Well, family, this week was insane! It started off nice on Wednesday when we went to the temple. I sat there and thought a lot about the eternities. It was a really peaceful thinking session. Then that night we returned to the real world where we taught English to little Taiwanese kids, one of my favorite things. Here is last week’s lesson plan: ABC's, tic-tac-toe, hangman, spelling game, describing game, old Macdonald, the hokey pokey, Simon says, SMASH BANNANAS, duck, duck goose, Let the wind blow,Fruit basket, charades, draw animals, musical chairs, 4 corners. Sing songs like Sing, sing sing, wiseman and the foolishman, head shoulders knees and toes, once there was a snowman, popcorn popping, pigs blood, toilet paper (being out). It was fun, so if you have any other ideas for teaching little Chinese children English, you just let me know.
We got a referral from the other elders. The guy’s name is Ryan. We met with him and he had been given a Book of Mormon that he had read a little with the other elders, and he's heard a little bit. We reviewed the 1st lesson and taught him a second and it went SO good!!!! I felt by the end of the lesson to invite for baptism and he accepted, after meeting with him one time!!! We told him that through this gospel, you can reach your ultimate potential! In order to reach it, you have to set goals, so we want to set a goal with you that will set you on track to reach that ultimate potential. He was a little scared at first, but excited in the end. He likes reading the Book of Mormon, he wants to know it is true. He's had some typical questions about God, and why He commanded Nephi to kill Laban, etc, but we answered, in a spiritual atmosphere. He's a laid back person, pretty accepting and his concerns aren't too deep. We asked him to pray and read about the things we have told him. The next time we met with him, he said he had talked about his baptismal goal with his parents, so he's taking it seriously. They said it was okay even though they oppose it. We will probably write a letter to his mom pretty soon. We call every night and follow up. He is a very good investigator, but he needs a spiritual experience. He's awesome and it will come. We are more bold with him and it goes really well. We tell him how it is and it has more meaning to him. I'm excited for this investigator, he is 20 years old and needs purpose in his life. He has good English, but we use Chinese. His date is set for New Years!
We’ve also found a couple families to work with. We've been filled up with lessons lately and it’s been WONDERFUL!!!! We've been working with the ward. There are 326 members in this ward, but only 120 are active, so we've been fishing for inactives. It’s really uncertain if they will be home or not when we visit, so we usually leave notes on their doors expressing our love. We ran into a Zhuang family the other day. The dad is the only member, the wife is Buddhist and the kids are half and half. The lesson went smoothly with them and both parents encouraged their kids to come to the ward activity and church. The parents can't ever come…they have work. (I roll my eyes). Anyway, their three kids came and they loved it and they are going to start coming more often.
We had a meeting with Eros, the most closed-minded man ever, we found two new families, one with a meimei called "Angel." We found a previous investigator who just so happened to be at his house when we stopped by and he thought it was fate. He said he wanted to come to church, but he's so busy with work, he'll do his best to get time off…ha. And the last thing is I've been able to find the holiday spirit. It’s been getting colder so we wear jackets and we go caroling on big street corners…it’s awesome! I love Christmas.
Today’s plans are MASSIVE. We're going back to San Chong to visit the Su FAMILY. Joyce is inviting Elders Taylor and Larson over to her house for Thanksgiving with her family. I am so excited to see them all again!!! When the Su family is finally baptized my, mission will be complete! Continue to pray for them and maybe you can write her a letter with your testimony. She would appreciate that.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
It has been a crazy week!
I love missionary work. I am staying in Taiwan forever. I love the people, the cute little meimei's in particular. I love being able to go out everyday, speaking to people that don't look exactly like me, hoping that they will understand my Chinese! I love riding my bicycle in the Taiwanese traffic, which is just like a video game. I don't think you will ever understand unless you come here. There are no traffic rules, but I would say that there are fewer wrecks than in America. It’s awesome, and I can't explain why it works out that way, but I think they are just better drivers here! It still scares me to death when I see a mom with three kids on a scooter, one being a baby in her arm! Wow! I love so much about Taiwan.
