Elder Daniels meets Elder Barton

Well, I'm in Taiwan and I love it!!! We arrived at approximately 12:00 am, where we met the AP's and our mission president. President Nielsen and his wife are very, very, very sweet people and they are so full of love. I'm so grateful to have them. On the bus ride to their house, they handed us new books and drinks and some sweet Taiwanese candy, and they began the orientation. When we arrived to the house, they sent us to an apartment on floor three. We were beat and we crashed in the most comfortable beds in the world, compared to the MTC table beds.
The next day we woke up and I realized that the temple was right across the street and my, was it gorgeous. We went for a run at the Chang Kai Shek (check spelling) memorial. It was a gorgeous morning.
After that, we returned and had orientations all day, until night, where they finally let us go off with some older missionaries to do some contacting!!! It was insane!!! We contacted everyone we had a chance to talk to. I then realized that I couldn't understand a single word they were saying! I think they taught us the wrong language in the MTC or something or maybe I got on the wrong flight and went to Japan, ha, just kidding. I could catch a couple things that were being said, but not much. Right now my ability to speak the language is far superior to my ability to understand it, but I'll catch on after about a month or so.
That first night was sweet. I went with Elder Marble who told me that I should “dan jones” it on a street corner. "It's a wonderful feeling," he said! Ha. I thought he was kidding at first, but he was being quite serious so I obeyed. At a 90 SECOND STOPLIGHT, I went up on a bike I was borrowing for the night, and I bore my testimony to the people as loud as I could. I got some pretty weird looks. Some people smiled, I don't remember what I said, but all I remember was that It sure felt great to stand there on that street corner. It gave me confidence and we got 3 appointments that night.
The next day we went to the place where Taiwan was dedicated for missionary work. They allowed us to go off on our own and dedicate the next two years of our life to the Lord. It was a great experience, the spirit was very powerful there. When we got back, we ate and had a testimony meeting at the president’s home, in preparation to meet our Trainers! They had us go back down to floor three and get our stuff together so that when we met our trainers we could be all set to depart.
We went across the street to the temple/church/visitor center building where they had already hidden our trainers in a special room. They put us in a different room w/ our luggage. They told us to grab our scriptures and get ready to meet our trainers. From a distant room we heard the song "Called to Serve" playing loudly on a piano. They had us line up and walk into the room where we saw 9 missionaries singing "Called to Serve" at the top of their lungs. We joined in, and then they made the announcements of who would be with who. I was the second to last to be called up and they announced ELDER BARTON and ELDER DANIELS! That was great.
Elder Barton is an answer to my prayers, he has a VERY strong testimony of Jesus Christ, and is full of charity for the people here in Taiwan. I will learn so much from this Elder, I am so grateful. He is from Parowan, UT. He went to the Naval Academy before he served. This elder is so awesome, I've had so many people tell me that he has THE BEST Chinese in the mission, I don't doubt that at all. He's been out for a year and a half and he's read Jesus the Christ in characters, the Book of Mormon, the entire mission library. Ha, impressive.... but what’s most impressive is his desire. He loves this work, he loves these people and he has so much faith.
We've been called to labor in the Sanchong mission, which is 20 minutes from the temple. It is a PACKED city FULL of families with little mei mei's and didi's ready to hear the gospel. This is a big change for him because he's been serving in the Taipei temple area where he has been zone leader for the past 6 months. He is such a good missionary. He's just as excited as I am to get to work here in Sanchong. We'll be "whitewashing" the area.
So yeah, after I met My trainer Elder Barton, we went out and bought all the mission stuff including a bike and rain gear which were STOLEN already. They were locked up I promise. I'm sorry. I think the Lord wants me to learn some sort of lesson from this, I'm still trying to figure that out.... man, I'm so sorry that bike was stolen. It was so beautiful, the bike and rain gear together were about 9500 kuai.... 305 dollars ish. Today I have to buy a new one. My president and companion recommended to me that that was the best thing to do because its gotta last me two years. I'm sorry. I'm going to paint this one up and make it look like trash. The story was crazy, about how it was stolen, I'll write more about it later. I don't have time right now. We have to fix up our new apartment and take care of everything so we can get to work, bringing souls unto Christ.
We've been working with 2 families here. We baptized the Yang family yesterday!!! My companion is such an amazing guy. I baptized their boy, Yangshanbo. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life and there will definitely be more to come. My companion has a picture of a little girl from Sanchong and we’re going to find her and baptize her family and I'm going to find a Ma family in this city. Well, I really don't have any more time, there is so much to say but so little time. I LOVE it here, the people are soo sooo sooooooo kind. Please pray for the Ling family. They are having a hard time giving up their tea. They have testimonies, but they need some help, prayer and fasting. Thanks family, I love you so, so much.

