Week 3: Zhang Family and P-Day Adventures

The pictures are of the city from the top of our building (the one with the blue roof is the church), the family we baptized this last Saturday and last is the sunrise also from our roof. The second to last one is most of the people at the baptism. The Ward mission leader is kneeling by us. To our right is the Tan family (the mom, dad, and two 13-15 year old children) and Liao Dixiong. To the right of Liao is Huang Guo Xin. The family and Liao are some of our best investigators right now and Huang Dixiong is an outrageously good pieke (member at lessons, and finding for that matter).

What a long, exciting and tiring week! Yesterday night I was more than a little exhausted. We went on a lot of exchanges this week and found some success in interesting places. The people here are very caught up in the here and now and not looking for a bigger picture, which happens to everyone sometimes. Once we help people step back and not be afraid to look for answers wonderful things happen. Sometimes helping them look takes time.

Last Monday we spent a lot of time in Zhubei which is where the zone leaders live, their chapel is the biggest in our zone and it is where we will hold stake conference. It also has a blue roof, it's easy to find and describe that way. We went to carrefour for some supplies, but what will be really good is when we get a chance to go to Costco and get peanut butter. After that we went home and made chao fan (fried rice). Then forgot a lot of stuff when we went out to Chuan Jiao, once we realized it it turned out ok, we stopped by an investigators house who is in the process of deciding if this church is the thing for him. There we met another one of the teachers he works with, she spoke pretty good English. When we left it started pouring and I didn't have a raincoat, we ran to the nearest seven and got a poncho then started contacting. The street was relatively empty, but at the end of the night we ran into a former who wasn't willing to give up coffee, and said that if we changed the rules we could have more people in the church. We told him that this isn't our church and that what God says is most important.

Then the exchanges start, we had district meeting right after I went with Zhou Zhanglao, a Taiwanese zone leader. We went out contacting in the same area I had been on Monday, when I was doing a contact I lost him and he was self contacted by someone who lives in his very good friend's area. More rain and then we were given cocoas and dinner before we went to the church for some lessons. When there we had a memeber who helped us peike and then drove us out to visit a lady and son who were sort of interested. That pretty much ended the night and we went home and planned. Qu Zhang Lao (Zhou Zhanglao's very good friend) and his companion called us and I was the only one available to answer the phone. They started talking in Mandarin and didn't realize I was the newbie and not the other zone leader who is also shen zhanglao (Elder Erickson).

Some rest and then Wednesday where I got to go back to Zhu Dong. Miracle morning without me, there were 3 new investigators found in about 1.5 hours and then I contacted another one who became our investigators, that was right before English class. I taught the English class about wildest dreams and all the marbles... along with my flat feet and talking about the army.

Exchanges again and a lesson with Liao (about the plan of salvation). He was really interested in this one and I saw a change in him that he understands why we are alive now. After Huang Dixiong came and the lesson he was suppose to peike for cancelled so he took us to a less active, the Tan family, and an old contact who he and his family are all yuehouhua jianzheng (Jehovah's witnesses), he wouldj't let us pray with him because he said he didn't know what we believed. We set another time to meet with him this coming Thursday and we're hoping for a peike and a focussed lesson on learning spiritual truths through prayer and praying to know the Book of Mormon is the word of God.

On the way from service to the bus stop on Friday we had some extra time so we stopped and were able to shang ke (teach a lesson) with a man on the street. He in the end wanted us to call him hei long (black dragon) we didn't see him at his appointment on Sunday but on the street he was cool. Later Friday night we contacted a mom and two little boys, I showed the boys the first vision and they were super excited about it.

Saturday was mostly the baptism and lots of travel time. We talked about how we are going to get the members to help us in our work so that we can spend time teaching and helping people receive baptism and less time trying to find them on our own. We put some of those plans into action and talked with the ward mission leader about how he can help us. The baptism was low stress and everything went well. I baptized the 2 sons (I got everything right the first time!). Now their whole family is baptized and looking forward to the temple. They all bore testimony about how they felt the spirit coming to church and how the daughter was an example to them and helped them to see that this is what they needed. The mom also talked about the blessings of commandments.

Sunday was their confirmations. Huang confirmed the parents and the ward mission leader confirmed the sons, that was good as well and church went really well. We had a dinner made for us by the 1st counselor in the bishopric (green beans, duck, rice, greens with tiny shrimp things, watermelon (with cooked rinds which are really good for you I guess) and another type of salami type meat). I got my first experience with tracting, my first door got shut on me without even saying a word. Besides that it was pretty relaxed, and all Taiwanese people watch tv all the time.

Today will be the adventure with the zhang jiating, we are going out to place in the mountained where some of the yan zhu min live, it should be good.

I love you all, keep turning to the Lord and doing your part to build the kingdom. Missionary work is for every member, we can always do more to help the work.

shen zhanglao