We had a lot of interesting experiences this past week. Two days ago we tracted and found a nurse across the street from the church. Now, I don't know much about Taiwanese nurses, but she seemed pretty sketchy from the moment we met her, haha. I showed her my family pictures and it got us on the topic of baldness, haha. She started off telling us that the reason people go bald early is because they eat too much meat! Once she told me this, I knew she was a quack, ha, so I said to her, "you know what? My friend’s back has some problems. It always pops when he bends over and I think he'd like it if you'd check it out!” She pulled Elder Gong into the operating room, he couldn’t understand what was going on completely, and she started doing some of the craziest procedures I have ever seen for fixing backs! It was so funny and kind of evil of Elder Daniels to wield his innocent companion to such torture, but hey, Elder Gong got his revenge when he said to her in his trainee Chinese, "Elder Daniels’ chest hurts." The next thing I knew, I was forced onto a table with 6 udder looking suction cups sticking out of my chest. I had no idea the purpose of them, but I walked away with 6 HUGE red spots on my chest and a popped neck, wow. You gotta love the old people in Taiwan, especially the grandmas, haha. You have to do what they say.
We saw a lot of silly things this week. We tracted a guy wearing a red speedo, who was completely plastered. One lady said if she saw God, she still wouldn't come to church, and a lot of other crazy things. We said a prayer of faith and found the Dong family. Wow time is out, I'll write better next time. Love, Elder Daniels
We had a lot of interesting experiences this past week. Two days ago we tracted and found a nurse across the street from the church. Now, I don't know much about Taiwanese nurses, but she seemed pretty sketchy from the moment we met her, haha. I showed her my family pictures and it got us on the topic of baldness, haha. She started off telling us that the reason people go bald early is because they eat too much meat! Once she told me this, I knew she was a quack, ha, so I said to her, "you know what? My friend’s back has some problems. It always pops when he bends over and I think he'd like it if you'd check it out!” She pulled Elder Gong into the operating room, he couldn’t understand what was going on completely, and she started doing some of the craziest procedures I have ever seen for fixing backs! It was so funny and kind of evil of Elder Daniels to wield his innocent companion to such torture, but hey, Elder Gong got his revenge when he said to her in his trainee Chinese, "Elder Daniels’ chest hurts." The next thing I knew, I was forced onto a table with 6 udder looking suction cups sticking out of my chest. I had no idea the purpose of them, but I walked away with 6 HUGE red spots on my chest and a popped neck, wow. You gotta love the old people in Taiwan, especially the grandmas, haha. You have to do what they say.
We saw a lot of silly things this week. We tracted a guy wearing a red speedo, who was completely plastered. One lady said if she saw God, she still wouldn't come to church, and a lot of other crazy things. We said a prayer of faith and found the Dong family. Wow time is out, I'll write better next time. Love, Elder Daniels
Friday, November 14, 2008
"The Process of Becoming Meek"
Note from Mom: Jonathan calls himself Elder Daniels thoughout the letter, so be prepared. :)
I finished reading the Book of Mormon in Chinese! Heavenly Father has blessed Elder Daniels a lot!!! Last week were president’s interviews, and oh man, Elder Daniels learned so much again. President instructed Elder Daniels on how to take advantage of every moment on his mission. President shared a lot with Elder Daniels, but what Elder Daniels took away the most was when president talked about the families he taught. That is what Elder Daniels desires most. Elder Daniels hasn't seen that much baptism on his mission, but President promised Elder Daniels that as he gives his time to the Lord, He will see that the families will start coming.
I've become familiar again with Jesus Christ’s gospel and the process of repentance, the process of becoming meek and teachable. It started last week during interviews when Elder Daniels and Elder Gong taught the zone leaders in a role play lesson. The goal: get the person we were teaching into the Book of Mormon. It didn't go very well. Elder Daniels saw a lot of his weaknesses and devised a theory to help him overcome the weaknesses. Elder Daniels is going through the Book of Mormon again and applying a whole new scheme to help him teach better while using the Book of Mormon and it has been AWESOME! I've been getting more out of the book than I ever have before. Preach My Gospel talks about the people who read the Book of Mormon and only get stories. My goal has been to go through each story and ask questions pertaining to some of the more important precepts that can be learned from each passage. You would be surprised by what the Spirit has helped me to learn. AWESOME.