Phone call from the mission home

This evening we had a surprise phone call from Elder Daniels, President and Sister Nielsen. It was fun to hear all three of them on the phone, calling to say that everything is going well. The president said Elder Daniels is man of faith, a greatly prepared missionary and that they will have to run to keep up with him. The president said they have excellent trainers and Elder D. will meet his companion tomorrow. They will be sending a picture with the three of them. P-day will be on Wednesdays.
Sister Nielsen said they will take good care of our missionary, that he will be faithful in writing letters each week with lots and lots of details that mothers like to hear.
What a treat to hear from them tonight!

He's there!

I have been tracking the travel chart for EVA airlines, and it shows that Elder Daniels' place has arrived! By crossing over the International Dateline, he missed the whole day of March 26th except for one minute! He arrived in Taipei at 11:59 pm!

Phone call!

Dad and I just finished our phone call from Elder Daniels! He sounds wonderful! He said he loved the experiences in the MTC and is now eager to get to Taiwan. With just a few minutes left on his calling card, he bore his testimony in Chinese. Naturally, we didn't understand, but it made me cry, of course. Dad grabbed a tape recorder so most of the conversation got recorded. It's great to hear The Boy's voice! I'm grateful for modern conveniences when compared to the missionaries leaving Nauvoo and their families not hearing from them for months at a time. The next call will be on Mother's Day... Good luck, Elder Daniels!!

Last letter from the MTC

Well, the time is approaching fast. At this time tomorrow I will be boarding my first ever international flight, and most importantly, the time has come to preach the gospel to the people in Taiwan in their native tongue.
It is such a weird feeling, I feel like it was yesterday that I got here. The time really has flown by, and now I can speak Chinese, well, missionary Chinese. I know that the Lord will help me when I get there. I've been praying for my companion that I will receive. I really hope he is there for the same purpose I am. The Lord will help me progress in this language, he will help me teach. I love this quote by Elder Bednar. I can't remember it perfectly, but I think its something along the lines of, "You will never be good enough to get the work done, get out of the way and let the spirit do the teaching." I really love that quote.
This email is short because I have to take care of things before I leave. I'll call tomorrow! It will be great to hear your voices...I hope things are going well.
I love you, Elder Daniels

Tomorrow is the big day!

As far as I can figure the flight schedule, Jonathan will arrive in Los Angeles at noon Pacific time, have a 4 1/2 hour layover, then fly direct to Taipei on EVA Airlines, an Asian airliner. We are excited for the phone call tomorrow! We aren't sure when he will call or how long the call will be, but it will be wonderful to hear his voice! When he gets to Taiwan, it will be 8:00 in the morning for us. Taiwan is 14 hours ahead of Mountain time.
Today we picked up a package of things he doesn't need from the MTC and included were some pictures he had taken there. It's fun to see the missionary in action. Mom misses her boy but is very happy he is a hard working missionary!
Good luck, Elder!

A day and a half

After 11 weeks, Elder Daniels will be leaving the MTC on Tuesday, March 25th. He will go to the SLC airport and fly to Los Angeles, then to Taiwan. We think he gets to make a phone call home! Can't wait! Good luck, Elder!

One week until departure

Ni hao wo de jiating!!! (hello family)

