Letter from 12/16
miracle time!
We were eating lunch in a FamilyMart and a BeiBei (a
grandpa) self-contacted us. He's a Christian and he reads the Bible a lot. He
reads 2 chapters every morning, marks things in his bible and then writes down
what he learned and stuff in a journal! We talked to him about the Restoration
and the Book of Mormon and gave him a copy and he wants us to find him again
this week. He spends most of his time in that store every day, so he's not hard
to find. He also speaks English and about 4 other languages.
On Saturday two women in a car on the side of
the rode flagged me down. It was a mom and daughter who said they want to
become Christian and come to church! In other words, they want to be baptized.
lol. So we got their info and passed them along to the Sister missionaries
since we can't teach women without another male there. A member in our ward
cooked lunch for lots of people at her house yesterday after church and the two
women came! Not only did they come, they seemed to really enjoy it! They were
taking pictures with us and of everything and smiling the whole time and they
were just fitting in well with everyone. If they were men, they'd be OURS to
teach! Why aren't they men?! lol. we did all we could by being in the right
place at the right time on the street though. I would honestly be shocked at
this point if they DON'T join the church.
Yesterday we were also invited over to a
different member's home for dinner. It was really cool. The mom has cancer and
just went through 2 chemo treatments, but she had more energy than anyone else
there! We shared the Christmas story and same some Christmas hymns and had some
fun. They fed us peanut butter noodles and the dad was trying to say
"peanut butter noodles" but couldn't. Lots of people want to learn
how to say certain words in English and the way they end up saying it is
sometimes...very interesting...we tried for a minute to help him pronounce it,
but he gave up and settled on "p***s (sounds almost like 'peanuts') noodles"...yup....that was very
fun...LOLOLOL!!! This family's son is an RM and is in charge of our weekly
correlation meeting each Sunday, so we just did it in their house. Elder
F was volunteered by a sister to play the Ukulele for a Christmas
activity and the family thought it was cool so they brought out a
clarinet...Elder F then told them I used to play clarinet, so now I might
be playing a song for New Year in February. Oh, and they want me to cook some
vegetables for Saturday's activity too...Well, my patriarchal blessing said my
talents will be of use and enlarged on my mission...here we go!
We had a lesson with a man who just married a
member (the tour bus driver). He's basically ready to be baptized and has a
strong desire to. He has a social smoking problem that he says is very small.
We'll check up on him soon and see how he's doing with it and give him a
baptism date! I'll probably get to see them go to the temple to be sealed in a
year too! Same with the family of the 13-year investigator!
Interesting fact about Taiwan for this week: The garbage
trucks are painted bright yellow and have sunflowers on the side. They also
play music. There is no set garbage day, so you basically pile up trash and
when you hear the music you run outside to throw your trash out. It's like the
ice cream truck...but the exact opposite...
Still no problems with healing from surgery, so I probably
will stop giving you updates every week :) I'm healing super well and feel
completely back to normal. I'll just have a scar for a year or so, but I don't
think it'll be a permanent scar.
The weather has been really nice this week. No rain and
sunny skies. warm with a cool breeze in every direction. literally. No matter
what direction we're traveling, the wind is ALWAYS against us. No joke. :)
I can't think of anything else for this week. ;)
Love you all!
-Elder Wolf
Letter from 12/23
Hi family!
I'm going to start with my quote of the week:
6:30 am, 12-22-12
Wolf: "I'm pretty upset and disappointed right now, I'm
not gonna lie."
F.: "why?"
Wolf: "I'm not dead...as in I'm still alive...as in the
world didn't end yesterday...yeah, I'm upset."
F.: *lol*
So yeah, good to know you're all probably still alive. If
anything happened on 12/21, it wasn't it Taiwan! YAY!
I totally forgot to ask last week, but when did Christmas
break start for everyone and when does it end? It's also now been over a year
since Hunter and I got our wisdom teeth out! crazy eh? That doesn't seem like
that long ago!
I've decided my bike is going to become very personalized
and sexy. If anybody wants to send me stickers/vinyl (preferably
water-resistant stuff) I'll be decorating my bike with them. You can tell
anyone you want, but they can't be big stickers because bike frames aren't that
wide. 3" inches tall is about the limit, length isn't a huge deal.
Thursday was our mission-wide Christmas activity! I got to
see my MTC district (the ones in Taichung at least)! We went to a Buddhist
temple and looked around and took pictures and sang and stuff (i'll send some
pictures in a zip file) then we went to this area where you walk around and buy
stuff (not a lot of stuff I want right now. I bought a head massager thing, a
soda and a small keychain. spent like 3 USD total. after that we went to an
all-you-can-eat steakhouse with 13 different types of cuisine. It was sub-par
honestly, but the mongolian-style bbq area wasn't bad! After that, we went to
our chapel and had a Christmas Devotional. This pretty much took up the whole
day, but we had 2 hours of proselyting at the end of the day.
We had a lesson with a long-term investigator this week.
He's 17 and has a testimony and a desire to be baptized, but his parents are
against it. He hasn't even been allowed to come to the church for lessons. But
this time he came to the church! why? He has a new girlfriend and was able to
get away with going to the church because he was hanging out with her. She is
now our investigator too! If he can get permission to be baptized, then 2 weeks
later, he can baptize his girlfriend! how cool is that! He now has a girlfriend
that we can use to "motivate" him. lol. The power of women is
amazing! seriously.
Another person we visit frequently but doesn't count as an
investigator is a man named G. His english is perfect and he's giant and
strong and kinda scary. He used to be in the mafia as a mob boss. literally, no
joke. we think he's killed people. I seriously am not exaggerating. He loves us
and likes to talk with us. We visit him at his store in a park about once or
twice per week. Anyway, his brother works at the store and we gave him a little
pamphlet to read about prophets, prayer, baptism, the restoration, etc. The
next time we visited them, his brother was reading the pamphlet when we walked
in! We still don't know if he has interest but it's cool! So yeah, anyway, back
to G. We go to the park a lot to find people and we've seen him walking
around with some shady people and we've heard him yelling at his brother a lot.
He all of a sudden has a lot of money to remodel his store too. We tried to go
caroling the other day with 4 other missionaries and he started almost yelling
at us saying "I'm Buddhist, if you come to my temple I might come to
your church" etc. So we think he's joined the mafia again. We're gonna try
once more with him this week and it's a make-or-break lesson. Anyway, moral of
the story: I'm teaching a freaking mafia mob boss in Taiwan. wish me luck.
love you!
-Elder wolf
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