I've been applying faith as I study, knowing that the words I read will need to be the words that our investigators need to hear and as I’ve gone through, I've been able to find perfect stories and situations for some of our investigators. This new way of looking at the Book of Mormon has brought even more excitement to my studies and has helped me teach using the Book of Mormon in a very simple manner. I love it.
Here is the big story of my repentance. Yesterday was Zone conference and everyone was excited because Elder Perkins of the seventy was coming to visit. (By the way, I have repented for all the time I thought "he isn't an apostle, he's just a seventy. Let’s listen to something else". Wow, I took the 70's talks for granted in the MTC so many times. Ah man, these people are AMAZING.
So I came into this zone conference with many questions prepared and I felt like the entire meeting was focused on Elder Daniels’ needs. And not only in reality, but it was literally focused on Elder Daniels needs! I'll tell you why. During the meeting they needed to have a companionship come up and do a role-play by teaching a first lesson to another companionship. Out of all 90 missionaries that were in the room, the names, "Elder Daniels and Elder Gong" were the ones to be announced for the role-play…ouch.
Elder Daniels was the senior companion and he needed to teach a ten minute 1st lesson with his trainee, to Elders Youd and Pullsipher, who were supposed to be 26 year old college students. In the audience was every single one of Elder Daniels’ peers, the mission president, his wife and a General Authority, who was boldly waiting to give us feedback. Elder Daniels had to represent the entire mission's teaching abilities and weaknesses in front of the general authority. No pressure, Elder Daniels.
It was a mess. I felt like a rambling monkey. It was almost as if Elder Daniels was under influence of the spirit to do everything wrong and go against the game plan he had made in his mind in order to give support to Elder Perkins theory for missionaries in their problems with teaching. I felt kind of like Christ, sort of, suffering the blow for everybody in that room. It was painful. But, I got the best feedback of my life. Elder Perkins started on how we need to "GET TO THE RESTORATION!” He asked us, “If you had to explain the gospel in six words, what would it be?” My favorite was, "GOD LOVES US and PROPHETS ARE BACK!"
That was a hard and painful learning process, and I was so nervous. By the way, it was all in Chinese! Elder Daniels was humbled and called to repentance again for sure. I learned so much from this experience. We bore testimonies afterward, and I had to share mine because the spirit there was too dang strong.
One big lesson was how I learned to walk away from the experience, discouraged or meek. I took a mixture and got humbled really fast again. Part of me was grateful and happy to have learned so much, and the other half felt terrible for thinking it went really bad, and it led to a tiny bit of discouragement. Elder Daniels didn't like that though. Last night in my prayers I said, “Heavenly Father, I can't do this on my own anymore, you win.” And Elder Daniels’ attitude changed. It was such an awesome experience, painful yes, but that is the process of becoming a more meek servant to the Lord, which is what we need to become to see those mei mei's and their families get baptized. Elder Daniels Faith is SO high now! Woooohoooo!! The Lord has blessed Elder Daniels beyond what he imagined.
I finished reading the Book of Mormon in Chinese! Heavenly Father has blessed Elder Daniels a lot!!! Last week were president’s interviews, and oh man, Elder Daniels learned so much again. President instructed Elder Daniels on how to take advantage of every moment on his mission. President shared a lot with Elder Daniels, but what Elder Daniels took away the most was when president talked about the families he taught. That is what Elder Daniels desires most. Elder Daniels hasn't seen that much baptism on his mission, but President promised Elder Daniels that as he gives his time to the Lord, He will see that the families will start coming.
