Townsend 2 taiwan

Monday, July 11, 2011

Monkey boy Elder T!

I wish Bust would be a little better when it comes to identifying people in his pictures. But for now we can just pretend he might be named Bob and of course the monkey I will call Busty. There seems to be a striking similarity...




Quit monkeying around!!!

I Thought I needed a title fitting for the pictures. ha but to start off thank you for the letters! Its far and in between they make it easier to know people still exist off this island! I think now I am starting to realize why my dad always wanted a card for his birthday. Opening letters on p-day is like christmas! Being cut off from any communication with all those you love and care about is not too bad, but it is fantastic when you know they still live.
All right! Well this last preparation day we went and saw monkeys! They were so funny. Everyone was a little freaked out by them so you would hear careful careful! You could just hand them bananas and they would take it from you. Also you would toss it to them and they would catch it. Elder peng tried to toss one a banana but he dropped it so he tried it again and this monkey just had butter fingers. Elder Peng started calling the monkey stupid because it couldn't catch a banana. Ha Everything in Chinese is so much funnier. Well after we had a little fun we "splitted" and went to eat some american food to celebrate our nation!
Well now about the people, last week I came across a 17 year old kid who break dances. I shared a little with him and he set up. Well this week we meet with him and he is amazing. He is christian and reads the bible almost everyday. We talked about it and despite being in a kfc (different from ours) we felt the spirit. It was cool at the end he really said something that hit me. He said thanks for reminding me. He specifically used the word to remind. Isn't amazing that we already know these things since we lived with God before, but our job is to be reminded of them? I think that is best feeling when I can see something and it reminds of something before, yet this time I understand it better. When we are here on Earth we are just learning to understand what we have "forgotten" and to try to understand it a little better.
Don't worry, this week wasn't that easy. Wednesday my companion and Elder Peng went to taipei. So Elder Murphy and I took on Taidong by ourselves!!! ha It was cool, but I am thankful that we have many called to work. Anyways I had to teach the advanced and intermediate English class together. Too many kids and too hard. ha
Also this weekend we encountered some strange people like the man who had some chinese music playing and was doing some tap type dance. Not even sure what it was. ha Ran into a Jehovah Witness. Kind of funny, my companion said to him, Hey you are like us! you are wearing missionary clothes." The guy said he was and pulled out a jehovah witness tract. Ah good old jehovah witnesses. Every time I see one they pull out the same scripture which says. I am God. My name is Jehovah. I honestly think that is the only scripture they know. Oh well, came across a few others but hey everyone is entitled to their weirdness.
Remember be happy that's the best way to get people to like you and remember the Savior.
Lots of love,
Elder (B.) Townsend

Thursday, July 7, 2011

God Bless America!

Awe at this moment I am dearly missing the good old USA! But its ok I'll rep the states over here in Taiwan so I am planning on throwing references of our land of freedom with everyone I talk with. I think it will go great.

Well this last week was pretty great, just saw miracles all around and some rough things as well. 
First blessing and sad thing is we dropped Wong. Found out that he had been lying to us, had no interest whatsoever, and only wanted american friends. Kind of figured as much but it didn't make any sense though, because he would come to church every Sunday. It was rough, but it was a pretty spiritual experience. Straight testimony mostly. I think the only bad part was when our member lin chao wei said, "mission fail, game over" waste of time... Yeah I think that hit wong pretty hard. Still love him but its his choice not listen to the gospel. Told him we would be waiting for him if and when he decides comes back. After the prayer, he got up and said mission fail with some tears in his eyes and left. Lin chao wei shared a great testimony, but I think due to one stupid thing said it killed the spirit and offended him for when the spirit was the strongest. 


Well we did meet a lot of new people, for example we meet this guy and we thought he was amazing, he reads the scriptures everyday, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, and The Bible everyday. Find out he is inactive but he wants his wife baptized so they can go together to church. So I think it was a great blessing in disguise because we are reactivating an amazing member and helping his wife at the same time. 
This week we went up to hualian again. During the lesson we were teaching baptism and just asked him what he thought baptism was and he said it was to get rid of past mistakes. He had never heard of that before from us or anyone. It was the spirit reminding him that these things are true. 
While in Hualian I got to go out with my old mtc companion Elder Wyatt and contact! Ha it was fun, Hadn't seen him and it was cool to see the both us, from practicing everyday to out on the streets doing the real thing.