Well, I am officially leaving for Taiwan on the 25th of March 2008! The bus will be here at 8:00 in the morning. We'll be flying Delta airlines through LAX. We are supposed to arrive at LAX at about 12:00 where we will have a 4 1/2 hour layover, so I will make the phone call between that time period if I get a chance. Just kidding, I'll call. We'll then board the plane and arrive in Taiwan at about 10:00 pm their time, 2 hours before the 27th of March. The 26th of March will never exist to me, sort of. I'm looking forward to it. I love airplanes and I'm going to get so much studying done. And, I'm going to hand out loads of BOM's (Books of Mormon) and it’s gonna be sweet.
I'm really excited to get to Taiwan and get to work. There are 11 of us going to Taipei on the 25th. Everyone else is leaving on the 24th. Twenty or so are going to Gaoxiong, 6 are going to Taizhong, 3 are going to Canada, 1 is going to Singapore and 1 going to San Jose. That covers all the Mandarin speakers in the MTC except the new missionaries who came in who that will go to Taizhong and Australia.
I don't think I need anything else before I leave. I appreciated the pictures and candy! That was great! I think I'll just pick everything I need up in Taiwan. This week I'll just use my card to grab some cash for travel and my bike. I do have a couple things I don't need. There is some weird service they have here where they let me give them all the stuff I won't be needing, and they'll send to a local post office for free and since you live so close to the MTC, and you can just come pick it up there.
My companion and I taught a great lesson at the TRC this past week. We spent 45 minutes with "an inactive member". We taught them parts of the first lesson and shared experiences. It was a really great lesson and good experience. The person we taught was an old man who opened the Taiwan Taipei mission 50 years ago! He said he was very impressed with our Chinese and said it was a lot harder back in his day to learn Mandarin He said they spent 9 months in a Language training center before they could start proselyting. That’s CRAZY!
I'm still progressing with the language. I can understand pretty much anything. But that might just change when I get to Taiwan and I hear real Chinese. MTC Chinese has its “own dialect”. This week I will start studying the characters a little. The way I will do it is by reading the Chinese hymn book. I also use 3 different Preach My Gospel books: English, Pinyin Romanized and the characters. I can't read the Book of Mormon at all yet in Chinese, because they haven't yet translated it to the pinyin version. They only have it characters.
It’s difficult to use the scriptures when you teach, because the scriptures are written with more formal symbols/syllables then I am used to. It’s called literature. In order to share a scripture with an investigator, you have to have them read it, but since it is so hard to understand, we have to pre translate it so that we can understand it as they read, and use words from it to help them understand the meaning of the scripture. I'll learn how to read eventually. I'm excited to learn the characters. Translating Preach My Gospel has helped me better understand the formal literary style of writing that they have. I really do love this language. It’s not a struggle to learn this language, it’s a blessing... and a struggle. We missionaries here are so blessed to learn this language. I can't wait to preach the Gospel next week to the People in Taiwan using this language.
We had our third branch president come into our branch yesterday. We have been here quite a while. Our old president was called to be a patriarch. Well, I'm gonna go eat some food. Love you much. Take care back home.
Love you, Elder Daniels

Mandarin, not Cantonese...

Two more weeks and I'm outta here! It's gonna be so weird going back into the real world, or Babylon as we refer to it, especially when everybody in the "real world" will be Chinese! But you know, as different as it will be for the first little while, I realize that I'm there to get the work done. I have my first Book of Mormon prepared and ready to go to give to somebody the moment I get off the airplane. Or, maybe on the airplane, who knows.
I just got back from the temple where I had the opportunity to see a couple of friends. It was crazy. There were two of them. Chase, from junior high and a buddy named Clayton from high school. Seeing how there are “millions” of elders at the temple on Monday mornings, I presumed them to be elders, too, so I thought it was funny that they would be called as companions together. But they told me that they only just received their calls and they are still living in Babylon. They decided to go to the temple today. It was sweet. Clayton received his call to the Taiwan, Taichung Mission. It was cool to see some old buddies.
Yesterday, instead of watching the Joseph Smith movie for the third time here, we decided to go back to our class room and watch conference talks in Chinese, which was very cool. At first when we put in the DVD and tried to pick the language, we picked the wrong one. We can’t read characters yet, so we accidentally chose the Cantonese language. We started listening and I realized I couldn't understand a single word they were saying! We eventually realized this had to be the wrong language, so went back to the language menu and switched it to the other Chinese character language and this time when we started listening, was much different. I could understand almost everything!!! It was such a weird/awesome feeling. It was like watching something in Spanish and not understanding anything, then switching over to Australian or something like that. A language that sounds really familiar and you can understand most of what they are saying...Australians. I like to pick on them a little now because there are so many people in our zone from Australia. It’s fun to be in the MTC where you are surrounded by so many people from different places. Anyway, as we were watching these talks I found it a little easier to understand the female speakers, because they seem to direct their talks to the Primary children all around the world so they like to use simple words. This made things much easy to understand. I understood about 95% of those talks, and about 76% of the authority’s talks. It was awesome.
The language is still coming along but slowly it seems. I think when I get to Taiwan, I will take a giant step, because Chinese is all I will hear when I'm there. I'm so excited!!!
I'm starting to learn a little of the characters by translating the children’s Book of Mormon stories book into to "pinyin",the romanized version of Chinese. Then I compare my "pinyin" with the "characters." I'm excited to learn more about the characters when I get out there, but my main focus right now is speaking the language so I can fulfill my purpose as a missionary.
Elder Holland came and spoke to us last Tuesday and it was the best talk I've ever heard. I'd write all about it but I don't have much time. He speaks a little differently than in general conference. He really opened up to us on the desires of his heart. It was a great influence and so awesome!
Well, I'm gonna go become "chibaole", eating to the point of fullness, so I'll say goodbye, love you... miss you. Love you Mom, Dad, brothers and sisters, friends, Matthew, Maren, Afton, Julianne, and Henry.
Love ya, Elder Daniels