I've become familiar again with Jesus Christ’s gospel and the process of repentance, the process of becoming meek and teachable. It started last week during interviews when Elder Daniels and Elder Gong taught the zone leaders in a role play lesson. The goal: get the person we were teaching into the Book of Mormon. It didn't go very well. Elder Daniels saw a lot of his weaknesses and devised a theory to help him overcome the weaknesses. Elder Daniels is going through the Book of Mormon again and applying a whole new scheme to help him teach better while using the Book of Mormon and it has been AWESOME! I've been getting more out of the book than I ever have before. Preach My Gospel talks about the people who read the Book of Mormon and only get stories. My goal has been to go through each story and ask questions pertaining to some of the more important precepts that can be learned from each passage. You would be surprised by what the Spirit has helped me to learn. AWESOME.
I've been applying faith as I study, knowing that the words I read will need to be the words that our investigators need to hear and as I’ve gone through, I've been able to find perfect stories and situations for some of our investigators. This new way of looking at the Book of Mormon has brought even more excitement to my studies and has helped me teach using the Book of Mormon in a very simple manner. I love it.
Here is the big story of my repentance. Yesterday was Zone conference and everyone was excited because Elder Perkins of the seventy was coming to visit. (By the way, I have repented for all the time I thought "he isn't an apostle, he's just a seventy. Let’s listen to something else". Wow, I took the 70's talks for granted in the MTC so many times. Ah man, these people are AMAZING.
So I came into this zone conference with many questions prepared and I felt like the entire meeting was focused on Elder Daniels’ needs. And not only in reality, but it was literally focused on Elder Daniels needs! I'll tell you why. During the meeting they needed to have a companionship come up and do a role-play by teaching a first lesson to another companionship. Out of all 90 missionaries that were in the room, the names, "Elder Daniels and Elder Gong" were the ones to be announced for the role-play…ouch.
Elder Daniels was the senior companion and he needed to teach a ten minute 1st lesson with his trainee, to Elders Youd and Pullsipher, who were supposed to be 26 year old college students. In the audience was every single one of Elder Daniels’ peers, the mission president, his wife and a General Authority, who was boldly waiting to give us feedback. Elder Daniels had to represent the entire mission's teaching abilities and weaknesses in front of the general authority. No pressure, Elder Daniels.
It was a mess. I felt like a rambling monkey. It was almost as if Elder Daniels was under influence of the spirit to do everything wrong and go against the game plan he had made in his mind in order to give support to Elder Perkins theory for missionaries in their problems with teaching. I felt kind of like Christ, sort of, suffering the blow for everybody in that room. It was painful. But, I got the best feedback of my life. Elder Perkins started on how we need to "GET TO THE RESTORATION!” He asked us, “If you had to explain the gospel in six words, what would it be?” My favorite was, "GOD LOVES US and PROPHETS ARE BACK!"
That was a hard and painful learning process, and I was so nervous. By the way, it was all in Chinese! Elder Daniels was humbled and called to repentance again for sure. I learned so much from this experience. We bore testimonies afterward, and I had to share mine because the spirit there was too dang strong.
One big lesson was how I learned to walk away from the experience, discouraged or meek. I took a mixture and got humbled really fast again. Part of me was grateful and happy to have learned so much, and the other half felt terrible for thinking it went really bad, and it led to a tiny bit of discouragement. Elder Daniels didn't like that though. Last night in my prayers I said, “Heavenly Father, I can't do this on my own anymore, you win.” And Elder Daniels’ attitude changed. It was such an awesome experience, painful yes, but that is the process of becoming a more meek servant to the Lord, which is what we need to become to see those mei mei's and their families get baptized. Elder Daniels Faith is SO high now! Woooohoooo!! The Lord has blessed Elder Daniels beyond what he imagined.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
You learn a lot on a mission
Ok, fine, I'll write, haha. (To our dismay, we figure our letters didn’t arrive in time) :( Well, this week has been a week to remember. A lot happened and a lot was learned.
I was touched by the Prophet’s last conference talk and thinking about how I can change my mission to have to have even more of an impact on my life. I realized I can judge my progress by how much I feel I have served has impacted the lives of the people around me and not just myself. There is so little time on the mission, there is so little time on this earth, why waste a second of it doing only for yourself. The things you do for yourself die with you, but the things you do for others leaves a legacy.
