Week Seventeen: More Rain and a Mission Christmas Activity

Dearest Family and Friends,

CHRISTMAS IS ALMOST HERE! AAAHHHH!

My Christmas card photo.  Like the cheesy effect?

  

Alright, I'm cool. Anyway, this last week has been pretty solid. We went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders this last Tuesday/Wednesday. I went with Elder Edwards. He's probably one of the most energetic, driven missionaries I've seen. He's a football player red-shirting for BYU. He's got a scholarship to be their kicker when he gets back. Apparently he's a pretty big deal back home. I don't know if you guys have heard of him...Corey Edwards? Anyway, he's an awesome missionary and I learned a lot. He gave me a lot of compliments that I don't think I deserved, and didn't really give me anything specific I could improve on, but he did challenge me to contact someone at every red light. In Taiwan, almost everybody's on scooters and you're on your bike so when you pull up to a red light there's usually someone there you can talk to. Sometimes there isn't though and he challenged me in those situations to go find someone. I've been really trying to do that, bus sometimes there's literally no one around, especially if it's more outside the city, so I'm doing my best.

Me at Sun Moon Lake.

 We also had a Christmas activity with the ENTIRE MISSION. It was pretty nuts. My zone met together at the Tainan train station at 6 a.m. We had to get up at 4, get ready, and bike there because there were no trains at the Yongkang station that were early enough! So that was kind of a chore, but it was worth it! We all got in a bus and they took us up to a place called "Sun Moon Lake". It's apparently pretty beautiful, but it was pretty foggy when we went so we didn't get to see much of it. I'll send my mom some pictures so you can all see. After that, we went to this all-you-can-eat steak house(those are super popular in Taiwan, especially for missionaries) and it was sooooo good. I ate a lot. After that, we went to a chapel in Taiping for a devotional with the President. He shared some scriptures out of Isaiah that prophesied of Christ. It really inspired me the next time I get to those dreaded chapters in 2 Nephi to really put effort into studying them. President Blickenstaff read the verses and then explained the background so that they made sense. It made me realize Isaiah isn't that bad. You just need to read cross-references and read about the background. The best part about that meeting, though, was having the whole mission together, singing Christmas hymns. It was such a great feeling of unity and power to be in the same room as 200+ other missionaries singing "Silent Night" in praises to Christ of whom we are testifying every day. It was a really special moment for me and one that I won't likely forget soon.

A classic tropical Christmas picture.

As far as investigators go, we met a really golden guy at our ward's Christmas party on Saturday and sat with him last night. Aparently, the sisters just invited him earlier that day on the street and he came. He lives in Gaoxiong(about a 45-minute drive south), but he comes back to Yongkang every weekend. He has so much desire and he's such a cool guy. His English name is John and his last name is Huang. I'm not sure what his full Chinese name is yet. His girlfriend is Christian, so he's pretty acquainted with a lot of that stuff. He said the first time he went to a Christian church, he knew he wanted to be Christian because of the feeling he had when he was there. That was super cool to hear. He also expressed a desire to be baptized so we set a date for January 18th. I'll let you know how that goes! Our other investigators are all doing pretty well. Chen Xuanzhen cancelled a lot this last week but he had legitimate reasons for all of them, one of which being that his scooter broke down. Satan is working hard on that man. We're meeting with him tonight, though. Nothing to really report with everyone else. They're all moving along pretty well. 

A Daoist temple.  I haven't showed you guys one of these yet.  They are all over the place.

I hope you can all come closer to the Savior this Christmas season. I read a scripture this week in Mosiah 5:13 that says: "For how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from the thoughts and intents of his heart?" I'd submit that the best way to come closer to the Savior is to serve him. To keep his commandments and give freely to others. Also, to read about him and think about him. I know if we do this, that we will be able to feel the true Spirit of Christmas, even the Spirit of Christ. I love you guys and think about you often. 

-Elder Smith    

Week Seventeen: The First Rain

Hey Everyone!

This week wasn't quite as good as last week. Besides not having the uplift of a baptismal service, we also had quite a few people cancel on us or not show up when we thought they were pretty dependable appointments. But that's missionary work sometimes! Setting goals that are largely dependant on you using your agency and other people using their agency to choose to follow Christ is a risky business and doesn't always work out like you expect it to. However! I've learned from this week and I'm now I'm going to "Look ahead and believe" as Elder Edward Dube put it in the last general conference. But I'll tell you about it anyways, since you probably want to know the details as well as the take-away.

First of all, Chen Xuanzhen dropped his goal, which means he didn't come to church and so he can't be baptized until after he can come to church next. He took the night train like he planned, but then he was too tired to come to church in the morning so it didn't really have much use. I totally understand. He is super busy. He's probably exhausted all the time, but we were really hoping he'd be able to be baptized this next week. We're meeting with him on Friday to talk about prophets, baptism and sabbath day observance. We're really going to try to focus on sacrament meeting as not just your ticket to get baptized, but also a really important meeting for after you are baptized. We have an recent convert who has a really similar situation to Chen. He's a really nice guy and from his teaching record, it sounds like he was super solid, but now he never comes to church because he doesn't have time and he's stopped picking up the phone because I think we were starting to bug him. It's really sad. I don't want that to happen with Chen so hopefully we can figure out a long-term solution.

We've also been working with another investigator named Chen. He's 50 years old, is a professor at a university in Taiwan and is working on his doctorate degree in philosophy so he's a pretty deep thinker. He says he wants to hear about the gospel in order to gain more "devotion" as he put it. He seems really sincere. We've met with him a couple times and extended commitments, but he's been kind of flaky so we'll have to see what's up.

