October 8, 2012

This is my son "trainee"

his first stinky tofu

 His first planning session (sleep)

With our investigator Brother Yang (grandpa)

 These are some shots of downtown SanChong from the roof of our apartment. In the area that looks the most "downtownish" there is a big WHITE building taller than the rest. The 7th floor of that building is our chapel

 

 

 

 his first scooter contact

 Some shots of SanChong at night

This week flew by. I can't recall much of what happened. I feel like I was just emailing home yesterday. It's amazing how quickly time goes by out here in the field. We're really working hard in this new area to try to help this ward out. The ward is amazing. Microscopic, but amazing. They want growth so badly. The members all fasted for it yesterday. I'm often really moved by the SanChong ward and their desire for growth and their love for missionary work. I've been in a lot of areas where the wards were big, and comfortable, and established. They'd be happy over convert baptisms, but not too excited. This little, needy, SanChong ward is full of fire. I know that the Lord has been hearing their prayers and he's ready to take SanChong to new levels. I really hope that before I leave here (anticipating this as my last area) I can help establish SanChong as a strong, successful area of the mission, as well as help the ward grow. I love working with them. Our bishop and his family are amazing. The lack of priesthood in the ward is astonishing, and to top it off the Elders quorum president is moving next month. He was a good guy with a testimony, wears Vans to church and doesn't wear a tie, but we really can't afford to lose him. 

This week we met multiple times with a man we found last Sunday. He's 31 years old, recently married, in between work (so he has time), and exactly what we need to get things started in the area. He came to church this Sunday and is progressing quite nicely toward the baptismal date we set. We'll probably end up moving the date earlier a bit. He's a really big miracle. A nice, humble guy, seeking the truth.

Our other great investigator is Brother Huang. He's the one I gave a blessing to the first day here in SanChong. He's a great guy. So nice. He's the last member of his family to be baptized and we're trying to help him quit smoking. Every time we go out there to visit he's always so excited to share with us an experience he had turning down cigarettes, or coffee, or alcohol at work. It's really funny. He's smoking a lot less than before. I really want this family to have the chance to be eternal. 

There is a recent convert here who was baptized a little bit before we got here. I heard that he was anticipated to die the week after his baptism due to his cancer, but after his baptism he's improved a lot. His body is still not great though, and yesterday it was apparent he wasn't super comfortable in church. He asked for a priesthood blessing. The ward mission leader and I gave it to him. I anticipated the ward mission leader, a member of 20 years, would give the blessing and I'd just anoint the oil (I prefer members to give blessings, because they can develop that relationship, whereas us missionaries will be gone in a matter of months). However, the ward mission leader had never given a blessing before and asked that I do the blessing. I agreed and it was a very special experience. I've never given a blessing to someone that close to death before. The spirit told me to tell him that he needs to cherish his time with his family and spend as much time with them as possible right now. He was also told to help them prepare to receive the gospel. It was a very humbling experience to give a blessing to someone who is in the final stages of their mortal existence. 

I'm really enjoying my trainee. He's a good missionary, but more importantly, his attitude is great and we get along really well. I think it'd be super hard to open a brand new area with someone that I wasn't good friends with, and I'm very thankful for that. It makes things that much smoother. 

In the training program of the church we have a lot more studies as a trainer/trainee and so we study until 12:00 noon. This causes us to just be at home all morning. We've developed a habit of eating/snacking throughout studies to stay awake/and then we're not really hungry for lunch. The problem is we've adopted a weird diet consisting pretty much of bread, hazelnut spread, and soy milk. It's pretty great. 

We've been blessed to work with a family the bishop asked us to visit. It's a Sister Cai. She is a single mother with three sons. 2 sons are less active, the other is a non member. It's sad. The oldest 2 sons, 18 and 17 in age, have left home, dropped out and are out living on their own. The youngest son is 13 and is following the same path. They don't listen to the mother at all. I've never met someone with a situation so hard. There is no visiting teaching system set up in the ward, and her home teacher didn't even know he was her home teacher until I sought out the list this Sunday. It's super sad. There is so much work to do here. SanChong is moving in the right direction, but we've got to get it moving there faster. 

One other cool thing that happened is that last week our bishop's wife and kids went down to the southern part of the Island to visit her family down there. While there they attended church. During church they met Elder Harrison Nickel! The bishop's little girls were so excited to tell me at church yesterday that they met my friend and that he was nice. Haha. They took pictures with them and Elder Nickel, it was cool to see them together.