I’ve been on a spiritual high ever since the baptism last week, where I’ve been singing hymns peacefully, thinking of the purpose of life, etc. The spirit continued through the weekend, through district meeting, which was amazing thanks to a Filipino sister’s testimony that made everyone cry. It continued through exchanges with Elder Smith, all the way to last night when sharing with Elder Gong about looking for families and through our discussion about "progression" and "potential" as servants of the Lord, and the potential for all of God’s children. I learned about Jesus Christ’s gospel this week. It was wonderful.
We had a lot of time this week. We worked hard and we “attacked” the big tall buildings. One night we knocked on 65 doors between dinner and going home. The very last door at 8:59 let us in, hahahaha, and we shared a wonderful lesson with a family. They are very into Buddhism, so their time may not be ready just yet, but I saw the message hitting them, especially the father. He said come back someday. :)
We have been fishing for new investigators at the moment because we are trying to the find the ones that are willing and have the desire to progress. We've been keeping our line in the water, and we're excited for the next fish to bite...
Yesterday we went on exchanges and a lot was learned by Elder Daniels! I went out with Elder Smith who is the type of guy that is impossible not to like. He is insanely good with people and I learned a lot from him. It’s fun to go on exchanges with another elder who has been on the Island for a while and has had experience teaching lessons and who has been doing missionary work for a while. We taught very, very well together. It helped me remember how missionary work was supposed to be done, it was like being jr. companion again. I tried to take advantage of that time, since it was a learning experience. While together, we taught 5 lessons and added one kid to the pool that they have been working with for quite sometime. It was wonderful.
Towards the end of the exchange, we received a phone call from the other companionship. Elder Gong was with Elder Reid in our area, Tu Cheng. Elder Gong had authority to act as senior companion, hahaha. He was so excited to lead and be out with a young missionary. He did awesome too. Elder Gong is the man! I think he felt a little discouraged towards the end of the exchange because the Hu family had called. Because he didn't quite understand what they were saying, the Hu’s had a friend who speaks English call and talk to him. I'm still not to clear on the situation, but apparently the Hu family grandma
opposes the whole Hu family having any affiliation with our church, so they asked us not to come back anymore. It killed me when I heard this news but I knew it had hurt my companion more, because it was his first family. "Our Hu family." They were so close. Their interviews for baptism were next week, so hopefully we can get this situation settled some time soon. In the mean time, Elder Gong have had a lot to talk about. It’s his first time seeing a family fall out of the teaching pool. Heavenly Father helped me a lot so I could know what to say to strengthen my companion’s faith. I was kind of waiting for this type of experience to happen. I remember when it happened to me with the Jin family and it killed me. I learned a lot from it. Heavenly Father likes to test our faith and He gives us trials to make us strong.
I know that families are on the way. Oh man, when I was on exchanges with Elder Smith, we visited a new member family who have the cutest mei mei in the world. They are such a happy, Mormon family, that applies gospel principles. They love each other and the feeling in their home was so warm and tender. That was a taste, a reminder of the things that we are hoping for as missionaries. I see all these Taiwanese families who need the gospel, so they can have that same loving and tender feelings in their home. Just like the family we visited.
The spirit, the warmth in that family's home was so strong. Their mei mei had been living with the grandma down south for the first 3 years of her life and the mother and father only saw her once every two weeks. Since they have been members, the mei mei has come back to their home to live. It was such a wonderful blessing to be there and witness the power of a Mormon family. I took 45 pictures of that cute, little mei mei.
That is what I want to see more of. I am here for families and I think Elder Gong understands the picture of it all now. He is going to be a family finding machine!
I'm tired of missionaries looking for singles. You get the families converted and the singles will come. I haven't had a family baptized yet. They are harder, but when they are baptized, you get families like the one Elder Smith and I visited.
Well I gotta go. We're going to the zoo today with the Lin family today! :) I love you, Elder Daniels
I was touched by the Prophet’s last conference talk and thinking about how I can change my mission to have to have even more of an impact on my life. I realized I can judge my progress by how much I feel I have served has impacted the lives of the people around me and not just myself. There is so little time on the mission, there is so little time on this earth, why waste a second of it doing only for yourself. The things you do for yourself die with you, but the things you do for others leaves a legacy.
