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