We saw a miracle this week with a less active man named Zheng Baba(Baba means dad, so basically just older guy). He was inactive, but in the last 5 or 6 months has been coming to church every week with his son. His son hasn't been baptized and he has never accepted the priesthood or a calling. However, the bishop came and visited him and he now has a goal to get the priesthood for January of next year so that's awesome! I'm super excited. We've also been meeting with him and his son and his son has a goal to be baptized as well. It's not until summer vacation, but hopefully as we continue meeting with him, he'll realize that he's ready now and I'll be able to see that great day when he can be baptized by his dad. That would be great. Please pray for them!

That's about it for this week! Oh also I had to wear my rain gear for the first time this week. Fun stuff. Hence the title of this week's email. Anyways, love you all. I appreciate you and hope you are all doing ok. And Merry Christmas!

-Elder Smith

Week Sixteen: A Baptism! and Other Adventures...

Hello Family and Friends!

Brendan, Lio Junxuan and Elder Sumsion before Lio Junxuan's baptism

This week we were blessed to witness our investigator, Liao Junxuan, that we met my first Sunday here receive baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost, and be confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was so great. When he got up and bore his testimony, he said--and I translate--"You know, when I first started investigating the church, a lot of people thought it was weird and asked me questions like 'why Mormonism?' or 'isn't that church weird?' and stuff like that. It got to the point where I figured if any church has this much opposition, there has to be something special about it." Him saying that just testified to me that the Lord prepares people. You know, most people wouldn't have had that way of thinking about it, but I really believe that Junxuan was prepared by the Lord so that when he did receive opposition, it only increased his faith and his desire to know the truth of the restored gospel. I feel so blessed to have been able to see his growth. We have to delay giving him the new member lessons for a bit because he has a few really big tests these next couple weeks, but we'll still see him at church and maybe at English class. I'll keep you guys updated!

And after.  :)

Chen Xuanzhen(the golden guy who wanted baptism really bad but had the meeting on Sunday) came to church yesterday! He also passed his baptismal interview so if all goes according to plan and he can come next Sunday for all 3 hours too, he's set to be baptized on the 20th of this month. SO EXCITED!! He met the missionaries in July so this has been a long process for him. He's grown a lot though. I haven't known him since July, but just from looking at his teaching record, I can tell that he wasn't always as awesome as he is now. It's taken a while, but he is almost ready to make that next step towards eternal salvation.

Last week's Pizza Hut chidaobao (all-you-can-eat).

Andy(the Japanese teacher) is doing well. We met with him yesterday and our ward mission leader was there as well. They talked to each other about a lot of stuff that didn't really lead to the Plan of Salvation like we were hoping, but it was good in the sense that now he has a really deep understanding of the Book of Mormon, it's purpose, and it's origins so that when he reads it, he will know how important it is. We were talking about our religion as opposed to other religions at some point and he brought up this idea that he said he had thought up based on his reading in the Bible. He said he thinks God has angels and people that work very closely with him and that Satan used to be one of them but he fell and some people came with him and now he controls the Earth with his people and that's where all the other religions come from. He said "Satan is so smart so he can lead people away from to truth to other things that look enticing." It was so nuts because it was all pretty much correct and we haven't even shared any of that with him yet. Another great example of how the Lord prepares people.

Other investigators are doing well, but those were the main stories I wanted to share. Please keep praying for them! And please, especially now during this Christmas season, study the Savior and His teachings, give to others, and don't hesitate to share or accept the Gospel. It will bless your life and the lives of others so much. Love you all!

-Elder Smith

Week Fifteen: Helping Others Through Faith

Hello Family and Friends!

My goodness. P days are coming faster and faster. I hope the speed at which time flies levels off at some point because otherwise I'm going to blink and it's going to be over. But let's not think about that. I've still got 2 years. Haha. That's kind of a joke when people ask missionaries who've been out here for a really long time how long they have to go and in order to not think about how little time they have left they say "Oh, I've still got 2 years." The best is when sisters say it because they never had 2 years in the first place.

  

Anyway.

Dinner.  Lunch box. Yummm!!!!

So this week started out pretty slow. We only had the evenings for proselyting on Monday and Tuesday becauseMonday was P-day and Tuesday was a Mission Tour(I'll talk about that later). So, we didn't really have anything going on Monday or Tuesday and Wednesday also looked pretty bleak so we looked like we were in sad shape to hit our goals for the week. However, we went forward in faith, we relied on the Lord, and we went to work. We didn't hit all of our goals but we hit the mission standards(standards set by our mission president to tell us what we should shoot for and what we should focus on). Every one! 2 investigators at church, 2 investigators with a baptismal goal, 3 new investigators, 8 lessons with a member present, and 20 total lessons taught. It was a miracle! We felt so blessed this week. We felt the power of prayer. Our own, and those that I'm sure many of you offered.

  

So who were all these people we were helping by hitting these "mission standards"? First, we have a baptism on Saturday! Wooooo! It's Liao Dixiong(I don't know if I said this before, but if I put a 'dixiong' after someone's name, it just means 'brother'. So liao dixiong is brother liao). He passed his interview this last Saturday right after the baptismal service of an investigator in the other ward. So yeah this is super exciting. 

Christmastime.