That's about it for this week. Keep praying for SanChong. I can't wait for General Conference next week!! I know you've all already seen it, but we have to wait until next week. I love General Conference. My 3 favorite times of the year are Christmas, April General Conference, and October General Conference. Living Prophets!!!

Elder White

October 1, 2012

WOW... One of the most tiring weeks of my mission. Every day just DEAD tired. However, I'm happy as can be, and the Lord is blessing us as we're going about opening this wonderful area. 

We're in the hood! SanChong is home to the Taiwanese Mafia. It's such a BUSY area. The traffic is super crazy, and my little green trainee almost got killed a couple times this last week! It doesn't get much more fun. The one investigator left to us is actually doing really well. We went to visit Brother Huang again a couple times this week. He's got such a big desire to quit smoking and get baptized for his family. It's actually been such a blessing teaching him, I feel the spirit so strongly when I'm around him. We wanted to share with him about 1 Nephi 3:7 and how the Lord promises us he'll provide a way for us to keep his commandments, and as we began getting into it he got really excited because he remembered the story. He was like a little 10 year old primary child as he excitedly summarized Nephi and his brother's story. It was really great, and the more I teach him the more I have a desire for him and his family to be eternal. He was able to attend the afternoon branch this week after he got off work. I'm really excited for his potential.

This last week we prayed especially hard to be able to get people we met within the week to attend church. It's not the easiest task but we prayed for it and were really blessed to have a couple other people attend sacrament meeting. However, they weren't exactly what one might call golden.

The first one was a college kid I met on the street. We began contacting him and he couldn't understand why someone could be Christian. He talked about how Christianity caused the crusades and so much more war and violence in the world. I looked at him and said, this is why I believe in Christ and shared Alma 7 about the atonement. He completely changed and wanted to come to church, it was a really cool miracle. He came to church and brought his girlfriend. We were super excited and they attended sacrament meeting. Then we went to attend Sunday School. Suddenly he asked if he could leave early. We said that's fine if he has to go, and asked if he had other plans or something, he then replied "No, I just have a strong discrimination against women and I can't accept sitting through a class taught by a woman." I was completely shocked. He agreed to come back again next week to the Sacrament meeting. We're also meeting with him again this week, but I've never heard anything like that. I'm thinking I must change our lesson plan to just talking about the priesthood.... Just kidding!

Our other guy that came to church might be homeless, might have killed somebody before, and might be crazy. It's all still up in the air. He has no family name, because he feels like his family wronged him and they ended up disowning him. He also claims he has a ton of people who owe him money. I asked our Ward Mission Leader to help us sit down with him and determine if he's crazy or not. Our ward mission leader kind of liked him. Needless to say I just invited him back to church and didn't set up a time to share the discussions. It was such an interesting day at church. However we're thankful for the many miracles we've had this week. We've been blessed to find some amazing, prepared souls who I know have a good chance at entering into the waters of baptism.

I'd like to share my favorite finding miracle of the week. I sat down with bishop and identified some less active Melchizedek priesthood holders, and we began visiting them throughout the week. We went to visit one who lived on the fifth floor of an apartment building. We accidentally ended up knocking on his neighbors door before his. We tried to strike up a gospel conversation with the neighbor, but he wasn't having much of it. So then we went to the less active's home. Upon leaving the less active's home I was prompted to talk to the neighbor one more time. I had no idea why. He had made it very clear he had no interest. I talked to him again for about 2 minutes, nothing came of it, and then we began descending the stairs down to the exit of the building. At the door of the building we met Mister Zhang. We would have been on our bikes and gone if we hadn't talked to the non-interested neighbor for an extra 2 minutes. We began talking with him and he was polite and listened. We began talking about Heavenly Father and prayer and said a prayer with him right then and there. As soon as we said "Amen" he immediately asked "Why are there so many different sects of Christianity?" We began sharing about the apostasy, Joseph Smith, and restoration. As we shared the first vision the spirit was so strong. He said "If this is true, this is HUGE!" He was super eager to set up a time to meet. So we set up a time and showed him where our chapel was... then the best part happened. He said "I work in that building." Such a huge miracle! He works in the same building as our chapel, and we'd never have found him if we weren't on the other side of our area, and if we hadn't listened to the spirit and talked to the guy that rejected us again. It was such a big miracle and it was exactly what we needed to happen to get our area off to a good start.

