Brendan Sings: Redeemer of Israel

Another hymn from Brendan.  I kind of love the times his voice cracks as he's singing--makes me smile.

https://soundcloud.com/brrrrendan/redeemer-of-israel-taiwan

Week Thirty-one: 3/24/2014-3/30/2014--First Week on the Island…Again

Hey Family and Friends!

This week has felt like my first week all over again, but kind of different. There's a lot to get used to, I'm even further removed from home, and my luggage took FOREVER to get here. I was riding on a bike without a pedal for a day and a half(I feel you, Dad!). 

I'm just going to jump right in. First off, all the investigators here are splendid. I don't know what Elder Fronk(the guy I replaced) and Elder Ward did, but all the investigators here just have the most pure intentions. It's really awesome to see. They all just want to come closer to Christ and what's even better is that they're all friends with the ward and with each other! The ones I want to talk about are Sister Zeng, Killy, Rod, and Brother Wang.

Sister Zeng is in her 20s and was just baptized two days ago and she's awesome! She grew up on an island on the outskirts of Penghu and her family was the only Christian family on the whole island. Her faith is super strong and I'm super stoked to see the great impact she'll have on the branch.

Elder Ward, Sister Zheng and Brendan right before Sister Zheng's baptism.

Killy is in his 20s and he's from mainland China. He's here for school and he's super awesome. Just the nicest guy you've ever met and he has super hilarious, good English. 

Rod is 15 and he's just the most pure, innocent kid you ever did see. He has such a big desire to follow Christ. He loves church, he loves all the people at church, but his family opposes him being baptized, so please pray for him!

Brother Wang is in his upper 20s and is set to be baptized next Saturday. He has a problem with his back so it looks like he's always bowing his head and he's really skinny. He's so hilarious though! He always says "ya know me?" When we were teaching the commandments, and said we had another one to teach, he was like "what? there's more? no coffee? no girls? what the?...oh ok!" and then he took the pamphlet. It was super hilarious. He's a great guy and he has such a strong testimony. I'm excited!

As far as Penghu the place goes, it's not super different from Yongkang. The main differences is that here's coastline everywhere and it's a lot smaller. Like, there's still high-rises and McDonald's and 7-11 and things like that. I'm not living in a hut or anything, but it does have a more rustic kind of feel. The people are a lot more laid-back, and we run into people that Elder Ward has contacted 2-3 times before almost every day. Oh also, the branch president births babies so basically everyone knows him. He's super awesome. Super old and wise. A really good mainland China accent to top it all off, and apparently he takes the missionaries out to dinner pretty regularly so I'm pretty stoked for that. 

I love you all! The work is doing well here! I hope your weeks are all going well. The church is true even on the most remote islands of the sea. It will change literally any one's life if they humble themselves and let it into their hearts. I have a strong testimony of that. 

   

Elder Smith

Brendan Sings: Ye Elders of Israel

Brendan has started recording weekly hymns.  It makes me happy that's he's in a mission where he is allowed to make music and use all of his talents.  Here is the first, "Ye Elders of Israel."

https://soundcloud.com/brrrrendan/taiwan-ye-elders-of-israel

Week Thirty--3/17/2014-3/23/2014: An Unexpected Change in Location

Hello Everyone!

Greetings from MaGong, PengHu. If you will notice, that place is different from my previous area which was YongKang. Yes, I moved, ohhhh did I move. So here's the scoop. Every 6 weeks, the whole mission has the possibility of switching around because that's when most new missionaries come on/old missionaries leave the island. Sometimes, however, in the middle of that time period they have to switch people around. This time, it was because they had to train a new Elder to be operations manager(works at the office preparing presentations and handling all problems with apartments, etc...So in this jumble to get everything to work out, I guess President had a feeling he should move me to the island of Penghu which is off the coast of Taiwan. There is a small, but growing branch there of about 30 people and there are only 2 missionaries. We don't go to most of the normal meetings that everyone else goes to because it's super inconvenient to have to fly back and forth all the time. So, we don't have a lot of contact with everyone else while we're here. It's really scary! I feel like I did when I first got to Taiwan. I feel like I'm training all over again. But, if President and the Lord trust me here, I hope I won't let them down.