Chen Dixiong also came to that baptism. He has wanted baptism for so long. He's been meeting with the missionaries for about 7 months because he's so busy with work. The other reason he hasn't been baptized yet is because he has to come to church twice for 3 hours in order to receive baptism and he has a company meeting ever sunday at 10 am that he leads. Our church starts at 9 and goes to 12 so he can only make it for the first 30 minutes. We talked with the mission president on Saturday night and tried to figure out a way he could attend an afternoon ward maybe, but president said--and I thought it was a really good point--that Chen Dixiong needed to exercise his faith and figure out a way to attend his own ward. We were a little discouraged because we new Chen would be disappointed at the news, but we decided we would fast and pray for him the next day. After dinner, we met with him and decided we'd give him a pump-up lesson. We read with him 1 Nephi 3:7 and Moroni 7:33 and basically just said "Alright, it's been promised that if you'll have faith, the Lord will provide a way. Let's figure out how we can get you to church twice for 3 hours so you can be baptized." We talked it out for a while and we finally worked it out so he could have his partner cover the meeting this Sunday and then next weekend, he'd take a train back from Taipei after his meeting let out so he could be in Yongkang Sunday morning--next Sunday as well. Then, he can get baptized on the 20th of December. It's a miracle. It's not a permanent solution to the problem because the meeting is still there, but I really think that he has faith and desire and as he comes to church twice in a row for the full 3 hours, he will want to make permanent arrangements so he can continue doing that. I'm so excited for him and I feel so blessed that I was able to see this great example of someone exercising their faith in order to do what the Lord asks of them. Everyone please pray for him! He needs it! 

  

We also met with a guy yesterday named Andy. He hasn't been able to meet with us for the past couple weeks because he was in Japan and then he had friends, but this week, he finally was able to meet with us again. He is so solid. His questions are so thoughtful and sincere and they invite the Spirit instead of distracting from it. One question he had yesterday was "Why didn't God share his gospel with people before the restoration?" and another was "What if people don't have a chance to hear that full Gospel? Will they just be lost?" Without going into huge detail, we were able to answer his questions and he's really progressing a lot. We just finished the 1st Lesson with him yesterday and it went really well. We have a goal for him, but because he meets with us so infrequently, I don't know if it'll happen. We'll see. He said he wants to believe that it's true though because he said he feels so comfortable here. It was really funny. He made the comment that "other churches are always telling people that other churches are bad and you need to come to our church, but you guys(meaning us missionaries/our church) are like 'hey, you can see what's out there. go for it. but we know that you will want to come back.'" and he likes that about us. He said that he doesn't like that a lot of churches focus so much people being converted to the denomination that they forget that they should become converted to God and Jesus Christ. He's just super awesome and prepared. I'm so excited to see him continue to grow and develop his faith. 

But yeah, that's about it for this week. So good. So many miracles and I'm hoping we can carry this into next week. Until then, my friends! Love you guys:)

-Elder Smith     

Week Fourteen: Family Letters to Mom and Dad

Hey Dad!

 

Thanks for the updates. I don't have time to respond to all of them but I'm glad your birthday went well. I'm going to be mailing a package out today with my ipod, a lame gift for you, my sunglasses(they're buxing which basically means they aren't allowed), and a note I wrote to you for your Bday.

I'm glad Damon's Eagle project is shaping up!

Intense ping-pong.

Alright about the ward. It is a ward. About 100 people come every week which is pretty big for Taiwan. We have a really nice chapel as you can see from the picture I sent a couple weeks ago. Most of the ward are converts but there are a few extablished families which is cool. They can sing alright and there are plenty of people who know how to play piano. The bishop's son is ridiculous. We've had 3 dinners at members homes so far. Basically, you get a bowl of rice and that's your plate. They have a bunch of different dishes on the table and you just grab whatever you want and put it in your rice bowl. It's fun to try everything. The only thing I've tried that I haven't loved is this meat that was mostly fat. I'm fine with a little fat. It gives it a nice flavor. But when it's like 80% fat, I gag a bit. I got like 1 piece down with considerable effort. As far as English goes, most people speak at least a little bit. Some are better than others. They probably know how to speak about as much English as I knew how to speak Chinese when I was taking it in High School. Members don't really help a whole lot. They want to help, but they don't really know how to do it effectively. They give us referral cards, but most of the time they didn't actually talk to the person they referred and when we call them they have no idea why and don't want to meet. Elder Sumsion's been teaching a member-missionary class the past few weeks but hardly anyone comes. So yeah, hopefully we'll be able to build up the member-missionary work here. As for now, we're doing our best.

 

That's about it though! I love you dad!

 

-Brendan

Yujin and the setting sun.

Dear Mom!

I'm glad things are going well at home:) Yes! The Atonement talk by Brad Wilcox...I just read that this past week, actually. Jake Hawken gave it to us to read one week but Elder Sumsion also had it printed off so I got to read it this last week again. 

It is so great--especially the part about how he sees judgement day. That really resonated with me especially when reading Mosiah 3:24-27. When we meet God on that day, it won't be him telling us "Sorry, you aren't on the list" and then dropping us down a chute into a different kingdom. We won't want to be in his presence because of our own choices and our own guilt. It makes the whole atonement and the whole plan of salvation so much more merciful and agency just makes so much more sense. Everything that happens to us is what we choose. Even living with God again is our choice. I mean we can't choose to change the laws that govern the universe to allow us to feel comfortable in the celestial kingdom, but neither can God, as much as he may want to. 

Yeah, that talk is awesome. The Atonement is awesome. Oh my goodness. 

