom as well! His Mom expressed to us that their relationship lately has been really bad, because he is really lazy and so she is always yelling at him to get his stuff done. I am so excited to be meeting with them, because that is just what the gospel is for! The gospel heals and strengthens families, and I know as she sees the change in her son after we keep sharing with him, she will want that change for herself and the rest of her family as well. So exciting!

   The lessons yesterday in church were mostly focused on prayer, and I learned a lot of really cool things as I finally made it through a Sunday without falling asleep! One cool principle I learned as I read through the Gospel Principles manual was that our thoughts, words, and actions are all affected by our prayers. I don't know why, but I thought that that was really interesting. Communication with our Father in Heaven really can affect every aspect of our lives--so good prayers will help you be a better person in everything you do, and bad prayers won't. How awesome is that?! Love you guys! Have a great week!

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HAPPPYY BIRTHDAAYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was going to send out your package last week, but it just so happened to be the Taiwanese version of Memorial Day (二月二十八日) so the post office was closed!! I was so disappointed!! It's on it's way now though, so hopefully you will get it soon and then you can have another birthday celebration!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! LOVE YOU DAD!!!

Bitter cold. Warming up this next week. We get extremely detailed weather reports every night from one of Elder Facer's recent converts in another area. Taiwan is doing great. About all the news channels can muster is Donald Trump, so that's pretty much what's happening in Taiwan. Their biggest news isn't theirs....

I'll just share with you family a few other things I wrote to other people, you can read them if you want. I figure if you guys are desperate for stuff about my mission I might as well give you everything I write on Preparation Days....

In response to the hardest part of my mission and what to do to prepare:

Hardest part of my mission... Well I can share two that have been really hard. The first is that the decisions others make affect your everyday life as a missionary. In high school, it seems like you have a ton of homework and other things to be busy about, but at least it is all more or less up to you whether you do it. On a mission, every single little thing you do has to be consistent with the expectations of your companion, your mission leaders, and your mission president--something I found extremely hard at the beginning of my mission. In other words, a companion says, "I want to go knocking instead of street contacting." The very last thing you want to do is knocking, but you have to go do it because your companion wants to. Other people make decisions, and you have to adjust even if you don't agree. The second was the culture of Taiwan, but unless you go to Taiwan you shouldn't experience this issue. The problem is that they have been without the gospel for over 4 or 5,000 years, so preaching the gospel with them you first have to overcome 5,000 years of culture. It's a good thing we have the Spirit or it would be impossible. I think the best things you can do to prepare are to read Preach My Gospel (chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6, the rest you can always learn later) and really ponder the Doctrine of Christ (faith in Christ and His atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end)