Happy Birthday, Elder Daniels!

I love my family!! Each one!

I hope you have felt it as I have prayed for each of you and your circumstances throughout my entire mission.

Question: What is love?
Pre mission Elder Daniels, love is liking someone...a lot, ha-ha.

Post mission Elder Daniels, love is sacrificing my own desires for the interest of others, or putting my own needs secondary.

I've learned the principle and I'm trying to apply it in every circumstance. I am giving it my all to have Christlike love for everyone and especially my family. Christ gave a perfect love, was a perfect teacher, a perfect person, and without this perfect path in the universe, "all things” would be frustrated. I know due to the Atonement, I have the potential to have Christlike love for every member in our family and outside of my family. This is the key step to having an eternal family. My love for my family has changed on my mission. Pre-mission Elder Daniels’ understanding of love has now become the post mission Elder Daniels’ understanding of love.

This love cannot reach it’s fullness without Christ. From the old prophecies of Christ to our prophet today and prophets of the future, we know that only Christ fully understands perfect love. Yes, we need Him. I love each one of you.

Where to start... I went to Hualien, and saw Jeff, Susan, William, but not Peter :( Huang, Wang, Cai, Zhen families and it was a GREAT experience. We saw miracles left and right in Taidong and Hualien. We taught at zone conference. It was really good, then we took a train to Yilan with two other Elders.

Afterward we traveled to TUCHENG! We went to church there!!!! EVERYONE was so surprised to see me again. I loved that experience. I remembered everyone’s name, and they remembered me. I went on exchanges with ELDER McComber! (Elder McComber’s family bought a home in our ward.) Does that name ring a bell? He asked me a lot of sincere questions, such as how do you capture the hearts of the members. It felt so feel good. I like him a lot. He is super fun to serve with and SO, SO, SO, SO, SO happy as he does missionary work. He is really on fire!

We were invited to eat at the Ding family house! It was great! Going to church there was so special. The bishopric looked older, the kids were taller, and lots more babies! I saw one baby that was born 2 weeks after I left. Cute baby. Oh good ol' Tucheng. I love that place. I saw Bishop Yang, Brother Ellie, Ding, Chen, everyone…the people that were baptized while I was there, Ryan who is still in New Zealand but comes home on the 23rd and Brother Fan. I will be visiting this week in Danshui.

Next was finding our way to Taipei from Tucheng. We ended up riding bike because they wouldn't let us on the MRT with them. We made it to the new member fireside where I saw every body from Jilong! It was great.

Zone conference in Taipei. Teaching was awesome. I saw Elder Gong, Elder Huss, and Elder Leavitt. I got to follow up with them on previous investigator families and it was AWESOME!!! We taught the principle of how to teach simply for understanding, using prophecies of prophets testifying of Christ!! And we invited everyone to bear testimony to their companions.

The last zone conference. I joined the rest of the missionaries who will be returning home and bore my testimony. I was second to last, right before Elder Gassin. I couldn't control myself. I couldn't speak or sing, it was too difficult. After I bore my testimony, I only saw red eyes looking at me. Elder Gassin was up and bore the best testimony I have every heard!

Times almost up. I love my family, Elder Gassin, Elder Worthen and Elder Scott.
They are awesome elders, and I am with them right now. We ran to Taipei 101 this morning!!! 6 miles.