Biking up hill

Keelung is awesome. We don't get lost anymore, but that just about wraps up last week’s experiences. Ha-ha, Keelung is famous for its hills and its winding roads and especially its rain!!! The map is only helpful when you can look at it in a dry environment, but then again it gets really confusing because of all the different winding roads! Ha-ha. Our house is located in a community on a hill, and our building is on the highest hill in that community, where we live on the thirteenth floor. Coming home at nights is always an adventure! It takes 10 minutes to get to the church from our house, but 25 minutes to our house from the church. I love it!!! Ha-ha, my bike begs to differ. Good old Kathi, (he named his bike after Aunt Kathi because she gave him money before his mission.) she is on her last threads, life is almost stripped from her, but she'll make it. Originally, my bike had 24 gears, now that she's so old. only gears 10-17 are accessible. Ha-ha, that’s why going up and down all them hills makes for such an adventure.

Our church is located right in the middle of the city, right along the edge of the bay/port, where there are a couple MASSIVE tour boats always docked. It’s on the 5th and 6th floor of a building right above a hospital. I think our ward at home could adopt this idea.

We have found a lot of investigators...we've been setting them with baptismal dates on the street! Most people reject, but we've found 2 already that have accepted. One on the street and the other afterwards. When we ran into him and invited him on the street he said he needed a little bit more time to think about it. Then he set a date on Monday! Surprisingly, all of our investigators are Christian. Usually they are harder to teach than Buddhists. Regardless, there are currently four in our pool and 2 set for this transfer!!! One is named Brother Wang...we might just quit meeting with him because he doesn't seem like he is going to progress. He's met with missionaries on and off for seven years!!!! He has a light of false concepts and doctrine instilled in his brain. Basically, he meets with us to try and prove our church wrong, and it makes him angry that it never works...so we always tell him to humble himself before God and simply ask which church to join. However he's not willing to pray, so were “killing” him. The next is Brother Yu....he is our miracle!!!! He is married, but when we met with him, only he came. We found him on the street, (because I'm used to Hualien and never seeing anyone on the streets) one day we were flying down a hill and I saw a man getting on his motorcycle, so I slammed my brakes on. We talked for 15 minutes, invited to be baptized, he said he needed time and he was willing to reset up. The next time we met with him he was hooked, even though he is "new life church" he knows the need for a Restoration, so we asked him if he had desire to know if it was true and he responded, “How do I read the Book of Mormon so I can know that its true?” (AWESOME QUESTION) 3 Nephi 13:7.... BAM!!!!!! He set a date for 11/7 and committed to all the other commitments. This is may just be the guy we came for! We’ll meet with him on Friday!

We've also been visiting A LOT of inactives!!!! There are a billion! We've been focusing on a Zhang family. The dad is AWESOME!!! And so are the kids, they love us! They want us to come back all the time and they even committed to come to church this week because they want to eat the fruit that grows on the tree of life!!!!! Ha-ha

Last week was the autumn moon festival. We were on exchanges and we went to two consecutive BBQ’s, eating a total of 4 steaks, 2 squid, 2 fish, 7 moon pies, and more!!! Best day of my life and yes, squid is delicious!!

In my English class we've got a student who will be baptized fairly soon! I named him.... J-money. Ha-ha, he is awesome!

I love my companion; he is so similar to Elder Larson its ridiculous!!! He is VERY advanced for a greenie. Chinese, testimony, everything is way LEHI…amazing. He is very funny, patient, calm, everything. He knows how to study. I've learned a lot from him. He speaks fluent French and some Spanish. !

He’s very impressed with how many scooters there are and all the simple things. It’s helping me to enjoy my experience here in Taiwan to the fullest!

Being district leader is different. I get to teach district meeting for 1 1/2 hours each week. It’s a good experience and I've been learning a lot from it. The zone leaders mentioned something to me. They said that the last district meeting I taught was perfectly in line with what they learned at Jedi council for this transfer. Ha-ha, it was really cool. I guess the Lord even inspired me to share the same references and everything while teaching the same principles that were taught at a meeting I didn't even go to, ha-ha.

A lot of missionaries are still really timid about inviting people to be baptized while out on the street. It’s kind of a new focus in the mission but after some of the blessing the Lord has allowed us to see ever since me and Elder Leavitt moved to Keelung, the excitement and Spirit towards this invite have increased and the whole Keelung district is now focusing on the invite for baptism! Prayers have changed. Prayers of faith are being said, pretty soon the whole mission will figure out the kinks and learn how to invite boldly!!!!!


ANYWAY! Life is terrific! My shoes are dry finally, they've been wet for a week. Now we're going bowling. LOVE YOU, ELDER DANIELS!!!