Townsend 2 taiwan

Monday, January 30, 2012

Long nian! The Year of the Dragon!

Long nian! The Year of the Dragon!
Well this week has been great with fire works, the shops closed, and finding people! The holiday is pretty much over. School kids still have some time off, but other than that we have ourself a group of people to go talk to! Well this week... I would say that I ate a lot of food provided by the wonderful members who make some of the best grub ever! Other than grub we had some really cool things and miracles happen.
The first thing is that happened is we had a specialed training and guess who was asked to translated for the natives? Me! It was a bit scary at first because I have tried to picture translating for president before and it is not easy. ha He uses lots of idioms and just funny stories. For example a dime in a dozen, and my fingers were frozen to the bicycle handlebar and my companion had to use a heat gun to dethaw my frozen hands! ha but in the end I survived and learn lots of great things that we strove to apply this weekend and as a result we saw many blessings and miracles.
In our specialized training we talked about chapter 8 of Preach My Gospel. It focuses on time management. There is also a talk in last general conference where a general authority talked about using Chapter 8. (So you might want to check it out and learn how to apply these principles now) One of the things we learned was set goals, set plans, and go do. It focused on our we effectively using our time? We could be the busiest person in the world, but the least productive and effective person as well. It mentioned how we need to focus on key indicators. So when Elder Slawson and I planned we did exactly that. We decided we wanted to find 12 set ups to meet with us next week. After we set plans to help us accomplish that. The Lord sancified and we found all of those set ups! They didn't affect our key indicators right then but they will affect them next week! We did that same thing for sunday and we saw a lot more than we planned! We found an additional nine set ups! So next week we can just teach, teach, teach, and get them to baptism!
Also Sunday we were so happy to be alive. We saw 4 people come to church. It was funny three of them came together. When they got off their bikes and before they came in the church they spent about 5 minutes fixing their hair, making sure they were still fly. ha it was pretty funny.I was smiling so big as I followed them inside of the church. They were all so good! Well one of the people who came, Mr. Wu, he had come the previous week and told us that he probably wouldnlt come back. Well he was there Sunday and when I talked to him he said that when he got home he said he heard a voice in his heart talking to him in Chinese telling him that church was a good thing and stuff. He then started to say that he thinks it was the bread and water, because he couldn't see anyone and he couldn't see the bread and water and he felt it come it so he concluded it must be because of the bread and water. He decided he was curious and came again. Who knows this guy is a bit special and has also seen the ghosts of roman soldiers walking down the aisles of catholic churches. Oh I think he has said he saw Jesus and Mary as well... Finally we head home after following our plan pretty well and we say our opening prayer for our Dailly Planning session and I look up at the time. Its only 8 o clock. We still have an hour to go out and teach. Ha It really weirded the two of us out. We don't know where they time came from. We did want we planned and yet we still had an hour. It was as if God had added an extra hour to our lives. He wanted us to still go out and do work! So we did! I guess you can say my testimony of time management and planning was strengthened. God is a planner and He has planned from the beginning so if we want to be like Him, we need to become effective planners. 
Finally I just want to add my testimony that the Book of Mormon is true. It is the word of God. As I have sought to use it in my missionary experience I know I doing it the Lord's way. That these people can feel of God's love.  
Well lots of love,
Elder Townsend

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