Transfer 5 - Week 5

Hello my wonderful family and friends! 

Honestly speaking, this last week was a bit rough haha. But it's not too bad! First off we were not able to get in touch with Brother Lin (Cookies. We call him Cookies cause he would always give us cookies) so that was too bad because he didn't make his baptismal date but I'm thinking he'll turn up. Secondly, there was another typhoon this week! So you know what that means, yep another day stuck inside! But we ended up cleaning our apartment pretty hardcore so now it's pretty nice :) Also both Elder Morgan and I's bikes broke this week on different days so we had to "scooter" our bikes across the city to the nearest bike store in the crazy traffic of Xinzhuang, Taiwan. (It's insane, trust me.) I'll have to get a picture of it or something. So we scootered our bikes acoss the city to the nearest bike store only to learn that what we needed was a brand specific part so we then had to scooter in the opposite direction basically and go to the other bike store! It was hot outside and I was definitely sweating big time, but in hindsight, I realize that I was sweating like a flipping GREASE MONKEY OUT THERE!! But it was fun. And then another thing happened is that while on exchanges, Elder Morgan accidentally typed our phone passcode wrong a few times so our phone restarted or whatever and we can't use it for 5 days so that was too bad but it was pretty funny. He was pretty down on himself cause it was hard to get hold of investigators and such but it will definitely be fun to bring this event back up with him in the future. Another sweet thing that happened is we went to a boy band concert! Oh ya! Our church has a boy band apparently called "Beyond 5" and they are doing a tour of Asia so our church sponsored them to come to Taiwan and do some concerts in some of the churches here. So we went to the one up in Taipei with our investigator Nick and it was pretty rad! Definitely made me miss good ol' N'Sync. Oh I forgot I'll be training again!! So that should be pretty fun. I'll also be staying in Xinzhuang so I'm going to be like the father figure of Xinzhuang, it'll be great. It was definitely a week full of adventures. And the work is slowly progressing as well! It's crazy, I turn 20 next month! I'm going to be so old sheesh. 

Anyway, I love you all!

 

Love,

Elder Hagedorn

Our shoes kind of get wet a lot so we make do haha.

At the Beyond 5 Concert with our peeps from Xinzhuang!

A few of us from my MTC district at the Beyond 5 concert!

On exchanges with one of the Zone Leaders, Elder Forbes. It was raining so we whipped out our rain gear and this is what he had bahahaha. First thought when I saw him was 'Zone Overlord Forbes" It practically has a cape!

My planner on a normal day! Trying to start to write in Chinese more :D

Transfer 5 - Week 2

It was a good week! Definitely were able to pick it up a bit from last week because some investigators got back from out of town and have more time. 

One of our investigators, who is actually from Africa and doesn't even speak Chinese is Ronnie. He lives in Linkou, a city on a hill above Xinzhuang. A few miles up the hill. So after a few lessons fell through Elder Morgan decided to head up there earlier so we could contact and stuff up there. So we biked up the hill and I can proudly say I didn't stop once! That hill is a beast! Took us 25 minutes to get up there. By the time we got up, it looked like we had literally just jumped into a pool. We were completely soaked in sweat! It was marvelous! I felt pretty accomplished haha. 

As we continued biking afterward I did the Lance Armstrong fist pump celebration thing. We met up with our investigator and his friend was waiting for us too! We talked to our new friend Peter a little bit about the Book of Mormon and he's willing to meet with us! The Lord blesses those who are willing to bike up long hills I guess! But it was a really good week! We're making with some great people right now and we're excited for them. Brother Lin is working on quitting tea right now and his faith is so strong! We taught him the Word of Wisdom about 2 weeks ago and he's gone from drinking a lot everyday, like 15 glasses he said, to just one cup every few days! And that will go to none soon! We're very excited for him he's awesome! We are working on finding new investigators because some of our investigators right now are a bit stubborn and don't want to progress but it's ok! All in due time. But keep us in your prayers that we can find some new investigators! 

I'm working on reading the Book of Mormon in Chinese and it's pretty tricky! I'm right now at 2 Nephi 7 and it's pretty interesting reading the scriptures in a different language. You get different meaning out of it sometimes, it's really cool! Today for P-day we want to go to this Titanic exhibit over in Taibei so we're pretty excited. It's going to be pretty sweet. Also one of my buddies "Colt", Brother Wu is going to America soon! He's going to Provo for part of his visit and I told him to go to my family's cafe so maybe you can meet him! He's the bee's knees. Look out for him, he's a lady killer. It was a good week for us and I hope it was also good for all of you! Love you!

