June 17, 2012

Happy Father's Day!

It's not Father's Day in Taiwan. Well, if it was no one mentioned anything about it. It might be because everyone was talking about the natural disasters of the week. 

This week was filled with a couple of smaller earthquakes, as well was a crazy flood! School and work was cancelled for the flood. It rained heavy rain for about 9 hours straight and in certain areas the roads turned into rivers. It was pretty cool, except for the fact that on the day it flooded the Zhang family from ZhuDong had planned to come up to TaoYuan to visit, and then they had to cancel because the train wasn't running. Which was unfortunate, because I had planned it out to be on exchanges with Elder Bogle (my former companion in ZhuDong) at the time. We were going to eat with them. It was going to be a great surprise for them and Elder Bogle and I were so excited we could barely the sleep the night before. And then the flooding happened. However, they still are planning on being sealed in the temple in July. Elder Bogle and I cannot wait. It was great getting back together with Elder Bogle. It was a really fun exchange talking about the good old days up in the mountains of ZhuDong.

Really good news. My sickness is gone. About time! It feels really good to do the work not sick.

This week was Zone Conference. Our mission topic for this month is Following the Spirit. It was such a great meeting. President Grimley has taught me so much, and it will be weird to see him go. It was his last zone conference. Elder Sheng and I also did a training during the conference that went pretty well. It was a lot of fun and a really great meeting. Since the meeting I've been focusing really hard on listening to the Holy Ghost, and I've seen some crazy cool miracles. Here a couple.

We were contacting after dinner in a part of our area and we were getting rejected pretty hard. I said a prayer and had a feeling to go to this alley that in my six months in TaoYuan I'd only been to a couple times and isn't known for having many people, but the feeling was pretty strong and we went there. While there, my companion was talking to someone and there was no one else to talk to within sight and sound of him so I knocked this random door and there were 3 guys in there. I asked if I could share a message with them and they invited me in and invited me to eat with them. I said wait a second, I'll be back. I went and got my companion and we taught these guys a lesson and set up a next time. They said we could come back anytime. Ha. It was pretty cool. 

The other great miracle was while we were on our way to Ward Mission meeting. I was riding through the park 2 minutes away from the chapel. The meeting was scheduled to start in 3 minutes. When out of the corner of my eye I saw a guy in the park. I had a strong feeling to talk to him, but I told myself no, I don't want to be late for the meeting and kept riding. The feeling was still there and I said no and then I got to the edge of the park where I could see the chapel and I felt almost scolded by the spirit. So we went and talked to him. I called the other Elders in our ward and told them to tell our Ward Mission Leader we'd be late. Then we continued to talk to Brother Yang, a husband looking for something to bring more happiness to his family. We prayed with him and he's going to bring his wife to meet with us this week.

On the not so positive side, Yang LiAn's mom isn't going to make her baptismal date. She won't give up coffee, and because she feels "pressure" has stopped reading and is praying inconsistently. Really heartbreaking.

Overall things are great. It's the last week of the transfer. It'll be interesting to see what happens with move calls as well as a brand new mission president. I know all will be well and the Lord with put us all where he needs us.

I love you all.

Elder White