xin nian kuaile!

Hello one and all!

Yes they did celebrate the new year here in Taiwan not the same as we do in America, but they did celebrate it. We woke up to the mass of fireworks going off at 12 am right next to our apartment. It wasn't too bad of a show.

This week the Lord blessed us extremely. We found 5 new investigators and all five of them have baptismal dates! I will tell you a little about them one of them came from our free English Class and they call him Roach. Yes his name is special and so is he. He came to my intermediate class and afterwards I went up and talked to him. He said that the church has a special feeling to it and that he really liked. He said the feeling was the strongest during the prayer as well. Set him up and were excited. He called us the day after and asked if he could change to that day we decided that would be ok so we met with him. We said an opening prayer and he ate it up. He said he felt it go from his heart to his mind, and from his mind to his heart. Said he loved it. Also he said he felt like a "white hand" was inside of him. I have no idea what that means and hope it is a good thing and not some crazy loony thing. Shared with him a bit and he just shared how he had looked and studied lots of different religions, but nothing had brought this feeling before. We started to invite him to baptism by saying, "As God answers your prayers..." and he immediately said he already has. We told him that was great, but we still like you to go home, ponder up the things we share, then to ask God. He set a baptismal date and is stoked out of his mind to come to church this week. Finally his closing prayer was amazing. Some parts were a little bit funny, but for a first timer it was amazing. He said he had no idea what to say sometimes and was just going to close, but he would open up his mouth and God would put more words into it. I thought that was the best part that he was voicing his desire to serve God and bring others unto Him and Son Jesus Christ. It will be a long and difficult process but one worth it.

Well this week we had a couple of invites from the mission, one of them is to study about obedience and diligence from preach my gospel, also memorize the quotes that are there as well. Work, work, work! There is no satisfactory substitute, especially in missionary work! This invite was awesome. It kept me going all week long. Everytime I maybe wanted to slow down and catch a breath, I would remember this and try to go a little bit farther. The Result, meet great people. Just constantly and carefully doing what we are supposed to be doing while being obedient allowed us to receive the blessings of the Lord. I met this rad guy named jay huang who also has a baptismal date. Its really an amazing thing to see the Lord guide. I know sometimes I don't see it, but reflecting back upon it now, its all in the Lord's will.

Also this week I went on exchanges with the zone leader Elder Bogle. He is great and fantastic. We loved tearing up xin zhu. It was pretty funny we had people come up to us basically. We went to the church to grab the English Boarding stuff and we saw a guy checking out the church. He asked if we had a free english class here. We told him we did and we asked him if we could give him a small tour of the church. It went well set him up and passed him over to the xiang shan elders who had a great lesson and I believe they said they set a baptismal date with him. Finally at night we we were going to have a meeting with the ward mission leader, but it was cancelled because sister holm got sick. As we were leaving, we ran into some man and who came to the church. We sat down got to know him and share a little message. He set up again and we passed him over to the other area missionaries. Also people were pulling over for us all night too. It was really cool.
Oh I have an English Student named Simon. I have sent a picture out of him before. He is great everytime I am sharing and I ask something he gives me two big thumbs up and says awesome! (Occasionally an excellent or two) Yep, that's right I taught him that. Ha

I have so much to share but not enough time. I know Christ lives and if we have faith in Him, Not in something, but that Jesus is the Son of God, our Savior and Redeemer of the World, we can do anything that is expedient in His name. I know of Christ's divinity because of the Restoration of the Gospel which blesses families and individuals.

Lots of love from a small island.

Elder Townsend