Yesterday was pretty wild. I totally wasn't expecting to move and no one else saw it coming either so saying good bye to everyone was both easier and harder if that makes sense...I think Elder Gish was more scared though because he really wasn't expecting it haha. I'm not sure if he's really confident with the area yet. Hopefully he rises to the challenge:)

This morning I got up really early, took a train to Taichung, then took a plane to Penghu. That was quite an experience to say the least. I got here safely, though, and my new companion seems super solid. His name is Elder Ward and he's from Tennessee. He wrestles and I'm his first junior companion. It sounds like this area is on fire so I'm really excited to start meeting everyone! We're going to dinner with the branch president tonight, then meeting with some Jehovah's Witness missionaries afterward so tonight should be interesting:)  

So how about the week before this all happened in Yongkang? Eason dropped his baptismal date because his grandma is super Buddhist/Taoist and has some misconceptions about what he can and can't do in order to respect his family's beliefs. He's going to talk to her face to face in a couple weeks, after which he should be able to be baptized. Yaay! There should be lots of great people being baptized there next month:) It's super exciting! I'm pretty bummed I won't have any way of seeing them in person, but I'll be able to hear from Elder Gish occasionally, I hope. 

Yeah, I really don't know what to write. I'm frazzled...Hopefully next week, I'll have it more together.

-Elder Smith

Week Twenty-Nine--3/10/2014-3/16/2014: Doing and Becoming

Hello Everyone!

This week has been pretty incredible. We have an 18-year-old kid named Eason getting baptized next week so that's super exciting! Also, I guess I can't call him a kid since he's my same age. I don't know, I just feel so old and wise when I wear a white shirt and tie every day. I suppose someone needs a humility check. We also had another miracle that made me super stoked about life, etc..First, I'll take you back a ways...This must have been at least a month ago. Probably more. We met him outside a laundromat under really miraculous circumstances and he was SUPER golden. We were so excited to talk to him more. But, after we met him we only got a hold of him once before he just totally disappeared. Wouldn't answer phone calls or texts, wouldn't call us back, etc..Usually, we call people 4 or 5 times and if they don't answer/answer and have 0 interest, we cross them off our calling sheet. But we kept this guy on there for way longer than we would keep anyone else, because he was so awesome we couldn't believe he would just disappear like that.  Finally, on Friday, he calls us and says(in Chinese), "Hey guys! I'm so sorry I haven't been answering your phone calls-"(He sounds practically dead at this point, by the way)"-I've been working overtime every day for the past 3 weeks and my boss doesn't let us use our phones at work." Overtime in Taiwan is like, 8:00 am to like, 11:00 pm, just so we're clear. So basically, any time we wouldn't have called him, he would have been working. He then said "And I haven't been able to call you back because I've been pretty much broke and haven't been able to pay my phone bill." (In Taiwan, if you call, you have to pay for it, if they call, they have to pay for it). He then blew our minds by saying, "I've finally figured it out so we'll be able to keep contact, and I've been talking to my boss about getting work off so I can go to church on Sundays so I'll almost definitely be there next week." This is a guy we've met for 5 minutes on the street, by the way. Anyways, super big miracle. I almost cried. Pray for him! 

We also met a guy from mainland china with a super sweet accent. We'll be meeting with him soon enough.

As the title of this email mentions, I've been thinking a lot recently about the difference between doing and becoming. I do a lot of things as a missionary, but it's not for sure whether or not that's helping me become someone. We do a lot of things every day. We go to school, we go to work, we play on the computer(well, now I don't), we do like, human things. But are those just time-fillers or are they things that are really shaping us and helping us become who we and, more importantly, who our Father in Heaven wants us to be?(rhetorical) Do we act with a purpose or do we just allow ourselves to be acted upon? Food for thought. In any case, I've just been more conscious of what I want to become so that when I go home at some point, I don't just fall back into old habits. It's made me more desirous to make sure that my actions are backed with the right reasons so that I will truly become someone.

Brendan's very own re-enactment of the Footprints poem. ;)

Looking pensive with a ukelele is something of a contradiction in terms.

I know what I am doing right now is the most important thing I could be doing with this time in my life. I'm not just spreading a religion, I'm spreading truth; fundamental truth that gives everyone an identity and a purpose on Earth. It gives us a vision of what we can accomplish and what we can all become as children of our Heavenly Father. He love us and I testify that he is there. In the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, Amen.