We had a great week and were truly blessed by the Lord. My trainee is a really good missionary, but even better is that we get a long great and he's got a good attitude. I know we're going to see miracles and we're going to baptize. The Lord sent us to open SanChong at this time because there are people here who need the gospel. There are people here who are ready right now. We need to trust the spirit to help us find them. I love this opportunity to finish up my mission in this manner. It's going to be fun, it's going to be hard, it's going to be TIRING, but I know it will be worth it and I know SanChong will grow and have success because the Church is true.
 

Pray for SanChong, Pray for Elder Peterson and me.

I love you,

Elder White

October 1, 2012

 

 All of these are from English class

Corn popsicles.

 Bad English on a wrapper

 More English class

September 23, 2012

Ok... so last week was pretty eventful to say the least. It all really started on Thursday, but I can review a couple things that happened toward the start of the week. Monday we held a West Zone p-day activity. It was fun to get the whole zone together and we made some food and played some games. 2 eventful things happened. One Taiwanese Elder was trying to make "smoothies" but he didn't know how. What he was doing was blending up all these fruits he bought from a grandma off the street with Ice. They were pretty disgusting but there was one sister missionary who felt bad that no one was drinking them, so she just kept drinking his smoothies. She later spent 15 minutes in the bathroom throwing up. Kinda sad, kinda funny. 

The other eventful thing that took place during zone p-day was that we decided to play that one game called "ninja." I don't really know, I think it's popular at like little Mormon gatherings. It's not a contact sport and the thought didn't even cross my mind that it could affect my shoulder, but as we were playing I moved my arm in a bit of a weird way and sure enough my shoulder popped right out of place. It's been in a lot of pain this week. The good news is I've been too busy and tired to think about the pain. Monday night I went to my last Family Home Evening in the TuCheng ward. WHAT AN AMAZING WARD. They truly are something special. I'm so thankful I had the opportunity to serve there for 2 transfers. 

Tuesday I went on exchanges with an Elder Honeycutt down in an area called SanXia. It's in the same ward as us, but they're forever away. A cool thing happened. While down there we ran into a couple of Mainland Chinese tourists. Of course they wanted to take pictures with us, that's just all of Asia, but as we got to talking to them we found out they actually had a quite a bit of gospel interest. The Elder I was with remembered that they had a simplified character Book of Mormon in the apartment down there and we asked if they'd like to read it and learn more. They were super interested. They told us where their hotel was and told us we could leave it with the desk guy in the lobby. We ran and grabbed the Book of Mormon. I wrote a short testimony in the front and we took it to the hotel. I get excited any time we can plant seeds for people in Mainland China. Even though we weren't finding people that actually lived in the SanXia area or anything, I really felt like we were accomplishing the Lord's will that night and doing the things he would have us do.

Wednesday we went and visited Grandpa Guo for the last time. He was pretty mad when he heard I'd be leaving. He told me that I should just stay and not tell the mission president. He told me he wouldn't tell anyone if I stayed. He then spent the last 20 minutes of the meeting plotting ways for me to stay or come back and visit. He's so funny. I will have to find a chance to make a trip down there and visit him one last time before I leave this island. He's so great. I'll miss him lots.

The real news of the week began Thursday. We went up for a full day of meetings for trainers. Then we took the new missionaries out for the night to work. I purposefully matched up with the Elder that looked the most like me, thinking that he would be my trainee, a guessing system that has been pretty accurate in the past under President Grimley, but not anymore. He was a great Elder and we saw some cool miracles that night. I just walked up to EVERYONE I saw and would say ''It's his first day in Taiwan, can he share a message with you" and then I'd just make him talk and testify. It was super fun.

I was surprised the next day when I found out he wasn't my trainee. Thursday night I also confirmed with a couple of the office elders where my new area was, even though I wasn't supposed to know.

Friday morning the whole mission got together for a new meeting that's never been done before now. It was a big move call meeting where everyone gathered and were paired up one by one and got their new companions. They started out with pairing up the trainers and trainees. President would introduce each new missionary then announce where they were going and who their new companion would be. When my trainee was being introduced President then said he'd be opening an area. He said he'd be going to SanChong and I got up and cheered... The problem was I wasn't supposed to know where I was going, and President hadn't announced my name yet... It was funny. So that's the adventure that began. I'm headed to SanChong, opening and training. I'll first tell you about my companion, then I can talk about the area.

My trainee

Name: Elder Zack Peterson

Age: 19

Hometown: Salina, UT... I know what you're thinking, and I don't know where that is either

Height: 6'5"  Yes 6'5" may currently be the tallest man in Taiwan

Hair Color: BRIGHT RED

Hobbies: Sports. He took state in the 3200 dash in high school. He's now on scholarship at UVU for track. Pretty athletic kid.