Alright, but yeah I also recommend Elder Christofferson's talk titled "Redemption". I used to like him mostly because he was your friend B.'s dad, but he's grown on me a lot and that talk is fantastic.

I love you mom. You're such a great example and I don't know what I would do without you or how sad I would be if you weren't my mom. I'm excited to talk to you guys at Christmas:)

Love, Brendan

Week Fourteen: One Month on the Island and Brendan Reaches Mango Nirvana

Hello Family and Friends!

Yongkang in the hazy morning sunlight.

This week has been really great. Very stressful and discouraging at times, but it continues to amaze me that even if 80% or more of the time, things aren't going well, the few good things that happen blow all the disappointment out of the water. The Lord truly does bless us.

Front of the Mango Museum.

On Monday, we went to this place called YuJin, which has called itself the "hometown of the mango". There was a mango museum that we wanted to go to but it was closed. It was so sad. Instead, we went to this shop and got "manguo bing" which just means "mango ice". It's basically shaved ice with mango chunks and mango sauce all over it. It was really good. Mangos aren't in season right now so the pieces of mango they put on there were previously frozen but it was still fantastic. I bet in the summer, it's absolutely heavenly. We also played Chinese chess which was pretty interesting. After that, we bused back home and finished our day. So yeah--P- Day adventures! So fun!

Manguo Bing (Mango Ice).

On Tuesday, I passed off my Lesson 3 evaluation. In this mission, the way you learn the language is through 3 "phases" of learning as established by past mission presidents and assistants. The first phase is learning to teach the lessons. We're evaluated by our district leader on each lesson individually and then by the zone leaders on lessons 1-3 together and then lessons 1-5 together. My goal is to get them all finished by the end of this transfer. So by December 8th! It's a pretty lofty goal. Most people don't finish it until a couple weeks after the move-call, but it's pushing me to focus which is great and I'm really learning the lessons and becoming an effective teacher faster I would if I wasn't working towards that goal. I also want to get to the 2nd phase as fast as possible which is basically a bunch of flashcards that help you learn common phrases and words. That will be sooooo helpful for actually understanding what people are saying because right now it's pretty hit or miss. I might get some of the points of what people say, but because I don't get all of them, my understanding is incomplete and it can make communication and teaching really ineffective. 

Playing Chinese chess.

We met with a past investigator named Lin Zandong. He's super solid. He's read the Book of Mormon all the way through and he feels that it's true. However, he said he's having a hard time right now allowing science and religion to coexist inside himself. He said he'll get baptized, but it'll take some time for him to feel that he's ready. It was really funny and also very frustrating because we asked him how long he thought that amount of time was going to be. He opened up to the introduction of the Book of Mormon and asked us when the Savior would come again. We said no one knows and he said he didn't know when he was going to be ready to be baptized either. We won't be able to meet with him again for a month so we'll have to think about how we can help him resolve his concern.

Yujin: Mangos on the street signs.

We found a new investigator this week on Thursday. His name is Liu. He's got an extra thumb on his right hand. Fun fact. He's a past investigator. Unfortunately, his record is pretty vague so we're not really sure what the past missionaries taught him. He knows a lot though. He's just a bit odd. He gets off topic really easily and it takes a while for things we teach him to sink in. We taught him a first lesson, though and set a baptismal goal with him for Christmas week. More about him next week.

We had a lesson with Chen Dixiong that day as well. He's still doing awesome! WE shared with him the 10 commandments, follow the prophet, and keep the sabbath day holy. The only one that was a problem was keeping the sabbath day because he has meetings on Sundays a lot. He's got 2 jobs and it seems like he's pretty important in both of them so hopefully he has enough leverage to change the times to different days. I know he'll do what he can though. His desire is so awesome!

"Manguo xiansheng" which means Mr. Mango

We shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Word of Wisdom with Liao this week. He is also just so solid. It's amazing. He came to church yesterday and in Priesthood, we were talking about...I honestly don't remember. I can still only pick up bits and pieces. Anyway, somehow it came up that Liao's mother was dead and that he could do vicarious ordinances for her in the Temple. He said that was awesome and that he hoped she was being taught in the Spirit world right now. It was so cool. His plan is to be baptized on the 7th and he's actually been telling people that when they've asked him if he's a member or investigator. I'm so excited for him. OH! Something else amazing. When we taught him Word of Wisdom, he said he'd studied about it a little bit but still didn't know very much. We started sharing it with him and somewhere in the course of the lesson, he told us the story of how the Word of Wisdom came about. I guess he'd been reading the church history online. He told us about how Joseph and Emma saw the men in the early church smoking and chewing tobacco and thought there's no way that's ok so Joseph prayed about it and the WoW was revealed to him. It was so nuts. His only problem with it was that he had just recently bought this giant can of coffee from Costco that cost him like $25 so he didn't know how he was going to get rid of all of it. But when we asked him to live the Word of Wisdom, he said in English "Absolutely". It was so awesome. I'm so excited.

But yeah, that's about it for this week! Tomorrow, we have a Mission Tour where Elder Funk of the Seventy is going to speak to us. I'm pretty excited for that! In preparation, President Blickenstaff asked us to read his conference talk(awesome, by the way. at least for missionaries) and prepare a 3-minute talk based on that talk, the scripture, and preach my gospel. It's been such an enlightening experience. I encourage you all to read his talk! 

Alright, more next week! Love you all and God does as well. Make sure you remember that and pray to him as you deal with life's challenges. It's helping me a lot right now:).

Until next week~

Elder Brendan Smith  

Week Thirteen Family Letter: Dear Dad

November 17, 2013

Hey Dad!