 

Love,

Elder Hagedorn

Elder Morgan wearing a "Linkin Pork" hat. Bahahaha

Awkward photo of the day? Got a yummy sandwich inside that bag. Mmmm...

Transfer 5 - Week 1

First week of the transfer and it was a good one! 

A little bit slower because a lot of appointments fell through but still a good one! Some exciting things happened. First, I got hit by a car and no longer have the use of my left leg. Ha no just kidding! But I did get in a little scooter accident, though the only thing that happened was a little scrape on my elbow and a little rip in my shirt. I'm actually pretty proud of the rip in my shirt, it's my first "seasoned" shirt! I was biking down the road, the usual and then a guy on his scooter came up on my left and then cut across over me hitting my front wheel, spinning it awkwardly, causing me to wreck. I had just gone down a hill too so I had some speed. Somehow, he must not have seen me cause he cut me off pretty good and I was just going straight. And then afterwards he turned left so I don't know why cut across over me from the left to the right, just to go back left. A little weird but whatever the case I'm fine! It was pretty much a miracle that I only had a small scrape. When I crashed I put my hands down to soften the impact and they both hit the ground pretty hard and I thought would at least get scraped up pretty good but somehow they didn't even have a scratch. It was pretty cool. Guess he's looking out for me! Second, Brother Cai got baptized! His wife is a member and it was mainly because of her that he got baptized. She's pregnant and so I'm very happy that he got baptized. They'll start a family with the Gospel in their lives! Third, it was the first full week of the transfer! Another month has gone by and it's crazy how fast time is going by. I was just emailing my man Elder Shumway and he's almost been out for a year! I have too! Pretty insane. Elder Morgan and I have definitely been enjoying one another, Ha though that is an interesting way to say it. We joke around probably too much but we laugh and think we're funny. In companionship study I'll read the Book of Mormon in characters and he'll read it in Pinyin (romanized Chinese) so we like doing that to improve Chinese and to do something together. We also read same chapters in the Scriptures sometimes and then discuss it throughout reading and afterwards. It's good fun! Also, the missionary dress code has changed so we can wear khakis now! I've decided I need to get my hands on a brown tie, khakis, brown shoes and a brown belt. I think I want to fully embrace this new policy and go all out... Hehe. Well I think that's about it! I love you all and hope all is well!

 

Love,

Elder Hagedorn

All that happened! Miracle!

Brother Cai!

Some food we put in the fridge at the church about a month ago that we forgot about... Mold... We were starving we had no choice but to eat it. Hahaha no we chucked it.

Transfer 4 - Week 6

This week we had transfer meeting! 

I'm not on my 5th transfer which is pretty weird... Still young though! A few interesting things have happened. A new area opened up in Xinzhuang so now instead of just 4 missionaries here we have 6! We're slowly growing! 

And also I'm district leader which is pretty crazy! Two of the new missionaries in the area are natives of Taiwan and the other missionaries in the district are all on their 3rd transfer or under so their Chinese is not bad. (haihao) District meetings will be interesting! We've also given a few of our investigators to the new Elders so we'll need to rebuild our investigator pool in the next couple weeks. Give out some Books of Mormon! Also, one of our investigators, James, moved to Texas to go to Texas A&M for his Ph.D. so that was sad! He's an awesome guy and we were sad to see him go! He's come a long way since Elder Beck and I started teaching him. When we first met him he would not even take a Book of Mormon but now he reads it almost every day and loves it! Most recent chapter he read was Alma 32 and he really liked it. So he's in Texas now and he'll be able to meet with missionaries there and go to church too! 

Chinese is still coming along and still working on Phase 3. In order to pass off phase 3 you sit down with the mission president and he randomly chooses a scripture from the book of mormon and then you have to know 80 percent of the characters and then tell him in English the meaning of the scripture. So as for passing it off I could do that but it's kind of bothersome to travel to Taipei so I don't know if I ever will pass it off. When you pass it off you don't get anything other than a handshake so I don't know if I'll ever pass it off because it's kind of a hassle to set up a time with him and takes a good amount of time to do. 

But don't worry I'm still studying Chinese like a madman! Still studying characters and improving but just don't get uneasy if I never say I pass it off cause I don't see much of a point of passing it off. Actually my mom wrote me an email in Chinese this morning and I could pretty much read all of it except for like 3 characters so that was cool! Sorry this week's email is a lot shorter because I'm pretty tired... But things are going well and we're working with some awesome people! Love you all!

 

Love,

Elder Hagedorn

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!