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!

April 18, 2011

Well, mission is good. I was going to baptize three next week, but then our solid investigator  turned out to be gay. that was a big surprise. So he failed his interview. So we'll keep working with him, and eventually he'll get a second interview with president bishop and get baptized. We also were going to teach and baptize two little kids that were referrals from the sisters' recent convert. But then because I felt like it was the right thing to do, we referred them back to the sisters, so I could do their baptismal interview and get them baptized this week.

Doing baptismal interviews is a great part of being a district leader. You can feel the spirit very strong when you determine whether or not a person has fully repented of their sins.

Anyways, things are good. My companion is the best missionary I have ever met. I'm not kidding either. I've never run into a more obedient, diligent, and focused missionary.  One of our investigators right now is a violin teacher. Last week I felt like we should go visit him. We hadn't set an appointment, but we just went. We were able to meet with his wife there as well, and share about how the gospel blesses families. She still won't come to church, because she's presbyterian, but we'll see what happens.

I love the Lord, I love this mission! I'll keep you all posted! Bubye!

Elder Vernon.

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!!!!!

April 4, 2011

 Things are good. I like the new area, the new companion, the new ward. It's all really good. No problems, except for that our investigator that just passed his interview suddenly moved to the Taipei mission. He was real solid too. Oh well, my companion is really hard working and humble.

We met with an investigator for the first time, and he saw the violin I had on my back, and he said, "I'm a violin maestro!"  in English.  I was able to play for him, and he got real happy and said he'd come to church and bring his family. His wife is Presbyterian so she didn't come, but he did. He is brother Zeng.  Turns out there is another investigator family who owns a violin shop. The father is a member of the Gaoxiong Symphony on the bass, and he wants me to come over and play his violins. He wants to progress slowly in the gospel though, and I don't like slow investigators. So we hardly ever visit him.

I had an idea that maybe we could do a musical fireside, and the ward liked the idea, so we're doing an Easter musical fireside in a couple weeks. we're also going to try contacting people by playing my violin at the cultural center and having a booth set up about Family History and eternal families.

It's interesting being in a city with so many people around us, because if someone is not willing, we don't have  time to argue with them, because there are so many people out there, it's best to just move on and try to find the next person.

I love you all. Keep up the good work. I'm excited for conference this weekend.  We see Conference a week later here.

Bubye.

Elder Vernon

pictures 28 March

1. this is zeng wei zhe at his baptism with his mom and little sister

2. Zhao Dixiong, (the haircut guy) at his baptism. He's already received the aaronic priesthood. He was baptized by my new member Pan Dixiong

3. Pan Dixiong.

4. Me and my trainer Elder Adams. He is training again right now.

28 March 2011

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

21 March 2011

Hi family! Things are good over here! None of the radiation or giant waves from Japan have got me. We did have two little tiny earthquakes though. We were teaching a really golden family the word of wisdom, And we said, "are you willing to keep the word of wisdom?" And the wife waited for a while and then said "....earthquake." At first I didn't feel it, so I was like "huh? what are you talking about? But then it got a little bigger to the point where it was kind of fun.

Then on Saturday morning, following up with our crazy investigator Jacky Gao, he said he had felt like there was an earthquake coming, but he didn't know if that was just a reaction from the Japan earthquake or not. Then the next day, Sunday night during a lesson, you can imagine my surprise when suddenly we feel an earthquake! ..............?????????????????????

Anyways, these are just hittle baby earthquakes,,,,,,,,,There's better things to talk about...