I'm actually really happy to be working with him. He's laid back in his personality but willing to work hard when it comes to the work. We're going to see a ton of miracles together. Taipei, SanChong district, Taiwan, and Salina, UT are a little bit different. But he's adjusting well. I'm just happy as a trainer that my trainee is 6'5" and has bright red hair, because what that means for me is I don't have to worry about losing him in Taiwan.

My Area.

SanChong district of Taipei. Pretty downtown. Pretty big. The mafia capital of Taiwan!! In my ward boundaries there are 400,000 people. That's just in a single ward boundary. Yet there are only about 60 members coming to church. The ward's biggest challenge is the Priesthood. There were only about 10 priesthood holders. That's why we're here. This ward needs priesthood. The last several transfers the ward has only had 1 set of sisters who didn't speak a whole lot of Chinese. They were whitewashed out... (both moved) and new sisters came in, as well as us opening the SanChong Elders. We were left with one real investigator. ONE. We've got work to do. The ward was so excited to see 4 missionaries and to see Elders. They really amazed me with how supportive and excited they were toward the missionaries and missionary work. I felt really overcome with emotion Sunday as I sat in that ward with a prayer in my heart hoping to be able to serve them and give them the kind of missionary they deserve and so desperately need. There is so much for us to do in the coming months.
 

The ward needs priesthood. The current second counselor in the bishopric isn't even in our ward. He is on special assignment from the stake to come be the second counselor, because they don't really have anyone else for the job. I really hope we can reactivate some priesthood holders as well as find and baptize some potential priesthood holders.

That first Friday we had a lesson with the one investigator left over from the sisters. It is a Brother Huang. He is a nice humble man who didn't graduate from high school, is illiterate, and speaks mostly Taiwanese. He understands Mandarin but doesn't speak much. His entire family are all members except for him. We went and shared a lesson. Thankfully we had it set up to have a member there who could translate the Taiwanese if we had problems. My Taiwanese listening ability is actually ok. I can get a lot of it, but there were some times where having the member to help us understand was a big blessing. I felt bad from my trainee. I've had like 2-3 lessons in Taiwanese my entire mission (including this one), and his very first lesson in Taiwan is Taiwanese... hahahaha super funny. Brother Huang wants to be baptized and my companion set a baptismal date with him. That was cool. The thing holding him back is his smoking addiction. We asked him if he'd had a priesthood blessing for quitting smoking and he said no. I felt prompted to give him a blessing, and what followed was one of the most spiritual moments of my mission. I called in his entire family from the back of the house and they all gathered in that small living room. I placed my hands upon his head to give him a blessing by the power of the priesthood. During the blessing I felt prompted to promise him he and his family would enter into the temple and be sealed as an eternal family. It was a very spiritual experience and I fought back tears as a finished up the blessing. I really love Brother Huang, and I know he's going to make it. He works selling fruit in the markets so he has to get up at 2 A.M. and then he works through the morning. He goes to bed at like 7 p.m. It's a rough job and that's part of the reason for smoking. Please pray for him and his family.

Another cool miracle took place as we were walking around our area looking for places to get the supplies we needed for opening a new apartment. We walked by a clothing store and as we passed it I was impressed to go back and talk to the man inside. I don't usually proselyte to people at their workplace, but I know the spirit is vital in this work so I returned and walked in. We got talking to the guy and found out he was a former from like 2 years ago. He also said we could come back this week and share more. It was a big miracle. I know the Lord has called us to open SanChong for very specific reasons, and I know that if we follow the spirit and work hard we'll accomplish what he wants us to accomplish here.

These last couple days have been a couple of the most tiring of my mission. Having to FIND, clean, move furniture into, and set up our new apartment, I feel a little bit bad for my trainee. We have a pretty ghetto apartment. I talked to the office elders about it and they said that SanChong is an expensive area, and that due to the fact that last month was "ghost month'' in Taiwan, no one was selling their apartments. Therefore the market was super competitive and expensive. We were able to get our apartment during this time because the person living in it before was an old guy who died just a couple weeks ago. It was in pretty bad shape, but it'll be fine. Friday we didn't have any furniture yet and so we had to go sleep in the neighboring area's Elder's apartment. They have one of the nicest in the mission. Haha, I felt kind of bad for my trainee.

There is good news. The neighboring area's elders are Elder Phelps and his trainee. Elder Phelps is from Alpine and I'm super excited to continue to work with him!! It's going to be a lot of fun.