Yeah I got the package on Wednesday. It was so great:) I got some milk this week so I can have some of that European Chocolate stuff. Mmmmm. Also, the pumpkin spice tea smells and tastes so good! Sophie's painting was also really nice and meicuo (literally no mistake) on the characters for "I love you". And your mission journal entries have been really good. (note: Aaron sent Brendan some of the entries from his own mission journal when he first arrived in Hamburg, Germany) It's fun to see that there are a lot of similarities in the way we both think/thought at this age, but there are also a lot of differences. One really funny thing was when you talked about leaving your family and you said "and then they left and none of us cried." It was awesome. Stone-cold Smiths for the win. It was also really funny when you talked about contacting with your companion and you said "he always beat around the bush with setting up appointments. That's where I came in because I always made sure we set up an appointment." Classic.

As far as pictures go, that's kind of hard because we're only allowed to use cameras on P Day and at baptisms, and the last Sunday before we leave an area. If everything goes to plan with this Liao guy, then we'll have a baptism on 7th of December so I can take pictures with all the ward members then. Until then, you'll just have to imagine haha. Sorry:(

All the kiddos sound like they're doing just dandy. I got an email from everyone but Lucy this week. That was awesome:) I'm glad Damon's getting into some good music, even if it drives Sophie up the wall when he plays the Shins nonstop.

With calling at Christmas, we actually get to use Skype! Elder Sumsion says that when they did it on Mother's day, they went to a member's house and used their computer/ipad. It'll be about 30-40 minutes probably. I'm pretty sure that's going to happen either the P Day before or the P Day after Christmas and we'll probably try to do it a bit earlier in the morning so it'll be about 7 or 8 pm Sunday night your time.

The language is coming well! My mission is really awesome. They have this 3-phase system for learning the language that past missionaries developed and now we use them to learn in the field. It's been really useful. Right now, I'm on phase 1 which is basically chapter 3 of Preach My Gospel in 3 columns. One column is English, the next is pinyin(romanized mandarin Chinese), and the next column in Chinese characters. At the back of each lesson, there's a list of vocab words and teaching phrases, as well as grammar patterns used in the lesson that we are supposed to learn. Our district leader evaluates us on each lesson individually, and then our zone leader evaluates us on lessons 1-3 at the same time, and then 1-5 at the same time. I'm hoping to get all the evaluations completed by the end of this move-call(what our mission calls transfers). Right now I've passed off lesson 1 and 2 and hopefully I'll be passing off 3 on Tuesday. Once phase 1 is done, phase 2 is just a bunch of flashcards that help me understand and speak on topics outside the gospel. Other missionaries say they don't really start understanding everything until they get to phase 2 so I'm trying to get through phase 1 as fast as I can. Wow, that was a lot. Long story short, my language is coming along well. I have a plan, I'm sticking with it, and I'm learning how to teach really well. I'm also getting a lot better with contacting. I'm still awkward a lot of the time, but I have little victories here and there and I understand most of what people say in conversation or I can at least guess. I'm excited to keep improving!

Love you, Dad! Thanks for mailing the entries. I know it must have taken a while to get those all copied, cut, and organized. Your birthday's this Thursday and I put off mailing you something until the last minute. Hopefully I'll be able to get something mailed out today. If not, it might get there kind of late. Maybe more like a Christmas present. For now, Happy Birthday!!

Week Thirteen: Fourth Week in Taiwan and Things are Moving Along

Hello Family and Friends!

 

This week has been pretty wonderful. It started out great with a very relaxing P-Day, followed by many miracles! 

Street in Tainan.  Source: tripadvisor.com via Google Images.

On Tuesday, we did companion exchanges. Our district includes all of Yongkang. Elder Sumsion and I have one half, Elder Ng and Elder Peterson have the other half, and there are two Sister missionaries, Sister Lai and Sister Wilkins that cover the whole area(which is huge, by the way. they are super hard-working). I went with Elder Ng, our district leader. We switched at about 2 pm Tuesday and went contacting on one of the main roads in their area. After that, we advertised for our English class, had dinner, then we knocked on doors. It was awesome. The second door we knocked on, there was a man who opened up and asked us to come in. He was such a nice guy. We talked with him for a bit about what missionaries do and got to know him a bit. Apparently he won awards in school for his calligraphy and said he could teach me if I wanted. I told him that would be awesome so I'll have to talk with him another P-day about that. He also had 2 kids and a wife so if all goes well, the other elders will be able to teach them as a family! That would be so great! After that, we met with a college student and taught him the first lesson about God and the restoration of the church. He was from mainland China. He was a really cool guy, if only a little bit shy, and he set up a time for a return appointment so that was a great experience! After that, we went home for the night. The next morning, we did studies and since mine are really long the first 6 weeks, we just had lunch and then traded back companions the next day. So yeah cool experience!

English class went well the next day. I shared an article with the students that Elder Ballard wrote about keeping your life in balance. It's really cool when I do that because we can go through and explain words and phrases so they're learning English, but I can also explain the principles that are being explained so it's both spiritual and academic. So great. The only downside is that it usually takes forever to get through the whole article so I only have about 2 or 3 minutes at the end to wrap it up/ discuss the article as a whole. Regardless, a couple students expressed thanks that I shared the article and one even went so far as to say it was "inspiring". Now the trick is to be able to get that reaction when I'm speaking Chinese! In any case, I'll try not to let that go to my head;).

