Transfer 4 - Week 5

Good morning good morning good morning! 

This last week was an interesting one because there was a typhoon! Though apparently the typhoon came in from the East side of Taiwan and then swept down South. I'm over on the West side of Taiwan so I wasn't affected as much but Xinzhuang still received a little bit of a hit. 

In some cases, rather large. (see pictures) We ended up having to stay indoors a couple days and let me tell you, I don't know if I've ever been more bored in my life! We basically just called people but you can only call people for so long until you slowly slip into madness. Ha no just kidding but yes we did in fact go a little crazy. To fight off the waves of insanity from slowly sinking in, we built a fort out of our beds and made calls inside of that. Surprisingly, it helped. (also see pictures) It was a very interesting week for sure. It was shorter because my last P-day was Wednesday and then Friday and Saturday we had to stay indoors so not too much happened this week... It's been good though. 

Let's see. I bought a classical guitar last week so it's been nice to be able to play that every once in a while. Songs like ,"Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring", Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and stuff like that, but on the guitar! So that's been very good. At night I probably have about 10-15 minutes to play so I try and make the time worth it! Also it is my dear sister Melody's birthday! So everybody post on her Facebook or something! Investigators wise, a lot of our investigators have gone out of town, to visit family and stuff, it's kind of random. One is moving to Texas and will probably get baptized over there because he's been doing really well and has been loving the Book of Mormon so we're both happy and sad about him but oh well! A few are on summer vacation and down South for a couple months, a couple have left out of town to visit their families. So it's strange all of our investigators have decided to leave about the same time so we really need to try and find some new ones this next week! Because our pool has unexpectedly shrunk! But it should be fun, love good ol' contacting. 

Man this email is lame but it's ok because I took more pictures! I made it my goal to at least take one picure everyday and I've done it this month so far! Hope you enjoy the pictures!

 

Love,

Elder Hagedorn

Our lovely church!

A Patagonia store... My dream come true.

Making calls in the tent! Like my T-shirt?

Typhoon!!

Dang...

Transfer 4 - Week 4

Hello everyone! 

Sorry I forgot to tell you last week but this week my P day is different because it's a temple day. Every once in a while we get to go to the temple so our P day gets moved to Wednesday. So I'm going to the temple pretty soon! But let's see this last week was pretty good! It was a bit slower because a couple of our investigators have gone out of town for the Summer so we had to try and find some new ones. 

We came across a few guys in a board game store last week! We went in there and started talking to the guy working there and started talking about God and we got into a little bit of a debate. (Whoops) His belief was that there are multiple Gods and that whatever a person believes in, is real. So I asked him,"So there's a lot of Gods today then, because people themselves have slowly created new Gods." And then he was like exactly. So then I said to him,"Hmm... People can create Gods?" This really confused him and we had a very entertaining discussion at this point that I won't go into detail about. He was very animated though, I'll have you know and his gesticulations and pounding on the desk claiming Zeus was his God was very humorous. 

Needless to say towards the end he wasn't very open and as we were getting ready to leave his brother came in and started talking to us. The original guy left and then we started talking to his brother about God and his beliefs and he had very similar beliefs to his brother, though he was a bit more logical and reasonable, more willing to listen than his brother. We gave him a Book of Mormon and invited him to read the introduction and particularly think about the last paragraph of it. He was a really cool guy and we're excited to see him again this week! We were also able to finally go guitar contacting! We went together with the Sister missionaries in our area to a park. It was pretty good! They got a new investigator and we did too! The power of music is great! Looking forward to this next week!  It'll be great! Sorry this email is shorter, but this morning I am pretty tired so... Sleep. It'll get ya. 

Things are going well! We'll continue to plug away over here in Xinzhuang!

 

Love,

Elder Hagedorn

With one of our investigators at Taipei 101!

Apparently you can get married in Taipei 101 so here is a little poster of all these cute wedding pictures... Should we hold hands?

Oh ya.

With the Sisters from our ward!

Went to the one American member in our ward's house for the 4th! He made burgers and hot dogs for us... It was heaven! Those are precious over here in Taiwan.

Transfer 4 - Week 3

Good Morning everyone! 

This last week was good! We have some great new investigators and Chen Bo Han got baptized! I'll start off with talking a little about one of our new investigators and English class students, Nick, or Brother Ye. He has very good English and has some Christian background which is really nice cause he understands things a bit faster. He's super nice and cool and we took him on a temple tour a few days ago! When walking into the church (the tour is actually in the church, which is the building right across from the temple. So you can look out the window and see the temple) he stopped and looked around for a second and said it feels really peaceful in here. Then he looked out the window and said I imagine it's more peaceful in there. That was kind of how most of the tour went. We walked around looking at the paintings while he asked questions and upon answering them he would say that makes sense, think for a few moments and then ask another question. We talked about our purpose in life, John the Baptist and authority, importance of temples and Jesus Christ in general. He's awesome and every time we talk about the Gospel he eats it all up! Another investigator we have is Julius! He's a bit slower but he's still cool. He is pretty strong in his own Christian church, which I believe is Reformed Baptist. When we first met him he was pretty opposed to our church and reading the Book of Mormon. But during those first few visits we had Leo (Recent Convert of a few weeks ago) help us teach and they've actually become pretty good friends. Leo helped him open up a bit I think. 

Yesterday we met with him and this time he had many, many questions. We taught from the scriptures and knowing he wouldn't readily accept Book of Mormon scriptures, we only used the bible to teach the Plan of Salvation. He believes more firmly in the New Testament so we stuck with scriptures from there. When we would talk about a part of the Plan of Salvation, he would not really agree so we would say well actually we've learned a bit about this through the Bible, in 1 Corinthians it talks a bit about this. Then he would read it and say I don't really understand. So we'd explain it and slowly, very slowly he would accept what we taught, though rather hesitantly. 

It's definitely a slower process with him but at the end of the lesson we committed him to read the Book of Mormon which he was very much against a couple weeks ago! So he's pretty awesome and we're happy that he's willing to read and pray. And then this week Chen Bo Han got baptized! He brought his wife and kids whom we haven't been teaching but we hope to start seeing the whole family soon! At the baptism all the members were talking to the family, getting to know them and stuff. It was beautiful to see. It seemed his family fit pretty well into church that day and I can imagine them all becoming members so I hope that day is soon! Will keep you updated on that. Also another cool experience with Bo Han is that when we taught him tithing for the first time a while back we were a bit apprehensive. But, starting the lesson, he said the opening prayer and in his prayer he said something like,"Heavenly Father, this is my belief. I know that this is the true faith and whatever the missionaries say to do, I will do it." So I thought to myself, well that's a good way to start off a lesson to tithing! So we taught him tithing and he said no problem! He also quit coffee, tea and smoking within a few days of us teaching him. The man is a total saint and the most humble guy you'll ever come across! He has 4 Mercedes Benz but you wouldn't know that upon meeting him because he's so nice and wears average clothes. Love him! 

Well that was pretty much the week and I'll talk to you all next week! Shout out to Tess Happy Birthday!