Finally, The saddest thing for me is that of 13 year old Shen hong yu. He broke his finger a couple of weeks ago. Had surgery this last weekend. Well this weekend he had to go back. Apparently the surgery went bad and his finger is pretty much dead. That is horrible. 
I can't even imagine how much he is going through right now. 13 and about to lose a finger. He is going up to taipei to see if they can save it. Yet despise all of this he doesn't complain and he is staying strong. Just trying to support him. Its funny the first thing he said to us when we saw him was That he couldn't read scriptures. Ha just laughed because he was more worried about reading scriptures than losing his finger. Thankful for our country and the doctors there.
Lots of love.
Elder Townsend

HELLO!!!

Hello World!
Wow, the Work was good this week. It was cool to watch a few people really fall in love with the Gospel. The friend I want to introduce you to is (Joe) qiu. We meet him on Monday and we started to get to know him and we started teaching him the first lesson. Elder Riches and I started to feel like we were teaching a lesson and not teaching him so we started asking him questions about his life and just started to get to know him. From there we were able to teach him and invite him to baptism. He accepted the invitation to come unto Christ and I think that is such a miracle.
 Later that week he came English class and meet with us again that week. We talked about faith, why we need, and how it applies to him. He seemed like he really understood it and enjoyed it. Usually you can tell when understand it or they don't. Even when you ask them if they understand it and they say yes, they probably don't understand it so have to follow up with another question. When we did this he really understood. We also invited him to church. He was so excited. ha the best part was that he was really nervous on what he should wear. Ha He wanted to match the dajia. (Big family, everyone here in Taiwan is a big family and they also use dajia as a greeting for a bunch of people.) We followed up with him on saturday about coming to church and he asked again about what his clothes should look like. ha He came to church and loved it. I have never seen an investigator enjoy church so much. Despite all the distractions (running around kids, screaming, speakers using advanced church terms, etc) he loved sacrament meeting. What was cool was the gospel principles class talked about keeping the sabbath. This was going to be a big one for him. His job is in insurance and insurance is rough business down here, they work like crazy all the time, but no one ever buys. So we thought he was planning on going to work after church but he said he wasn't. I truly believe the class was answer. He had a spiritual experience and he now wants to keep it that way. 
Well this week we said good bye to Yu rui. He is moving to tiao yuan. Its up near Taipei. Keep praying he will figure things out (Go out and do something rather than waste his life behind a computer.) and will one day go on a mission.
This week we also had a giant miracle. We meet with Lai dixiong and we ask hou dixiong if he could come along and accompany our lesson. It was really good, We tied in how prophets teach repentance and how repentance really fits in our lives. He feels his biggest problem is repentance. He really opened up and told us how before he had no desire to go to church because his wife would come back from church and tell him he was the devil, etc, etc. Not sure how much of it is true, but that seems like a legitimate reason why he never came to church before. 

Anyways the really cool part, so the taiwanese people are really superstitious about dreams. They believe they come alive and stuff. Well Hou dixiong shared a dream that he had awhile ago(probably when lai dixiong first meet the missionaries), that he was supposed to become friends with Lai dixiong, but the problem was they both have crazy work schedules and it is nearly impossible. So in the end, didn't happen. Well Lai dixiong shared that when he first meet with the missionaries his wife asked who he wanted to help him receive baptism by. At the time he just said the branch president because he didn't know anyone. Well, Lai dixiong also had a dream, he dreamed that hou dixiong baptized him in a river. Well both of these men had never told these stories until now. It was way cool and spiritual. I guess we do have to watch our dreams and see what happens with them.
Well lots of love, hope everyone is doing well, keeping pushing along, but more than push along life enjoy it. Follow President Monson's advice on enjoy the journey. I know Jesus Christ lives and he makes the journey one worth bearing with joy.



Elder Townsend