April 11, 2011

Sorry I have little time to e-mail today.

The sisters in my last area baptized a wonderful family, the Xie family. It was a joint effort of the sisters, elders, and the ward. President Bishop took interest in it, and forwarded the sister's e-mail about the family's conversion to the area presidency, who liked the story, and wanted some more information on it, and a picture, so that maybe they could show it to Elder Holland and Bednar!

Contacting with the violin was really fun. We set up a table with pictures of the temple, Jesus, the Family Proclamation and a bunch of different brochures on it, and then I played violin near the entrance of the cultural center. They told me I have to register or apply to play there next time. But it was great. We didn't really add a whole bunch of people, but the best part was that we invited some members to come with us. So people would stop and look at me "why is he playing violin" And then the members, or missionaries, or both would contact the family and bring them over to the table and get their information. It was really fun to see one less active brother get excited and start contacting families by himself, he ended up giving us five referrals of the people that he contacted.
I also realized that it was an effective way to weed out those who would actually have interest. I feel like sometimes on the street I talk to, and even add too many people who actually don't have interest. But if they themselves stop, and are willing to learn more, then they are probably interested.
The first family a member contacted turned out to live in our area, and the wife had toured BYU hawaii and heard of the church there.
Another man that stopped had studied violin making with in Salt Lake City for three years, and said he had gone to music and the spoken word every week and loved it.
I realized that students never stopped, bums never stopped, but little kids always stopped to look at me, and families did too.

things are good.

Our best progressing investigator right now is Brother An.  His last name is special, means peace, or safety. Turns out I first contacted him in my last area, referred him over here, where he started meeting with missionaries, and then I moved over and he's progressing towards baptism. Yay. Also, there are two little kids that are nephews of the sisters' new member that are probably going to get baptized soon. It's nice when members prepare people to get baptized, and help share the gospel with their families. In fact that's the way it is supposed to be done. We heard that again in conference. But, there is also a sense of accomplishment when you baptize someone that you found on the street, and you know that you took them from knowing nothing about the gospel to being latter day saints. It's a good feeling.

 

I'll send you my thoughts on conference next week maybe, I don't have time today.

But I'll share one good little story, promise to tell Brother Story.

 

So, we went to visit this member, and I was surprised when we got to his house to see a bunch of tahition noni decorations and stuff. Turns out he has only been baptized for two years, he was inactive for a while, but now is doing better, coming to church almost every week. I asked him how he met the church, and he said he went to Utah to visit the Tahitian noni place, meet the bosses of morinda and hold some meetings or something, and then on the way home visited Salt Lake City/ Temple Square, ran into a chinese sister missionary, who referred him to the missionaries here in taiwan, and he was taught and baptized by my friend Elder Lundin. So, props to brother Story and brother Asay, and the other three guys. I think there's one of them that speaks chinese because he went on his mission to taiwan.

Maybe brother story can write him an e-mail and encourage him to go to church. haha. The guy's name is Wu2 shi1 xian2  or if you use the old romanization (wu shih hsien)

 

I love you all. Goodbye!!!!!