April 24, 2011

I'm in Taiwan!

Here's my missionary work update.

I pulled out my goals I had set as a new missionary for every key indicator, and realized some were too high, some were still reachable, some too low. And I hadn't looked at them for a year. So, I went back and looked at all my numbers for these past seven or eight transfers, and set new goals and then made red line graphs with my goals. And put the graphs on the wall where we plan every night. It helped me to be more focused and motivated. So, if you have goals in life, write them down and put them somewhere where you'll see them a lot.

 

All our investigators lost interest and stopped progressing. Oh well. no baptize. The two little Gao kids got baptized on Thursday, and the baptism was really great. I played violin, and baptized them. We also had a good Easter fireside where we sang hymns and dyed Easter eggs and I played violin. One of these days I want to buy an er4 hu2. I don't know how to say it in English. It's a Chinese instrument with a little box on the bottom and two long strings, played with an ancient looking bow. But the cheapest one would be 100 dollars American, so it's not worth it yet.

 

Anyways, I feel like Heavenly Father gave us this time with no investigators so that we could focus more on members. I realized the other day, that members in Taiwan, and maybe the whole world, aren't really doing a great job of sharing the gospel. There are some really good ones, but not enough are like Mom and give out pass a long cards.

So, we are going to start visiting all the members of our ward and sharing brief messages and inviting them to do missionary work, and we'll see what happens. Half of me is still a little doubtful, because it takes a lot of time to visit members. But I think it's what the Lord wants us to do. And he'll bless us if we do it good.

 

The faith of some members is incredible. There is this less active member Brother Ke who is handicapped, can't move his little tiny legs. And nobody really takes care of him. We went to his house to pick him up and bring him to church in the first time for a long time. His little kid didn't want to wake up and help us out that early in the morning, and there was no way that I was going to help Brother Ke put on a catheter, so we just had to stand there and persuade the little kid for 40 minutes to help us. When the little kid refused to help, he said, "forget it! I'm going to church today, and that's final. I don't care how hard it is, it's what Jesus Christ wants me to do!" And then he started grunting and scooting his handicapped stump of a body out of bed onto his wheelchair. It was pretty epic.

 

I also really like a less active Brother Zhang. He's less active, because he has to work on Sunday. We met with him, and invited him to pay tithing and come to church, and he expressed his disappointment that he wasn't able to. He had a desire, but because he signed his name on some mortgages for his sister, he went into some huge debt, and he lives the most basic life, with hardly any amenities in a rented apartment. But when we came, he brought out some little jellies to give us. I asked him where he got the jellies, and he had been saving them from his workplace where they gave them out for free. I wish he would pay tithing. He would get blessed. He needs to pay his tithing fully and honestly or he'll never get the full promised blessing. But he is always willing to help us teach investigators.

 

As far as investigator stories, only two come to mind.

 

1. Last night we were tracting, and we snuck into a big apartment complex through the back door so there were lots of doors to knock. After it was time to go, I said, there's probably one more door to knock, so I told my companion to "use the spirit" and close his eyes and hit one of the elevator buttons. He hit the fifth floor. we got out and found one door that was really fancy compared to all the others close around it. We knocked and to our surprise out came a bald white guy named Brian from California. He wasn't interested, but we happened to have an English book of Mormon that day, I don't know why, and we gave that to him.

 

2. We were riding home Tuesday night, and this kid caught up to us on his bike (we were riding fast) and said in English "I need to talk to you!" Turns out he lived in Canada most of his life, and that day, he had a fight with his parents, and didn't want to go back home, and didn't know where to go or what to do. When he saw the missionaries he felt like he needed to talk to us. He followed us on his bike, and finally caught up to us, sweating and heaving. We sat down right there on the spot, prayed and read scriptures and confirmed him for church and invited him to be baptized. I think he'll make a good investigator. I know that it was the spirit that led him to us. And he had to have had a group of angels pushing his bike real hard from behind, trying to make it up that hill to catch up with us. That was an experience I'll never forget.

Bubye!