Thanksgiving

Li bek yi gao hui bo? (Do you want to come to church in taiwanese)

Yeah probably don't trying saying this one out loud...

Also I forgot my camera this week sorry...

Food.

I love pumpkin pie. We got to eat some more of that heavenly delicassy. Even though it was small, I was able to eat turkey!!! It was awesome. I got a little dark meat in my belly. Most of the ward members had eaten turkey before so it was a new experience for them. ha I could not imagine never eat the gobble monster before.

People.

Before I had always have a bad view on girlfriends here (and I guess it would also include boyfriends too) in Taiwan. One of them would have interest, but the other... rejection! Well this week huang jun zhen, his girlfriend is heaven sent. She is a member from Taizhong and decided to buckle him down. Daniel had been smoking a pack a day. With his girlfriend's new quit smoking plan within a week he was down to 3 cigarettes. Answer to prayers? Yes. Can girlfriends be a good thing? Yes. In conclusion, I am so grateful for all the many different and extraordinary ways the Lord answers our prayers. He won't leave them unanswered. Sometimes they might feel that way, but he does not leave them unanswered, because we are important to Him.

Xiao ren jie. He is doing pretty good, unfortunately he didn't come to church yesterday. We did however meet with him. He is start to pull in the Gospel and apply it to his life. What a huge step. Without application of the principles of the Gospel, how could we ever dream of reaching potentials that are far from our imperfect tendencies? We shared with him agency and the beginning of the Plan of Salvation and he understand agency and we asked him if he wanted to use his agency to accept or reject our message. As it now stands he wants to continue forward and learn more so that he might be able to be baptized.

Li dixiong. (Pedro's dad) So we set up another time to go over to Pedro's house and to share a gospel message with his family again. Before that, I asked Pedro what did he want me to share. He said a happy message. I thought what is a happy message? First thought. The Gospel of Jesus Christ. By Jesus Christ we are cleansed, faith, and repentance. So we shared when Jesus Christ visited the ancient americas part of the Book of Mormon. How if we have faith in Christ we can be healed. (3 Ne 17) then the invitation to repent and come unto christ (3 Ne 9). His dad as we read this part had an interested look on his face. My companion said we represent Christ and just as Christ invited them then, we invite him now to come to church. He said he was willing. It took his family by surprise. I think they didn't believe him. It was a really cool experience and I just followed up by promising just as we have faith in christ and repent, we can receive the healing power of savior in our lives. He heal our past spiritual wounds and also our physical ones. He can help us mend those pains. It was a very humbling lesson.

Rejection Corner.

This week rejection winner as we were riding to zhu bei we stopped a light. A car pulled behind us with two kids. Elder Slawson made the attempt to go contact them. Everytime Elder Slawson went backwards they backed up too. It took a little bit for Elder Slawson to notice this great pattern. Finally he gets to them. (Other traffic helped that one out) It was pretty funny to watch them back up on somewhat a freeway to avoid the Elders. That's right put fear in the hearts of the people.

Other.

Well, we had a Thanksgiving play. It was pretty funny we renacted the "first Thanksgiving" wasn't quite true since the pilgrims brought haagen das with them and meat rice too. Ha The Narrator always had to point out that the Indians were descendants of the Lamanites. Ha Sister Holm did not like that too much.

Also we had a member come out and proselyte with us. Ha it was funny. He taught me a few funny things and it was great motivation to go out and do work. Hopefully find some prepared soul he could share his testimony with.

I think that wraps it up for this week.

Lots of love and dub,

Elder Townsend (and I'm the chub...)