Patience Turns Burdens Into Blessings

    Elder Puzey and I have been working with a lot of part-member families this last week to see if there are any unbaptized family members or anyone that would be interested in returning to church. So far haven't found any golden people that are going to get baptized, but found a cool family of four that we might be able to get back to church! Super cool! Huang Bo Chao is probably our closest to baptism. His date is for June 1st. His problem is that he still doesn't feel that the church is true, and so we are helping him develop that testimony that Christ's gospel has been restored. We send him texts with scriptures every day. I'll let you know how he keeps progressing!

    Last week in news headline format: two missionaries deliver cookies from a box mix to local members! Elder Hawkes eats weird Filipino food (including wrapped and fried bananas) with seven women, one man getting baptized next Saturday, and an Assistant to the President! Elder Hawkes also eats shark and large intestine of a pig! Two Americans infiltrate the Gold Dragon Tower (金龍寶塔) ash-burial facility and escape through spider-infested and overgrown stone paths through the Taiwanese jungle! Dirt City 土城 Elders Puzey and Hawkes teach powerful lesson to investigator only interested in learning English, then turn around and teach an investigator that wants nothing to do with the church other than getting married in the temple with their RM girlfriend!

    Ok, so maybe I'm not going to make headlines over Trump and Korea and all that jazz, but it was a fun week! Continuing with my weekly Christlike attribute study, this last week was about patience. Four things really impressed me as I studied patience that I had never really thought about before. (1) Patience turns burdens into blessings. (2) Patience is almost never sitting around and waiting, but rather working hard to do everything we can in obtaining a result and then accepting the Lord's timing. (3) Having an eternal perspective fuels and undying supply of patience. Selfishness and shortsightedness often lead to a bad case of impatience. (4) Anger, frustration, and anxiousness--when looked at through the right lens--are just patience practice. I have loved learning about patience and especially how these four principles were so deeply ingrained into the life of our Savior. I know that as I become more like Christ, I can help my investigators do the same. I love you guys, have a great week!

Buddhist general conference.

Pig's large intestine.

Cookies that we baked and gave to members (one exploded in my bike box....... I still ate the crumbs).

Photo shoot at night.

Meeting with the investigator that gave us the Toyota hats we were modeling.

Hiked along one of the coolest paths ever. The jungle was just so alive!! You could literally breathe in the life force as you walked on these rock paths. You could hear some sort of insect or frog or something croaking.

 

Ok, that old monk guy straight up grabbed that bee with his fingers, walked it over to a bush, and set it down. It was still kind of alive!!!!!!!!!

Panorama for days

The mountains are blossoming with this cool kind of tree. They are all over the place! The mountains are just speckled with these awesome white flowers.

P.S...Just ate a pig's large intestine after I finished skyping, also, Quentin L. Cook is visiting our mission this Saturday.