Training

This is your son, the one on a mission in Taiwan. Right now I am very, very tired because Elder Dickson (former companion and now a traveling AP) came back to Hualien today with Elder Gassin and we just got back from hiking up in the mountains. All of us missionaries went along with the Zheng family and Jeff and his sister. It was a blast. Elder Dickson was very happy to return back to the comfortable atmosphere of Hualien. It was fun and we took some awesome pictures that I will try and send to you.

All of our investigators are still awesome and progressing towards their dates and that is the investigator report for now.

We've been doing a lot of training of missionaries.

The three missions in Taiwan have combined to make two missions, and some of the missionaries from the Taizhong Mission are assigned to Taipei. There is a new focus in our mission inspired by the new missionaries from Taizhong…baptism. They baptize a lot. We invite people to set dates on the street now. It’s SO MUCH FUN! Some missionaries reacted negatively to the new focus, which was kind of disappointing, but we plan to address their concerns on Friday during Zone Conference. I want the missionaries in one area to support their new District Leader who came from the other mission. I went on exchanges with this new DL, and we both want everyone to work together.

Last week we got right to work. I love the new focus on baptism. My companion and I like it so much they asked us to role play in Zone Conference, in addition to teaching a one hour zone breakout. We now have 10 people in our baptismal pool because of it. One thing we really want to focus on in this new system is that investigators are actually converted before they are baptized. Retention is just as important. So we're focusing on building their testimony.

I'm not going to lie. I learned a lot going on exchanges with Elder Dixon and I think he learned some things from me, too, about using the Spirit to teach to the needs of the investigator.

Training is really fun, that was the topic in Jedi council yesterday. I saw my “son,” Elder Gong and I can't believe my son is a zone leader already! Training is something that President Grimley specializes in, being from a military reserve background and a 6th grade teacher. He really loves "leadership." He was a scout master for 20 some odd years!!!

I will be going on exchanges with Elder Dickson these next 3 days, it will be fun. :)
Love you.