-Elder Smith 

Week Twenty-Eight-3/3/2014-3/9/2014: Forgetfulness and a Family at Church

Note from Erin:  I've included some pictures of Brendan's YongKang apartment with this letter.  I was curious about what his digs are like, and thought others might be, too.  

Spidermissionary…Spidermissionary.  Doing whatever a spidermissionary does...

Dear Family and Friends, 

So yeah, this week a few good things happened. First, as the title states, we had a family of 4 show up to church out of no where! The whole ward pounced on them, telling them about all the activities our church has, dinners at members' houses, etc. It was AWESOME! Although, I hope it didn't freak them out. They have this little 5-year-old son that loved all of it, so I'm pretty sure he's going to force them all to come to English class and then to come to church again next week. It was great:) I also ate a thousand-year-old egg for the first time. It was pretty gross...It's basically just an egg that they hard boiled in a bunch of soy sauce and stuff for a really long time so that the white turns into this transparent black and the yolk turns green and gooey. It wasn't as disgusting as it looked, but I definitely wouldn't have chosen to eat it(Elder Gish bought it and made me eat it...). 

Brendan's closet.

Brendan's bathroom.  Good to see that dental hygiene is still important to him.

Missionary supplies/pamphlets and shoes.

So yeah, some investigators forgot their baptismal dates which is kind of our bad because we didn't bring it up enough. So yeah, we will hopefully have at least 3 baptisms on the 22nd of March. That would be super awesome! It will be a 4th year college student named Jobshn(not the weirdest English name I've seen here) who is really willing to come to church, pray, etc.. but has some logic problems with some commandments like the Word of Wisdom. The other is a 1st year college student named Eason who likes Americans, but we're not really sure if he's super stoked about keeping commandments either. The last is a guy named Lai. He's super solid! He's been telling a bunch of people he's getting baptized on the 22nd and is super stoked to follow Jesus Christ. It's awesome to see his desire. He also ran a marathon, so...he's basically just awesome. Pray for them!! Pray that they'll be able to develop a personal testimony that what we are teaching is true and that they will have desire to live according to that testimony. Or something to that effect. I just really hope they can all be truly converted to the gospel and not just to us. Thank you all. 

Brendan's YongKang apartment's kitchen.  There isn't an oven--though it looks like they have a microwave and toaster oven.  And emergency backpacks all ready to go (which will hopefully not be needed anytime soon).

I recognize lots of real food in this fridge. Brendan is not going to be dying of scurvy anytime soon.  Whew. 

Brendan's half of the room.  Sometimes, he has such wise insights and such a mature outlook these days that I worry I won't recognize him by the time he comes home.   The messiness of this room is reassuringly familiar.

Getting all domestic making French toast.  Is it just me, or do the tongs they are using in this pic look more like pliers?  What a manly-looking cooking utensil that is.

Our RC's are all doing pretty good. Chen is doing so great!! Oh my goodness. He wasn't at our church yesterday, but he called us to tell us he went somewhere closer to where he had to work so he could take the sacrament and set up a time with us to meet and talk about his questions. He has some of the best questions I've ever heard, by the way. They are all really on target and deep. Like, this week, he asked about what doctrine there was about people with mental disorders and the celestial kingdom. You know, just things that everyone thinks about when they are growing up in the church. I don't know. It just made me really happy:). But yeah, that's about it for the week. If you have any questions, let me know! 

Elder Smith

P.S. We found some really creepy weird coins on our bikes one day and we don't know who put them there. If anyone knows what they are, particularly if they are cursed, please let me know. Pictures attached.

Every time Brendan picks up the coin, it glows red-hot and it looks like it has emerged from the fires of Mount Doom.  Should he be concerned?

Kidding, kidding.  Brendan sent the picture with the special effects included, so I'm pretty sure that's what he had in mind.  Here is the front view of one of the coins they found on their bikes.

Here is the back.  Anybody know what it is all about?