He who never stays long on the phone!

THREE more weeks!!!! I'm almost there! Things are going great here and progressing very well. My companion and I have made the decision to stop speaking English completely. If we talk to somebody who doesn't know Chinese, one of us takes the role of translation. It’s been really helpful. My district on the other hand is still struggling to give up English all of the time, but they know that when they speak to me, “I won't understand them” unless they use Chinese.
With only three weeks to go and with all the excitement of leaving, it’s easy to slack off a little. But to be honest, as excited as I am to leave, I realize that in order to be successful, I need to work as hard as I can. The time I have right now to study is sacred. In the field I’ll only get about an hour a day to really focus on the language and not only language, but scriptures as well. The MTC really is a wonderful place. How many places are there in the world that allows people to really study the gospel all day long every day? None. I only get this opportunity for 12 weeks and 9 of those weeks are up. This experience really is sacred to me. I thought the MTC would be long and dreary, and it has been at times, but in reality, it’s been awesome.
This past week I had the opportunity to make some phone calls in the R.C. (Referral center). I love it there. It’s as close as I can get to real missionary work. Haha. I was blessed with the opportunity to receive a phone call from Deborah Martin. This lady is 50 years old. She has called the MTC 7 times for 7 different items, including the Book of Mormon. She said she’s never really been interested in having the missionaries come over, she just loves the free stuff. Who can blame her, free stuff is awesome! But yeah, I decided to pry into her life a little and ask her if she’s read from the Book of Mormon lately. She said “no” but she reads her Bible every day.
I continued to talk about the Book of Mormon with her, and I ended up teaching her all about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. I gave her the 1st and 2nd lessons in their entirety, haha, and she kept asking questions. I asked her if she believed that Heavenly Father appeared to Joseph Smith and she said “yes.” She then bore her testimony to me about prayer and how hers have been answered throughout her life. I then invited her to pray about the Book of Mormon and she was very willing. She said that she already felt like it was true and I felt inspired to tell her that it was the Holy Ghost that was giving her that feeling. I shared Moroni 10. The Spirit was so powerful…over the telephone!
Then we started talking about families, my favorite topic. I read to her from D&C 137, and taught her how families can live together forever. She asked me to send the missionaries over so she could learn more!!!!! Her phone was about to die. We had been talking for 48 minutes. I continued talking about the plan of salvation until her phone died and I’m pretty sure if I asked her to be baptized, she would have said yes. It was truly an amazing experience. I felt the Holy Ghost teaching through me. It was so awesome and I hope the missionaries going to her house can close the deal. She was definitely one of those golden investigators, and I am very glad she called in and I had the chance to answer the call. I will follow up next week to see how the missionaries are doing.
Anyway, that was definitely the highlight of my week. I can’t wait to have the opportunity to do that in real life. I have to finish learning Chinese first though, Haha, and I will.
I gained my weight back because I started eating smarter and working out more. I’m pretty sure its not fat, haha, if it is then I’m even more excited to get to Taiwan and ride bikes all day and convert people!
President Boone (MTC President, a former LDS Air Force Chaplain and friend) and his wife came to our ward a couple weeks ago because we changed branch presidents. I told him that he knew my parents and he said he was delighted to see me. He is a VERY good speaker and I enjoy his jokes. He shared the poem that Dad has in his reference books (The book of Mormon/TV guide) at the missionary devotional that we have every fast Sunday. It was funny. Well, I’m pretty hungry, and I know you want me to eat more food, so I better say “zaijian” love you.