July 23, 2012

Hello everybody,

What a fantastic week to be a missionary in TuCheng. This place is amazing. The work here is on FIRE. Due to the fact that last week we had our temple day and we moved p-day from Monday to Wednesday, I don't know that a whole lot has happened since last time I wrote. We'll try and take it one day at a time. 

Wednesday. I went to the temple and felt the spirit of the Lord so strongly there. It was my 3rd time doing the session in Chinese. I feel like I learn more in Chinese because as I listen I have to focus that much more. It was great to go feel the special spirit of the temple. The temple president is my good friend President Horner. When I served around the temple last year we used to get up early in the morning and play basketball with President Horner and some other senior missionaries, so I'm closer to the temple president than your average missionary. The cool news is I found out he was Uncle John's mission president! I talked to him about it Wednesday and he asked how John was doing. He still remembered a lot of things about John, so that's really cool. The Horners are great people. After the temple Wednesday we went to have our p-day fun. There is a gondola that is closed on Mondays so missionaries can only go on temple day weeks. It was really cool to see the views over Taipei from the gondola. The gondola also had a glass floor which was cool. I have a lot of cool pictures to send home from that occasion. That day I came back and taught English class. We talked about bucket lists, all the things they wanted to do before they die. It was fun to get to know people that way and realize that 99% of Taiwanese people just want to make lots of money and buy lots of things. They need the Gospel!! It was really fun though. My bucket list included riding a Razor scooter on top of the Great Wall of China. It will be done.

Thursday. Went on exchanges to our neighboring area. Saw a lot of good miracles, but my favorite was Grandpa He. We were going to drop off a card to the Elder's in that area's investigator. As we were riding I saw this old grandpa getting off his scooter. I pulled over and started talking to him and we immediately became friends. He invited me up to his house, and so I called to the other Elder to come over and we went up and talked with him. He was Awesome! He showed us a bunch of pictures of his family and we shared with him that prayer can bless families. He asked us to teach him how to pray the Christian way and then he and his wife prayed with us. He shared with us a cool Chinese poem that really tested my ability to read Chinese... but I eventually got it. And then we shared a little message. We invited him to offer a closing prayer. He made a big ordeal out of it and didn't want to make any mistakes. He wanted it to be perfect. So he recited his prayer to his wife, who wrote down the whole thing. Then after he read over it making sure it was good, he bowed his head and said our closing prayer. They were cutest old Taiwanese couple, and the nicest people in the world. The Elders there in that ward will be going back to visit tonight. It was a great miracle.

Friday- Brother Huang was baptized!!! It was so great. He is so absolutely amazing. He shared his testimony and said, I've only been coming to church for about 3 or 4 weeks, but I know it's where God wants me. He shared his experience in meeting the church. It was quite amazing. Last year he had a serious car accident. It resulted in a couple different things. One was that because he nearly died he began thinking about the purpose of life, another was that it made it so he had to go get treatment at the hospital. While at the hospital he met Brother Tang, an elderly man and long time member of the church in Taiwan. This 70 or 80 year old brother shared the gospel with 20 year old Brother Huang and invited him to meet with missionaries. We called, he came, he was baptized. I love that story, because it teaches me a lot about sharing the gospel after my mission as a member missionary. This brother can share the gospel with someone 60 years younger than him, and simply give him an invite, that led to Brother Huang's baptism! It's really great. Another cool thing was that our mission president came to attend. Last week we called him to let him know Brother Huang passed his interview and I jokingly told my companion to invite him. My companion did, and President and his wife came! It was great, it was the first baptism they've attended in Taiwan thus far. It was nice of them to come because it's still a bit of a trip from here to the mission home. Before the baptism we had a lesson, and president and his wife came early. I invited President to teach with us. That was cool too! He's really eager to participate in the work with us, which is really fun! We had our investigator Brother Qiu's interview... he had some things we didn't know about that still need to be cleared up, so we're going to continue working with him. 

Saturday- I did a lot missionary work... One cool miracle was that we had an investigator, in a dream, have Jesus call him little brother and invited him to follow Him. Not too shabby! This investigator is super close to baptism!

Sunday-Partook of the sacrament. Did more missionary work. We had a ward activity last night where our recent converts were able to meet a lot of members, so that was great. During lunch we also cleaned out the fridge and freezer in our apartment. SCARY. Elders haven't cleaned that out for probably a year. Lots of expired, rotting food. 

In closing I'll share one last bit of good news. The DanShui bishop's wife is a temple worker, and I ran into her at the temple. She informed me that DanShui ward made their goal and they're building a Chapel!!! Great news!!!

Now for my favorite English of the week, the English we see here is truly amazing! "I fine out a sight of full of happiness, let me inform there to a someone." This was on the bottom of a card, like the kind you give to others for holiday occasions.
I'm loving Taiwan!
Elder White