Week Twenty-Seven--2/23/14 to 3/2/14: Movecall Madness and Skydiving

Hey Everyone,

So, the move-call/transfer/change day is today and I'm..............Staying!! Woohoo! This will be my fourth transfer in Yongkang and I'm stoked. For those who don't know what a transfer is, missionaries have the possibility of switching areas every 6-weeks and that 6-week period is called a transfer. So long story short, I've been in Yongkang for 4 and a half months now. It's going to be really tough to leave when I finally do. I love the people here and I'm just..settled. I don't know. In my district(comprised of all the missionaries in the city of Yongkang, 4 elders and 2 sisters in all) the only change was that one of the sisters left to go up to Taichung and a new missionary came down to be trained by the sister who stayed here. Everyone else stayed the same though so it's going to be a fun transfer with people I know:)

Brendan going skydiving on P-Day.

Kidding, Kidding.  Had you for a minute, didn't we? :)

First off, my mom mentioned that I haven't really talked about what I do every day and for people who aren't acquainted with missionary life, that might be kind of confusing, so let me explain: I get up at 6:30 every day and exercise for half an hour or sometimes less depending on how fast we get ready(sometimes, it's slow going). At 7:00, I get shower, eat breakfast, and get dressed, etc. At 8:00, I start personal study. I study the good word of God! Scriptures, Preach My Gospel(the missionary manual), I plan for lessons we're going to teach that day, and if there's time, I ponder about what I want to be and what I want to do on my mission/that day. Next, at 9:00, we do companionship study. We sing, we pray, we share what we learned in personal study and we study together. At 10:00, we have language study(I just started learning characters. I'm super stoked!!). At 10:30, we're out the door and if we don't have a lesson or errands to run, we usually just talk to everyone in sight about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and try not to weird anyone out. At 12ish, we eat lunch and do another half an hour of language study. After that, it depends on the day, but it usually consists of finding people to teach, teaching people, and eating dinner. Or a combination thereof. Sometimes, we have meetings with other missionaries where we get trained on different aspects of the work, and sometimes we get to see someone decide to follow Jesus Christ and be baptized. We return to our apartment at 9:00 or sometimes a little later and we do the next day's plan for half an hour. Then, for the last hour of our day, we write records so other missionaries/our future selves can remember what we taught that day, write in our journal so that our posterity/future selves can remember what we did that day, and we wind down. At 10:30, we pray, then go to bed. But yeah, that's about what we do every day. On Mondays we have a Preparation day where we basically buy groceries and do whatever we want from 10:30 AM to 6:00PM.

So yeah, this last week, the standouts were as follows:

1. Golden Chen finally got baptized!!! He's what we call a week A drop-in. When we have people we meet with and they set a date to be baptized, we say they're a week A if they're going to be baptized that week, week B if it's next week, etc..So if you have a week A drop-in, that means someone decided to be baptized the that same week. So yeah, Chen did that. We met with him on Thursday and he decided he wanted to baptized on Saturday. Super stressful! He had an interview on Friday and then he was baptized on Saturday afternoon. It was a wonderful day. Not a lot of people showed up to his service because it was so sudden, but there was a really strong spirit there. He gave a really strong, humble testimony. I'm super excited to see him keep going and do great things. He's still got the work situation that keeps him from coming to our ward every week, but he'll at least be able to go to a sacrament meeting every week and he wants to retire as soon as possible so he can become a teacher(no work on Sundays! yay!). Anyways, that was awesome.

Brendan, "Golden" Chen and Elder Gish at Chen's baptism.

2. The other elders in Yong Kang taught a family and committed them all to baptism. The best part, though, is how they found them. The father was someone that missionaries from another area referred to us. The other elders were calling them while we were there and Elder Surdu decided to play a joke and pretend he was talking to this guy(he hadn't answered any of the 4 or 5 times they had called him before) and say the guy wanted to talk to me. He handed the phone to me twice and both times I said "Hello?" in Chinese, but the guy had already "hung up". Finally, I got sick of it and just called the guy myself. He surprisingly answered and was being kind of flaky about setting up a time to meet in the next week, but then he kind of all of a sudden asked if we had time right now. I said "yeah" and he said "alright, I'll be there in 15 minutes." Elder Gish and I left, but I guess the guy came to the church and brought his 18-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son. They met with them and committed them all to baptism on the 29th of March. It was super awesome!! Miracle status.

That's about all I can think of at the mo. If I think of more later, I'll tell you all next week. Love you guys!

-Elder Brendan James Smith