The rest of the week was just about average. We have two investigators right now with a baptismal date set. One is named Liao and he's from Hong Kong. He came here for school and he's so excited to learn about the church. It's awesome! He's cruising through the Book of Mormon and he's even researching the church which can be a bad thing if he searches in the wrong places(like blogs where people go on anti-Mormon rants and such), but all the information he asked us about was pretty solid so I'm not too worried. He's accepted and understood everything we've taught him really well. Most Chinese people have a really hard time with a lot of the gospel concepts, but he's getting it no problem. He not only understood the story of Adam and Eve and why they had to fall and everything, but he was also trying to find deeper meaning and analyze it like you would an English text. It was nuts! He also had a really awesome question when we were explaining the different kingdoms of glory. He asked us "If the Celestial kingdom is perfect, will we just be at a standstill? What will we do there if we're perfect? That doesn't sound very fun to just do nothing forever." We explained that even after we're perfect, we'll still be improving and working towards higher degrees of knowledge and glory. It was so cool to see him have that big of a grasp on the concepts.

Our other investigator is Chen. He's super busy with business meetings and things like that so he's been meeting with missionaries on and off since July. When we started teaching him, he'd already been taught the first 3 lessons. Yesterday, we taught him part of the 4th lesson which is about the commandments. We taught him prayer and scripture study and were planning on teaching him baptism and following the prophet too. However, when we asked the member who was helping us teach how keeping commandments had blessed him and he talked about the Word of Wisdom and mentioned specifically no tea, no coffee, no smoking, etc., we figured we should probably talk about that instead. Apparently, the hardest commandments to teach in Taiwan are Word of Wisdom, because everyone drinks tea as part of the culture, and the 10 commandments, because there's a tradition here of ancestor worship. So we were pretty worried about it, but when we committed Chen to live the Word of Wisdom, he was like "Yeah, sure, no problem. It would be easy to do a lot of this stuff sparingly, but not at all is going to be kind of hard. But yeah, I'll do it." It was a miracle. We are truly so blessed to be able to teach him and see how the changes he's making in his life are blessing him. Oh! He was also saying that he didn't really know if the Book of Mormon is true yet, but that he wanted to know so we shared Alma 32 with him about how you need nothing more than a desire to know, but if you let that desire work in you, it will develop and grow until you know for sure. He loved that and even asked us if he could read the rest of that chapter to which we enthusiastically replied "Yes! Of course!" It was so great. Such a great end to the week. 

Anyway, that's about all for the week. After I finish emailing, we're going to this place called "The hometown of the mango" as a little adventure so expect lots of pictures of that next week. Until then, know that I love you all and am so thankful for your support. Adieu!

Elder Brendan Smith 

Week 12: Hoping For Weak Things to Become Strong

Hey Family and Friends!

So this is week 3 in the field, I guess. Every week is better and better, but time is also going by so fast. I feel like I was just sitting here writing last week's letter. Ahhh! 

Anyway, highlights of the week: 

One of our investigators accepted a baptismal goal which means we talked to him about baptism, then asked him if he'd be willing to be baptized when he knew that our message was true. When he said yes, we asked him if he could prepare for [insert date here] to be baptized and he said yes. So sweet! His name is Liao. He's from Hong Kong originally, but he goes to school in Tainan and lives in Yongkang where I am. He's 20 and he said he's investigating the church because he's never really looked into religion before and he thinks it might be able to help him relieve some of the stress from school. Pretty good intentions, I'd say! Anyway, he's super sharp. He has a really cool motorcycle. And he's set to be baptized on December 7th which is super exciting! 

We have one other investigator with a baptismal date right now. His name is Chen and he's also super solid. He was referred to us from the other ward's elders. They taught him the first 3 lessons so we'll teach him Lesson 4 and then he'll be baptized hopefully! He has a really great desire to baptized. We read Mosiah 18:8-11 and he said that was him. We are so excited for him. The only problem is going to church. He's very busy with work and lots of times he has meetings Sunday mornings when church is happening. He also has to go to Taipei every third Sunday on business. So I hope we can work that out. He went to church in Taipei last time he went, but he hasn't gone here yet so hopefully we can get this figured out.  

We've got a lot of other investigators who we've only met with once or else they aren't really progressing very much. We're also working with a lot of recent converts and less active members, trying to help them either come back to church or keep progressing. Right now, only a couple of them are making progress. It's so sad when you feel like you're doing everything you can do but they aren't going for it. I have to force myself to remember that you can't force people to accept and live the gospel. Everyone has the ability to choose for themselves. In a talk that Elder Bednar gave to mission presidents, he said that we only have the power to "bring the message unto their hearts. It is up to them to let it enter into their hearts."

As for me personally, I'm doing really well. Yeah, it's tough. I don't know the language very well so conversations that get anywhere past "what do you do for work?", just go right over my head. I'm not a very good teacher. Missionary days are long and pretty tiring. Even though it's late fall, Taiwan can still get pretty hot. Can't wait for summer. Yaaay:) But even though all this is pretty rough to adjust to, I can take solace in the fact that I've only been here for 3 weeks. That's nothing. That's a little less than 3% of my entire mission. Things will get better soon. My trainer, Elder Sumsion has been a huge blessing in working through things with me with the language or in learning how to best present the lesson material. He tells me about his trainer and how they didn't get along very well. He was told the first week that he "shouldn't ask questions". That he'd just "figure it out". I'm so glad that's not what I'm having to deal with. I feel so blessed and I feel confident that I'm going to have a great mission. I just have a few weaknesses right now that I need to work on and Ether 12 tells us exactly how to strengthen weaknesses. In verse 27 it says "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them." My mission president sent out this scripture this week in his letter and had some great comments that really helped me. He pointed out that our weaknesses can't be strengthened without our effort. We can't take advantage of this power unless we come unto The Lord of our own free will and choice, humble ourselves and have faith. So good. 