I’ve been on a spiritual high ever since the baptism last week, where I’ve been singing hymns peacefully, thinking of the purpose of life, etc. The spirit continued through the weekend, through district meeting, which was amazing thanks to a Filipino sister’s testimony that made everyone cry. It continued through exchanges with Elder Smith, all the way to last night when sharing with Elder Gong about looking for families and through our discussion about "progression" and "potential" as servants of the Lord, and the potential for all of God’s children. I learned about Jesus Christ’s gospel this week. It was wonderful.
We had a lot of time this week. We worked hard and we “attacked” the big tall buildings. One night we knocked on 65 doors between dinner and going home. The very last door at 8:59 let us in, hahahaha, and we shared a wonderful lesson with a family. They are very into Buddhism, so their time may not be ready just yet, but I saw the message hitting them, especially the father. He said come back someday. :)
We have been fishing for new investigators at the moment because we are trying to the find the ones that are willing and have the desire to progress. We've been keeping our line in the water, and we're excited for the next fish to bite...
Yesterday we went on exchanges and a lot was learned by Elder Daniels! I went out with Elder Smith who is the type of guy that is impossible not to like. He is insanely good with people and I learned a lot from him. It’s fun to go on exchanges with another elder who has been on the Island for a while and has had experience teaching lessons and who has been doing missionary work for a while. We taught very, very well together. It helped me remember how missionary work was supposed to be done, it was like being jr. companion again. I tried to take advantage of that time, since it was a learning experience. While together, we taught 5 lessons and added one kid to the pool that they have been working with for quite sometime. It was wonderful.
Towards the end of the exchange, we received a phone call from the other companionship. Elder Gong was with Elder Reid in our area, Tu Cheng. Elder Gong had authority to act as senior companion, hahaha. He was so excited to lead and be out with a young missionary. He did awesome too. Elder Gong is the man! I think he felt a little discouraged towards the end of the exchange because the Hu family had called. Because he didn't quite understand what they were saying, the Hu’s had a friend who speaks English call and talk to him. I'm still not to clear on the situation, but apparently the Hu family grandma
opposes the whole Hu family having any affiliation with our church, so they asked us not to come back anymore. It killed me when I heard this news but I knew it had hurt my companion more, because it was his first family. "Our Hu family." They were so close. Their interviews for baptism were next week, so hopefully we can get this situation settled some time soon. In the mean time, Elder Gong have had a lot to talk about. It’s his first time seeing a family fall out of the teaching pool. Heavenly Father helped me a lot so I could know what to say to strengthen my companion’s faith. I was kind of waiting for this type of experience to happen. I remember when it happened to me with the Jin family and it killed me. I learned a lot from it. Heavenly Father likes to test our faith and He gives us trials to make us strong.
I know that families are on the way. Oh man, when I was on exchanges with Elder Smith, we visited a new member family who have the cutest mei mei in the world. They are such a happy, Mormon family, that applies gospel principles. They love each other and the feeling in their home was so warm and tender. That was a taste, a reminder of the things that we are hoping for as missionaries. I see all these Taiwanese families who need the gospel, so they can have that same loving and tender feelings in their home. Just like the family we visited.
The spirit, the warmth in that family's home was so strong. Their mei mei had been living with the grandma down south for the first 3 years of her life and the mother and father only saw her once every two weeks. Since they have been members, the mei mei has come back to their home to live. It was such a wonderful blessing to be there and witness the power of a Mormon family. I took 45 pictures of that cute, little mei mei.
That is what I want to see more of. I am here for families and I think Elder Gong understands the picture of it all now. He is going to be a family finding machine!
I'm tired of missionaries looking for singles. You get the families converted and the singles will come. I haven't had a family baptized yet. They are harder, but when they are baptized, you get families like the one Elder Smith and I visited.
Well I gotta go. We're going to the zoo today with the Lin family today! :) I love you, Elder Daniels
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