We got a baptism! Our nine year old investigator Zeng Wei Zhe missed his baptism last week. That got us a little bit worried. But, It was all according to the plan of Heavenly Father because having his baptism this week was infinitely better!
The biggest difference was that his Mother was able to bring him to the baptism that night. There was opposition that day. Planning session seemed long. I kept getting stupor of thoughts about investigators where I just didn't feel any inspiration, and was confused about what to do, and that made me kind of grumpy. And when I'm grumpy Elder Mitchell gets defensive. But it was all just Satan trying to make things bad. Then that night wei zhe's mom calls us and says "He's got a cold, he can't be baptized today." Good thing we were fasting for sister Bray and her family that day, so we could have extra power that day when we fasted and prayed for that investigator to be baptized. The mom called, it started raining. We pulled over to the side of the busy road, took off our helmets and bowed our heads in really sincere prayer. We prayed real hard, and then went to persuade the mom to let him be baptized that day. We called the member Wei Zhe is closest with, and he just happened to be driving home from work right past where they lived. We went in and kindly explained that there were already over 20 people expecting to attend the baptism tonight, and if they couldn't come, there would be no baptism. The mom admitted that besides the cold, the grandma opposed him getting baptized and didn't want him to go. But she agreed to go in and ask grandma one more time. We prayed real hard again, listening to her talk to the grandma in Taiwanese for a while, not understanding a word. Then she came back and said "OK" she could take him to the baptism. But then she couldn't find the church, and after a lot of stressful calls and explaining that she went to the wrong 7/11, we finally got them there and he was baptized.
A couple days before the bishop and his wife (Wei Zhe's primary teacher) had been walking at a nearby park, and happened to run into Wei Zhe. The bishop's wife felt a strong prompting to go to Wei Zhe's house and meet the mom. So they went and met. When the mom came to the baptism, it was arranged so well by the spirit. The bishop's wife gave a wonderful talk about the Holy Ghost, and testified that the Holy Ghost had prompted her to meet Wei Zhe's mom. As she was speaking I looked over and realized that Wei Zhe's mom was crying, a testimony that she too, felt the power of the Holy Ghost that evening. We invited her to come to church on Sunday, and she came.  Last night we all ate dinner at the first counselor's house, and she was able to make good friends with them. We taught her the word of wisdom and she was willing. The first counselor's wife testified that if their whole family got baptized how much it would bless them. Miracles are happening! We are so excited to meet and start teaching the father when he comes home from prison next month. Hopefully this time he'll be able to live the word of wisdom, and get baptized.

Directly after Wei Zhe's baptism, the sisters had a wonderful baptism where two sisters were baptized. I had had the privilege of doing baptismal interviews with both, and they both had such strong testimonies. I had never heard a stronger testimony at a baptism than I did when these two sisters stood up and bore testimony of the true church. I was privileged to baptize one of them, and play violin at both baptisms with sister Koay on the piano. So many wonderful ward members attended both baptisms, and the spirit prevailed. As I stood in the bathroom about to change out of  wet white clothes, I looked in the mirror and the thought entered my head that this was the happiest day of my life. I was so happy to see success in my district, three new latter-day saints. Especially happy that sister Bray could have that good experience to help her in a hard time. The new sister in my district, Sister Bray, her mother just passed away. :(  
But....Our district is doing so well! This area of Sanmin and Yuanshan is so good. We set a district goal for 8 baptisms. Which seemed almost unreachable at one point. Now we near the end of the month, we have had five really solid baptisms. And, miracles continue to happen.
The San-min Elders are working with one investigator, Robin, that they hope to be able to baptize in  a week. A goal, as soon as he develops enough faith to be willing to keep the law of chastity in his complex situation (his wife won't let him divorce, and he's had a girlfriend for ten years). I'll probably do a quick follow-up interview with him and then see how the second goes.

We went on companionship exchanges on Friday night. After the baptism, we switched, and I went with the short-term missionary Elder Chen. We got home, and then discovered I had left my keys at the church. So, we called the other Elders and told them to meet us at the church. When we got to the church though, we ran into the bishop who was just leaving. I sure love this bishop, he's just a really really really good guy. So, we got home really late, at about 10:40. oops.
Then the next day, we had a ward activity of walking around the lake at 5:40 in the morning. We had one investigator come, who likes to take walks in the mornings, so he came and walked around with us. I pulled a mommy and gave every one of the members a BOM pass a long card and invited them to give it away to a person they met walking around the lake. Li Shi Rong's wife is really amazing, she contacted a whole family and we were able to get their contact information and refer them to the sisters.
But, turns out the best member at fellowshipping our investigator turned out to be 90 year old Xie Bei Bei, who walked and talked with our investigator for the whole time, and then invited him over to his house later to eat, and then invited him to church. So, nobody is too old to do missionary work. Anways, we visited this investigator, Huang2 Xuan1 Rui4 later the next day, and we talked to him about getting baptized, and he told us he felt like he was ready to be baptized. So we'll see if he passes his baptismal interview tonight.

And another miracle, when we went on exchanges, Every single lesson we had that day, Elder Chen was able to provide exactly what the investigator needed. We visited our long term investigator Zhao Dixiong (that cuts hair) and Elder Chen, after meeting him for a little bit, bore testimony that he felt Zhao Dixiong was ready to be baptized. Zhao Dixiong has been a 3 year investigator. Elder Chen was also a three year investigator, and he encouraged him to get baptized.

I love you all!!!!

Goodbye for now!

Elder Willum Verny