Thank you for your prayers everyone! Please pray that I can have that humility and faith in order to make my weak things become strong. 

I love you all!

Elder Brendan Smith

Week 11: Week Two on the Island!

Hello Everyone! 

Week 2 on island! Wow. That's kind of crazy I've already been here a week! 

Elder Sumsion peeling a pomello (basically like a giant grapefruit).

The food's still great. When I can understand them, I know the people are great too! I don't know. They smile a lot and they seem nice enough. There aren't a lot of mean people. There are just a lot of shy or wary people. They see two white guys in white shirts and ties riding bikes and it looks suspicious I guess. I don't know. 

Elder Sumison and me.

Everyone rides scooters here and we ride bikes so the best way to contact people and see if they're interested is at stop lights. We only have like 30 seconds or less so a lot of times it doesn't really go anywhere but at least they know we're friendly and we exist:) Most people don't really make eye-contact or they wave us away or they sound really flaky when we ask them if they want to meet with us or if we can have their phone number to call them later. Some people are really nice and open though which is awesome! 

Me in front of the chapel.  Nice, huh? 

Not that missionary work is salesmanship or anything like that, but a lot of the same methods are used to get the word out about missionary work such as knocking on doors and street contacting so I really feel for all those guys now. It really makes me wonder to myself what I'd do if I wasn't LDS and two guys approached me or knocked on my door. If I treated them like I treated every other salesman going from door to door or passing out fliers, I'd probably talk with them and be curious but I wonder if I'd let them talk with me. That got me thinking "what's the difference between what I'm telling people about and what every other solicitor or salesman is handing out?" The answer I came to was that everything that people solicit or sell is a supplement to life. Let's be honest. You can live without pretty much anything anyone has ever tried to sell you. What makes the gospel different is that it's true and it's fundamental. It's not(or shouldn't be) a supplement to life. It IS your life. It's truth! It's what makes you you and it's the foundation for everything that exists. If the gospel wasn't true, there would be no God and therefore, we would not exist. That's what makes it so important. And that's why I need to share it with people and shouldn't be bashful about doing so! 

And you all shouldn't either:) I mean, do it in a loving way. Don't belittle someone because they are unwillingly ignorant of the truth, but be an example and look for ways to share the gospel in respectful ways. Work with the missionaries in your ward in finding people. They will be so grateful and you will be so blessed for having done so. 

Me in the family history center.

Thank you all for your prayers and your support! I feel them. I really do. We've seen so many miracles this week. We have 4 new investigators, one investigator who has so much desire to be baptized and if all goes according to plan, that will happen on the 23rd. So exciting! We've also been blessed to meet even more people who are willing to meet with us and will hopefully become other new investigators. We also had people just giving us food left and right. We figured someone must have been praying for us. Anyway. I love you guys. And I know God does too. Rely on him in all things, and he won't forsake you.  

Until next week!

Elder Brendan Smith

Week 10: First Week in Taiwan

Hello Family and Friends!

So yeah, I'm in Taiwan. It's a Monday around 1:37 in the afternoon, my time. So that's what? Like midnight your time. Wow. I feel so remoooooved. So here, let me summarize the events of the last couple days really quick.

Brendan with President and Sister Blickenstaff.

So. Woke up Tuesday morning, crack of 5:00 am. I went and got on a bus, then a train, then trax that took me to the airport. Took a plane from SLC to LAX, had a 4 hour lay-over in LA, then went on a 14 hour flight to Taiwan. Yaaaay. 

The flight was ok. I was all by myself and the two girls sitting by me were sleeping most of the time so not much chance for practicing there. We got to Taoyuan airport at 9, got our luggage, etc., then met the Mission President and his wife as well as the assistants to the president. We all took a picture and then hopped on a bus that took us back to the mission home where we crashed. 

The next day, we got up at 6 to go run. Ok, first thing I noticed when I got out on the main road, SO MANY SCOOTERS. I didn't get a chance to take a lot of pictures this week, but next week I'll make sure I get a picture of a good street. If you're super impatient, just go to google maps and look at the street view of basically any major city street in Taiwan. There will most likely be scooters lining the entire road and sidewalk. So nuts. 

Second thing I noticed, Taiwanese people are super active. The track we were running on(this is at 6:15 am, mind you) was super crowded with people of all ages doing exercises, running, or just stretching. It was awesome. There was a track team there working out and everything.  Anyway, we went there and ran a mile. The mission has all their Elders constantly work on improving their mile time. I got 6:52 so I'm going to try to work down to 6:30. Wish me luck! 

We then ran back to the mission home, showered, dressed and had the best breakfast EVER. We had all this fruit, fresh soy milk, dumplings, etc. Let me tell you about the fruit. I had passion fruit. Passion fruit tastes just about the same as passion fruit flavored stuff in America does, just more fresh. That was great. I had dragon fruit which is either white or red inside and outside, it looks kind of like a more leafy pineapple. It tasted like cantaloupe/honey dew but the texture was more like a soft watermelon. It sounds gross but it was super good. I had star fruit. It was ok. It just tasted like tart water. They also had yellow watermelon which was interesting but super good. 

