So, I moved. I felt a little bit like on the "Other Side of Heaven" when he was sad to leave, and crying. I felt just a little bit of that feeling yesterday. I've never felt anything like that before. It was a different kind of love, that only comes after you've spent all your time and efforts and sweated and done all you can, and then leave. I've never quite felt anything like it. The last six weeks have been the best of my life. Being a district leader was one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. I'll never forget that transfer with my district there, we helped seven really solid people enter the waters of baptism in the month of march. Three were Elder Mitchell and I's, and then the Elders and sisters each had two. The month of february our entire zone only had three baptisms. Anyways, the sisters also have a super golden family lined up to be baptized Wednsday. The family really wanted me to play violin at their baptism, and baptize them, so... I got special permission to go back on wednsday. Because it's only a twenty minute bike ride to my last area. I moved right into the thick of the second biggest city in Taiwan. I'm in Gaoxiong city, Lingya district. My new companion is Elder Farr, who was trained in the same area as I was, Fengyuan. He replaced me and was trained by Elder Kossman. He's all I could ask for in a companion. Really diligent, willing to work super hard every day, SYL with me, and wants to baptize. He came on island the same time as Elder Mitchell. It's about the same situation. He hasn't been able to have very many baptisms up to this point in his mission, and I really am more focused on baptizing now after some adjustments last transfer, so I hope we'll be able to see some success!
Anyways, I am going to miss Yuanshan a lot. The bishop was especially good. Things just seemed to click with him. I played violin with sister Koay on the piano (she was really good) at every single baptism, and then on sunday I was playing in another ward's sacrament meeting. Then my bishop came up to me, and said he had a feeling that I should play in our sacrament meeting too. So I got to play, and the spirit was really strong. My very favorite thing is when I stand up to play and I hear a bunch of noises, and talking, and fussing kids, and then I pull the first note out of a violin, and all other noise just drops away. It just feels so special. It becomes really quiet and the spirit is felt like no other way.
I've felt the spirit so strong in the last couple days. I have had an unbelievable amount of help from those on the other side of the veil. All the loose ends were tied up, and the time came to leave. I was able to see the Shi Brothers again, they were still solid, although some things had prevented them from coming to church for a couple weeks. Zhao Dixiong was able to get confirmed yesterday, and that night we sat down with him and his wife together, and taught about the temple, and they were both excited to make preparations to get the wife baptized and then go to the temple. (but they move really slowly. I had to push that guy to get him baptized, but now he's baptized and really solid.)
The day before I was able to go visit my very favorite new member, nine year old Zeng Wei Zhe, and took him to buy colored pencils to mark his scriptures. He read through the picture book of Mormon, and now he loves finding scriptures in the real Book of Mormon and coloring them. On the way to the bookstore we taught him how to contact people on the street and invite them to get baptized. He was amazing! After a couple contacts together, he asked us for more of the church flyers and then started contacting people by himself. It was actually really effective, because the cute little nine year old was hard to reject, and his testimony was really strong. We actually found some investigators from the people he contacted.
Leaving him behind was the hardest part. During sacrament they announced that I was moving, and I was sitting next to Wei Zhe. He looked up at me and said "You're moving?" I told him I was moving tomorrow. He asked "will you come back and see me every week?" I had to tell him probably not. And then I realized that he was going to cry, but he was trying to hide it. Anyways, he started crying, and then I did too. I'm going to miss that little kid. He's going to be the best missionary ever.
I don't really know what to say. I feel like I've been so blessed to move to this place. There are thousands upon thousands of people here. Mom would just die if she saw us weaving through the traffic on our bikes. It's one of my favorite things to weave through scooters and cars in downtown traffic on a bike, in a suit, with a violin on my back, a book of mormon in my box, a nametag on my pocket and a mission to fulfill. This area happens to have a huge cultural center where they have all the classical music concerts, and it would be a perfect place to play my violin outside to contact people. Yay!
Bubye!
Elder Vernon
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