Great news that your book is in Wal-Mart. Hope all goes well at your writer's conference. Glad Veronica had fun at prom and glad she did well on the ACT. Hope Grandma's feeling better. Glad no one was critical.
I don't even know where to begin. This week was a great week for the work! Our companionship had such an amazing week last week, that we didn't know if we could possibly improve on it, but we did!! We absolutely tore it up this week. The Lord is smiling down on Zhubei.
This week we met with Scott Zhang and his family. I don't remember if I told you about them in my first email home, but last week we were on exchanges when my companion met with him. This week I got to meet with them twice and they are about as golden as can be. They are a husband and wife and have a little 2 year old son. They are so awesome, they are unlike any Taiwanese people I've come in contact with yet. The story of how the missionaries met Scott is cool. He pulled up to them at a light a few months ago and told them to pull over. Then he said he really liked our church's stance on families, and met with the missionaries right there. The bad news was that he lived in Taichung and was only in Zhubei for work. Fast forward to this transfer. He moved to Zhubei, same time as I did. It's been awesome to be able to teach this family. They keep their commitments (except coming to church this week!!!!) and they've done a lot of research on their own about our church. They are already starting to live the commandments and we haven't even taught them about them yet. They asked us if we could eat chocolate, because of the caffeine, after doing some Word of Wisdom research. The wife was really happy to learn that we could. They are so great. Last time we met with them Scott was asking us about the priesthood, and when we told him he could get it after he's baptized he got really happy and said he could use it to bless his family. They're awesome.
< br /> Jevon Wesley, the investigator I've talked much about and that we found in a miraculous fashion. Where to start with him. He runs with a rough crowd, a really rough crowd. Although this week he brought a friend named Gary (these are all these people's chosen English names). Gary is great! He has a decent Christian background and is curious. Gary is different from this group of friends. He is respectful and very smart. He's just hanging out with the wrong crowd and not reaching his potential. When we meet with him he begins by turning off his phone and then he's absolutely focused and participates in the lesson. He set a date for baptism the same day as Jevon. It would be really great to see these two kids enter into baptism. There will be some problems with the commandments, but their faith is good. They also brought two other friends to meet with us who have set baptismal dates for that same day, so we will continue to work with them, but Gary and Jevon are the ones who have been consistent in meeting with us.
Last night some other missionaries called and told us one of our investigators was at the church. We hurried over and found Jevon there. He informed us he had no money and no food and hadn't eaten at all that day. We prayed with him. It was really hard to know how to handle the situation. We can't have this group of kids expect that they can just turn to us for money or food. We prayed about it and decided we would go grab some of the food in our apartment an investigator had given us but we didn't want to eat, and we gave that to him. We asked him to try to budget his money better this week and buy food before anything else. It's tough though, the poor kid was starving, and just is in a bad situation. When we found Jevon, I had specifically said in my prayer to lead us to someone who we could help and change their life (not something I typically say in a prayer when we go out looking for investigators). There is no doubt in my mind or my companion's that we were led to Jevon divinely. We just need to figure out the best way to go about helping this lost soul.
This week English class was rough. I teach the beginner class, and the first week it was all adults and really fun, but my district said I got lucky. Now I see why. The kids I teach are all about 9-11 years old and absolutely crazy. They aren't really there to learn English. Their parents just drop them off to be babysat. They all just want to play games, and when I had run out of games to play, I started doing math with them. They loved it. Little Chinese kids love math, reading, and computer games. I thought it was just some overplayed stereotype, but it is so accurate! Once I started writing math problems on the board they were better behaved than ever before. They were still crazy though, and I still hate English class.
This week we were doing so well in our area we got permission to go down to Xinchu and help a couple of Elders in our district down there because they were having a rough week. Xinchu is a much bigger city and I knew I wasn't familiar with it so the night before we went I made sure I set my bike lock key out right next to my nametag so I wouldn't forget it the next day. Sure enough I forgot it. I wasn't too worried though. My companion never locks his bike and it's always fine. However, we parked our bikes, went into Subway, and returned 30 minutes later to find my bike stolen.
Let me just say that nothing positive ever happens from eating at Subway. When you eat at Subway you end up always regretting what kind of bread you ordered, always end up smelling like Subway the rest of the day, and sometimes you end up having your bike stolen. There goes the bike I paid $350 dollars for and got 3 weeks use out of. I did too good of a job painting it. The good news is there is another bike I can have from a missionary who just went home. But it really does suck. When we came out of Subway and realized it was gone, I was mad, but I said its not going to come back by us standing here. We gotta go preach! And we had a very, very successful afternoon of sharing the gospel.
Three weeks in and I've already been hit by a car and had my bike stolen, but the missionary work is good. We're working HARD. My companion is hitting his year on island mark and all but 2 transfers have been here in Zhubei. He said that in his whole time on island, Zhubei hasn't had numbers like these last two weeks or success like these last 2 weeks. We're breaking all Zhubei records and I've seen and felt a change in Zhubei from the time I walked off the train until now. The work is going great, and we're finding like crazy. All this is happening in what was supposed to be "the hard area to find people" in the mission. They even brought that up in zone conference this week. I'm glad I got sent to the "hard area" first thing. We're doing great things here, and I'm excited for what the future holds. Working hard and having a lot of faith. Loving it. Doing good work.
Do your best and good things will happen. Love you,
Elder White
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