I'm so excited to have these first few days behind us and to finally be settled into our apartment. We're going to go CRAZY this week in the work. I can't wait. I know we're going to see so many miracles... mostly because we're going to need them.

I love this opportunity and this work.
 

Pray for SanChong.

Love Elder White

September 16, 2012

Good Morning.


It was another amazing week here the TuCheng. The Lord loves this place, as do I. The biggest highlight of this week was hands down the baptisms of Andy Huang and Wayne Yang. These 2 brethren are so amazing. We have two completely different backgrounds here. Andy had been investigating for over a year and a half. Missionaries had actually stopped meeting with him, although he was coming to church, FHE, ward activities, and institute during that time. I felt prompted to begin meeting with him and in the first time sitting down with him told him he'd be baptized while I was still in Tucheng. I will be moving out of TuCheng in just a short 5 days after his confirmation. The Lord really touched his heart over the last little while and I feel like he was one of the biggest reasons I was called to serve in TuCheng. 


On the other hand we have Wayne Yang who was an investigator for just under a month prior to being baptized. The Lord knows him and prepared him prior to his even becoming our investigator. Over this summer vacation his older sister died of a stroke. It was an unexpected death because his sister was still in her 20's. He was feeling blue one day when he ran into a happy missionary. He said the happiness of that Elder made him willing to give his phone number which was then sent to us here in TuCheng. We shared the plan of salvation, promised him families are forever, and shared the other wonderful truths of this perfect gospel. He felt it. He prayed and felt it. Heavenly Father heard and answered his prayers and he was baptized. It's amazing the Lord gave him this right after the tragedy of losing a loved one. We took him on a tour at the "Taipei Temple square" yesterday after church. The temple tour sisters talked about baptisms for the dead. Something he's very interested in. It was wonderful. Also, he wants to serve  a mission!!! He's 21 years old right now so he's got time to do so. I hope he does it after he continues to grow in the church. I love the opportunity of working with so many amazing people. It's been a blessing to be here in TuCheng. We've brought 9 brothers into the church through baptism in the 12 weeks I've been here. HOORAY for potential priesthood!!!


My time here in TuCheng is ending. I will be leaving this Friday to go open a new area with a brand new missionary I will be assigned to train. I'm not supposed to know until Friday where I'm going but I've already figured it out, and confirmed it. I'll be headed to the SanChong branch in the Central Taipei Stake. It will be pretty nice to have such a central location as my last. I don't know much about the ward or area. I just know they don't have Elder's right now and they're in desperate need of priesthood holders last I heard. There were Elders there about 6 months ago who got closed down, and I heard that they were a little bit of "problem missionaries.'' I hope when we get there we can be welcomed in a positive manner. It's going to be a great adventure opening and training but I'm super excited. I couldn't think of any better way to finish out my mission. 



Another great miracle this week occurred while on exchanges. I ran into a less active man who I taught when I was on my 3rd transfer. At that time he hadn't been to church in over 5 years and came into the chapel just looking for hope. We met with him a couple times and then after finding out he lived in another ward, referred him to the missionaries in that ward. I never thought much of it. Now, over a year later I went on exchanges in that ward, and I ran into again, but this time he was much happier and much more active in the church. It was a cool blessing to be able to see him. 



Another great miracle took place Saturday night. We were on the street when out of the corner of our eyes we saw this man decked out in all sorts of bling and wearing a fedora hat. We knew we immediately had to talk to him, although we didn't have much time. We went up and engaged in conversation, after brief introductions, due to time, we exchanged phone numbers and said we'd try to find a time to meet. Then right at the end I invited him to church the following day, not giving it any more thought after that. The next day at church in walks Brother Jiang blinged out in his jewelry like a Chinese Mr. T. Hahaha he's pretty cool! We've set up a time to teach him again this week.



But wait there's more... I have an English student named Neo. He met with us after English class to learn about the gospel 2 weeks ago but didn't have time after English class this Wednesday. Needless to say we didn't expect to see him at church at all, however he unexpectedly showed up Sunday... with his entire family!!! His Father, Mother, and Sister. He himself is in his late 20's his sister is in her mid 20's and their parents all came. It was such a huge miracle. They had a great experience and said they want to come back every week!!


But wait there's more... Last week we began meeting with a Brother He, and he came to church. This week I taught him the restoration and he committed to reading the Book of Mormon. When I opened the missionary closet to give him a copy I found out we were out. Then I told him I'm sorry, and we'd get him one the following day. His reply was "It's okay, take your time, I'm only half way done with the gospel principles book." HAHAHA my face lit up. The teacher had let him take it home and he had already read half!!! That's so amazing... once he finishes that teaching him with be a breeze! He's super Golden!!!




