Here is Chris' letter for this week:
Hey everyone! Another week gone and one full of miracles at
that! I'll use some stuff I wrote to President B to go off of to
start:
This week was SO good here in TaiNan! We were
able to give a long-time investigator a baptismal goal on Friday! He was met
several months ago and was very prepared; his only problem was that his parents
thought baptism was "inappropriate" for him, but after talking about
it and the blessings of baptism and ultimately after having him share his
testimony with us, he agreed and is excited to be baptized on the 30th of this
month! It's a miracle!
Well, the prayer roll at the
Temple works! I had my parents put his name on it, and now 'M' (one of our investigators) has some good news! We meet with him 3 or 4 times per
week (usually to eat with him) and his testimony is so strong! He didn't want
to offend his family by being baptized after they didn't like the idea, so it
was kinda put off for a while, but he came to church most weeks and FHE EVERY
week as well as other ward activities. We basically just convinced him to make
the decision to get baptized and then let his family see how it's blessed his
life. It's refreshing to see people go against friends and family for something
they know will be great for them
We also were able to give 2 priesthood
blessings to a member and to an investigator. They are both such humble people
and really had faith that the blessings would help them. I love seeing people
with that much faith in God and His power and love for them; It really
strengthens the faith of both the giver and receiver of the blessing - It's
great.
We were going to dinner and went down a road we use several
times every day and a woman opened her door and freaked out (in a happy way)
when she saw us and had us pull over; turns out she's a former investigator
that stopped meeting because she got in a scooter accident and was in the
hospital for a while and then was too shy to come back to church or meet with
the missionaries because her face was kinda scarred from the accident AND she
was told to refrain from leaving the house because she has some blood in her
brain that's pretty dangerous. She asked for a blessing, which we of course
gave her, and then said that it must have been set up by God that she opened her
door right at the time we rode by; her faith was super strong and we gave the
Sister's her info.
The other blessing was for a SUPER humble, strong member
that we meet with every week. He's had some health problems lately and asked us
for a blessing. Such a great guy!
At church this week we had 2 investigators at church that
have never come before; one of them always seemed uninterested in coming and
the other has had a HUGE desire for baptism, but just hadn't come to church
yet. They both came this week and watch the primary program and really enjoyed
it.
'A' is an investigator that was
taught everything by missionaries in another area before moving here and he
couldn't go to church because his parents forbade him to do it; now he's on his
own at college and decided to do what he knows is right; Lately he's had tennis
matches and has visited family, so couldn't come, but he came this week!
The other one is a Mr. 'L'. He's
an older man who owns a traditional Chinese medicine shop and plays
cool Chinese instruments. He's been baptized in 2 other churches and his faith
in God and Christ is strong, but he never seemed interested in coming to
church, but he ended up coming this week!
Someone asked me this week what the hardest
part of my mission has been so far; I realized that the hardest thing is
learning how to deal with people 'misusing' their agency; It's so sad to see
people make wrong decisions and to reject and/or throw away wonderful things
for the "easy" road through life. Then I realized that must be how
God feels when I do something wrong too. It's a hard, but valuable thing to
learn; It helps to develop all of our Christ-like attributes.
That's self-explanatory and applies to more than just religion and
is applicable to everybody.
Anyway, I'm super happy to be here in Taiwan and to have all these
wonderful experiences. This church is true; Christ lives; God loves us
all.
Elder Wolf
Short random stuff:
- I killed a very large cockroach in my companion's bathroom with
hand sanitizer and a lighter...enough said.
- We had interviews and planner checks with President this week; I
really love President B; he's super amazing and is definitely meant
to be here.
- The missionaries here participated in the primary program. We
sang 'I am a child of God' with the primary kids; they sang verse one in
chinese, we sang verse 2 in English, then we all sang verse 3 in chinese.
Pretty fun!
- I hit day number 450 on Thursday!
- Elder Funk from the Seventy will be touring our mission at the
end of the month.
"I just danced with my
bicycle (trying to get my feet back on the pedals while running
at 15mph) and spiked metal pedals don't like skin. (almost healed now;
that was last Monday) My pants, socks and
shoes are fine and my companion got a good laugh from it."
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| My foot after it
slipped off my bike pedal |
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| A trip to McDonald's
with my Zone Leaders | | | | |