After breakfast, we had orientation until lunch. For lunch we went to a "hot pot" place. Basically, they give you a pot of this broth stuff on a burner and you turn it on and cook all this stuff in it. I had this bowl of veggies and a plate of rolled up ham things. You'd throw them in the hot broth to cook them and then eat them over rice. It was really good! The weirdest thing I ate there was this cube of rice held together with pigs blood. They didn't tell me what it was until after I ate it...but it wasn't bad. I wouldn't choose to eat it, but it wasn't awful. A sister at the other table totally gagged when they told her what it was. After lunch, we had more orientation. 

Then we had dinner at this really good Peking(Beijing) place. We had Peking duck which was AWESOME and all sorts of other tasty things. After that, we had the Dan Jones activity. For those who don't know who Dan Jones is, he was a missionary for the church in the mid 1800s who went to Wales and England to preach. There's a famous picture of him where he's standing on a box in the middle of a town square, holding up a Book of Mormon and preaching to everyone. So that's what we did. We went to a night market in Taizhong(Taichung), stood up on a crate and bore our testimony. That was so scary, but it definitely helped me with the jet lag. I don't know if my mom will post the pictures that she got, but it was pretty cool. 

After we did that, we got paired with an older missionary and went to try and talk to people and give out Book of Mormons. It was cool! I gave out 3. It was really awesome talking with people in Chinese and being understood! It's like I thought this language was made up until now, but now I'm seeing how it actually works with communicating. It's crazy! Everyone we talked to, pretty much, was so nice and I'd be so happy to see some of them get baptized. 

After that activity, we shared experiences from it back at the mission home and then went to sleep. Yay. The next day, we got up early and ran stairs(ugh). I just barely got over being sore from that. After that, we had breakfast again and went to the "meet your trainers" meeting. We saw some footage/pictures from the previous night and President Blickenstaff talked to us for a bit. 

Then we each were handed a red envelope one by one with the name of our trainer in it. I got an elder named Elder Sumsion. He's from Kaysville, UT and he's awesome. Super solid guy. Super hard worker and I think we're going to have a good time and have success together. It's nice that one of us has their head on straight and knows the language well enough to get by(by the way, that isn't me).

 

A photo of the inside of Brendan's apartment.

The front door of Brendan's new apartment.

We went to lunch at a Burger place, then took the train off to my first area which is Yong Kang which is a suburb of Tainan. Woo! We're about 2 hours south of Taizhong. On the train to Yong Kang, we talked about our goals and set expectations which was nice. 

We had 2 lessons scheduled for that night. One was with a guy named Kase. We gave him a tour of the chapel and taught him how to pray. He did a really good job praying. He seems like he's interested for sure. 

The next lesson was with a less active man named Brother Li. His story is kind of sad. He has some mental health issues, so he's kind of depressed a lot of the time. He actually came in while we were giving Kase a tour of the chapel. We stopped now and then to talk about pictures of the savior and Brother Li had some really good insights when we asked him so I could tell he had a good understanding of the church and a strong testimony. Anyway, after Kase left, we had a good lesson with him. We read Alma 32 with him which talks about faith and he expressed that he needs to face his problems and not just shut himself off which was awesome! I'm hoping to see him improve while I'm here. 

The next day, we had a lot of lessons, but 3 out of the 4 cancelled so we went and contacted around a college campus. We then went over to a man's house named Zhang Baba. Baba means father. We call him that because he's older. Like, in his 50s or something. He was such a character. It was hilarious. He was super animated and he'd throw an "ehhhhh?" after a lot of his comments just to add emphasis. I loved it. He's a member, but I don't know how often he comes. He has a 10-year-old son that we want to teach, and Zhang Baba wants him to be baptized and go on a mission, but he knows if he forces it on his son, it won't be  any use. So he wants to wait until his son is ready. What does that mean? I don't know. We'll just have to pray for them. He did refer us to his son's friend's parents and their children so we went and visited them. They said we could come back so that's cool! 

After that, we went and got dinner, then we had a baptism. It was a boy in a part member family that my companion and his previous companion had taught and prepared for baptism. That was really cool to see. The dad wasn't a member so the bishop did the baptism. 

After that, we had a lesson planned that fell through again so we went tracting(knocking on doors) by where our scheduled lesson was supposed to be. We found a man and his wife there that let us in. They were so nice. The man had a friend when he was a kid who was Mormon in Costa Rica or maybe he said he saw missionaries when he visited there. I don't really remember. In any case, he also agreed to have us back so I'm super excited about that! 

After that, we came home and slept(Yes!). The next morning was church. That was kind of a blur, I have to say. I hardly understood anything. I got up and bore my testimony in Sacrament meeting which was kind of nerve-wracking. Everyone said my Chinese was really good for how long I'd been here so that was nice:) We did studies, then had a meeting with the ward mission leader who's awesome, by the way. He had us over for dinner last night. After dinner, we had a FHE activity with what was supposed to be members and non-members, but really only ended up being members. Oh well. After that, the day was over. 

Today, we got up and it was P-Day. That brings us to now. So I guess that wasn't very quick. I'm almost out of time though, so I'll have to tell everyone more next week. Maybe just snippets because there's so much going on all the time, I don't think I'll have enough time any week to say everything that happened. Suffice it to say, I'm here safely doing the Lord's work, I have what seems to be an awesome companion, the food's great, the people are fantastic. People will just talk to you without it being weird at all. It's awesome. My area is busy and I'm going to help people receive the restored gospel! Yaaaay! I love you all and I'll talk to you next week!

Zai Jian!

-Elder Smith