This week, just like every other week, had its fair share of laughables. My favorite took place last night. We had this rather peculiar English student call us last night and ask if he could meet. We'd set up him up before and then had him stand us up, but we had to go to the church later anyway so we agreed on a time. He came. It was weird. We determined his interest wasn't in the gospel and simply testified that the gospel could help him and that Heavenly Father loves him and exists. In closing we invited him to say a prayer. What came next was unexpected. What followed was a literal 10-12 minute prayer. The first 6 minutes or so were stereotypical Buddhist worship (a common thing to hear in peoples first few times praying here, but never for that long of time), then he went on apologizing to Heavenly Father for being a Taiwanese person who didn't speak Taiwanese well. He apologized that he only spoke Mandarin Chinese, and told Heavenly Father it's because he grew up in Taipei where Taiwanese is used less. He also told Heavenly Father his parents are from the south of Taiwan, so their Taiwanese is really good. He pleaded for Heavenly Father to forgive his Taiwanese deficiencies. Then the last few minutes he prayed for world peace. He prayed for world peace because if there is a war he's not able to participate because of health reasons, and he really wants to participate in war, but because he can't, he wants world peace. Then he ended. It was painfully hard to keep from laughing during that prayer. But we made it out alive.




Overall it's been 2 great transfers here in TuCheng. It was a wonderful way to leave on these 2 great brother's baptisms. I love this work. Being a missionary is AWESOME!!!!


Also, I've determined that dragonfruit is the best fruit on earth. 


I love you all.

CTR 
Elder White

September 10, 2012

Hello Friends and Family,

Good Morning. This week really flew by. I don't remember all of what happened, but I'm sure most of it was good. The biggest and best news occurred on Saturday night as Brother Lin entered the waters of baptism, and covenanted with our Heavenly Father. Wow, he's so good! His desire for baptism was so strong, and I can't wait for him to continue to progress and grow in the gospel. He's a spiritual giant who has changed a lot in his life. He's all about repentance, and has a strong testimony of the saving power of Jesus Christ's atonement. Working with him has been an absolute privilege.

My favorite news this week is probably that Andy Huang passed his baptismal interview!!! This is a huge miracle! The TuCheng ward has been waiting for this for so long. When I first got here he was attending church, FHE, and English, but hadn't been meeting with missionaries anymore. He actually said he didn't like hearing the discussions from missionaries. The first day I had a strong feeling about him and we set an appointment with him for after English class. I shared the first vision and asked if he believes it. He said he did. We talked about what that means he HAS to do. In that meeting I told him he'd be baptized while I was in TuCheng. He chuckled at that. We've been meeting with him every Wednesday after English and every Sunday after church ever since. He's made some changes and adjustments and developed a lot of faith over the last two months, but most importantly, he's developed a desire and determination for baptism. It's been really amazing as the spirit has worked on him. I don't know what it was that brought the change, but Bishop and the entire ward are so excited!! 

But wait... there's more. After just 3 and half weeks of meeting with missionaries, Brother Yang Wei Xiang is also being baptized next week!! He is one of the most Golden people I've ever met. Missionaries in another area contacted him and sent us his number. The first time we did what we usually do here Taiwan on a first time meet--talk about Heavenly Father, who he is, that God exists and teach them how to pray. The second time we felt impressed to share the plan of salvation, and we found out his sister had recently passed away. Then we felt we should teach the restoration and that day at the start of the lesson he asked what was different between our church and other Christian churches. When we planned to teach the 10 commandments he asked us at the start of the lesson what these commandment things that he'd heard people in church talk about were. Then there was the coolest part of all... This week we decided to teach him the Word of Wisdom as a bit of a "challenge" to see how golden he truly is. When we shared what it was he said "oh this I know" we were astonished. We asked how he knew? He said that he had a member share it with him at church the previous Sunday. We asked if he was willing to live it. He said the only one he had a problem with before was he'd drink tea, but he said since that Sunday he'd already stopped drinking tea. He then told us he'd also read about the law of chastity in the Gospel Doctrine book. He was willing. We went over tithing the following meeting and asked him how big his desire for baptism is. He really wanted it so we invited him to move up his date quite a bit and be baptized this coming Saturday. He was pumped. He passed his interview Sunday morning and spent much of church services Sunday asking me questions about being a missionary and expressing that it's something he might be interested in doing. (The Gospel Doctrine lesson was on missionary work.) He's super cool. Super golden. It makes me so excited just knowing that these people are out there. Heavenly Father knows who they are. He wants us to find them. He will lead us if we're willing to be led. We've just got to follow the spirit.

I can't wait for this upcoming Saturday!!!

In other news I was in Taiwanese newspapers and likely on Taiwanese television. This week was Taiwan's annual "Clean up the World" event. It's a huge event in which tons of businesses, schools, and sponsors participate in a day of cleaning. Our mission participates yearly. What they do is they throw this MASSIVE event with music, dancing, a big stage, snacks and drinks, and then everyone breaks out and cleans the neighborhood for about 30 minutes, and then they get back together and have more music and dancing. All in all I think it does more harm to the earth than it does help. But oh well, it's fun. We were organized to sit in our zones with our missionaries. My zone was at the front of the event right next to the stage. At that point some guy was coming around and asking for each participating company/groups leader to come up on stage for pictures and like a opening ceremony. He asked our group who their leader was and some younger missionary who was talking to him from our zone pointed to me, his zone leader. Next thing I know I'm following some PR guy and lining up to go up on stage for the opening ceremony of this event. HaHa it was super funny. I got to dance next to the Taiwanese 7/11 mascot... a big honor here in Taiwan. I'll have to copy some pictures from some of the other missionaries that took them. It's pretty funny. I also while up there gave the main guy throwing the event a tract and started proselyting with him. He was all ears! It was sweet. 

Another cool bit of news is that a guy that my trainer Elder Erickson and I began teaching in Zhubei 1st transfer ran into me in Taipei. I asked him how he was and he got baptized last week!!! Super cool. That long after I'd left he finally got baptized. I'm glad Heavenly Father let me run into him so I could hear this great news!!! Really cool miracle!

When I was in TaoYuan our bishop's father was this really cool 80 year old man. Every time I saw him I'd shake his hand and say "long time no see" In Chinese, which you only say if it's really been a while. He would laugh and say it's only been 3 days, or it's only been a few hours, and then I'd say "in my opinion that's too long and then he'd laugh some more. This continued all 7 months there. Anyways... My MTC companion Elder VandenBerghe is now the zone leader there. He told me this week that he has kept that tradition up and they're still doing it every week. It's great!! It's kind of like the tradition of high fiving the stake patriarch every week in sacrament meeting. I'm so happy Elder Vandenberghe is down there with my old comp. We're actually going down there for p-day today to hang out with them, and hopefully see a recent convert!!!
I love this work. TIME FLIES!!!
I love serving the Lord.
CTR

Elder White

September 3, 2012

Hello there,


Good morning from Formosa.
This week was full of great news and events. I'll try to take it one day at time.


Monday- I usually don't talk about p-day, but this p-day was just too good! We went to TaoYuan! We got together with all of the missionaries I was down there with a couple transfers ago. Elder Sheng's new zone leader companion down there is Elder Vandenberghe, my MTC companion, so it's even that much more fun! I love those guys. We played some football. It was a much needed p-day down there with some really good friends. If you'd have told me the first day in the MTC that my 135 pound, dinosuar loving companion would end up being one of my best friends, I'd have thought no way. I missed all of those missionaries down in the TaoYuan zone. I was there for five transfers and exchanged with all of them. Really great P-day.


That evening we also got a referral from the TaiChung mission. It told of a Lin Hong Jie, who had been taking the discussions down south and was attending church. He just moved into our area. I gave him a call and he was super excited to hear from missionaries and said he wanted to be baptized. We set him up.


Tuesday- I get a call from the assistants informing me that my companion and I, in the following day's zone conference would be doing a 30 minute training. This is nothing new, but it was super late notice. What really caught me off guard was the topic "How to teach 9 year old Children." Super specific, no section of Preach My Gospel with this heading. It surprised me a bit.


Wednesday- We went to zone conference. During our training we pretty much just told them to use candy. 2 days later was zone leader council. The assistants used candy in their training. Which means our training was a SUCCESS!! Another cool thing happened Wednesday. We were at zone conference right by the temple, and the TaiChung missionaries were up for their temple day. I was able to see my favorite TaiChung missionary from the MTC. Wow it made it seem like time flies. It felt like last month he and I were on the plane just talking to everyone that would listen. Now we're on the back ends of our missions. He informed me that none of the missionaries that came on with us from TaiChung will be extending. They are all going home before Christmas.... ah man. I literally have no one on the plane home with me... well actually I have 3 sister missionaries as my travel companions......


Thursday- Did missionary things.


Friday- Friday was zone leader council. Prior to zone leader council my companion and I went to the mission office so I could do my interview with President Day, which had been postponed by a couple weeks. This interview was great. He informed me that I'd been a zone leader longer than he'd ever heard of. 7 transfers. He then extended the call for me to finish the last 3 transfers of my mission as a trainer. I was thrilled! He told me that I will be training a brand new missionary next transfer, as well as opening an area. It's going to be a huge challenge opening an area with a brand new missionary but I'm super excited! It's going to be a great adventure and an opportunity to see a ton of miracles. In interviews I also asked him about my decision to extend and said it's been on my mind a bit as of late just because I don't know what I'll be doing right as I get home. He gave me some good advice and told me I should start setting personal goals right now for things I want to do in those first few months home. In the last part of the interview he invited me to read all of D&C in 12 weeks. YIKES!!


It was a good interview. I'm super excited for the challenge that lies ahead in opening an area and training!
Also at the lunch following Zone Leader Council the TaoYuan zone leaders kept giving me their phone as a bunch of my recent converts there were calling. They informed some of them that they'd see me at that time. It was so great to talk to Brother Tsai and Nami!!


Saturday- I read the first 10 sections of D&C. Haha. Saturday morning Lin Hong Jie, after meeting with us a couple times during the week passed his baptismal interview. I'm super excited for this man. He is full of faith and I'm so excited for TuCheng to get this strong of a future priesthood holder. He met the church through his girlfriend, who was baptized last week. He moved up here and found new work because they were living together and he needed to obey the law of chastity. He's amazing. I can't wait for his baptism this coming Saturday!


Saturday evening was our ward's musical fireside. I played Love One Another and sang in English, then the second verse I played while a member sang in Chinese, then we came together for the last part with some harmony. I can't wait to show you the video.... the very last line I tapped into my super falsetto and hit some really high notes. I don't think it sounded very good, but I know the entire ward thought it was funny and awesome. It was a really fun fireside. My good pal, (and last companion) Brother Su, formerly Elder Su came up and performed his bamboo flute. It was pretty cool. His whole family came up so I got to meet them all. That was really great. He stayed for the weekend because one of our converts was speaking at the Taipei new member fireside Sunday, and today (Monday) he's driving us out to JiuFen and JiLong, some cool parts of Taiwan that you need a car to get to. Good times.


Sunday- Met with Andy Huang after church. My first day in TuCheng we went to a family home evening and Andy was actually the first person I met. He said "I'm Andy, I'm your investigator." I had a strong feeling from that point. After FHE I asked Elder Su if we had a time set to meet with him. Then I found out Andy had been an investigator for over a year, and missionaries had met with him twice in the last 8 months because he wasn't progressing. I called Andy that night and set up a time. The first time I sat down with Andy I looked him in the eye and quoted the first vision. The spirit was strong and I asked him if he believes it's true? He said he knows it's true. I asked him why he hadn't been baptized and he had gave several excuses. I told him the spirit that we were feeling was from God, and then I told him he would be baptized while I was in TuCheng. Bold, yes. Overbearing, I think not, because it was the spirit prompting me to say it. He kind of laughed but said he was willing to give it a shot. In these last 9 weeks I've been working closely with, and praying fervently for Andy. He's a great guy. Although these last 9 weeks with him have felt like an uphill battle, he's progressed so much. I didn't stop at the beginning when he wasn't progressing much, the spirit was saying to keep working with him. In our meeting yesterday I asked him how he feels about baptism. He said he knows he needs it and now he wants it. He's living the commandments now. We scheduled a baptismal interview this week!!!! I'm so thrilled. I really can't wait for him to make it, the ward has been waiting so long for this. He's come to church every week for over a year, and he attends a majority of church activities. In ward council a couple weeks ago I informed bishop that Andy's baptism was coming up. Bishop was shocked and thrilled!


Sunday night we had the privilege of attending a New member/ Investigator fireside in Taipei. Our recent convert Brother Jian spoke. He's a genius! Taiwan National University graduate (it's like the Harvard of Taiwan) He gave a talk that sounded more like general conference than fireside. I felt bad for the poor missionary that got stuck on translation duty that night. Haha.. Brother Jian is awesome! It was another great week here in TuCheng. The Lord is continuing to bless us with SO MANY miracles!!

I love you all,
Elder White