Sunday, November 27, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving and Welcome Home Anthony

Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan
Hello everyone and ANTHONY,
First of all I hope you all had such a wonderful Thanksgiving, especially because Anthony is home now.  Wow, that is weird to think about...  Also, Happy Birthday to Uncle Mike!  Hope you have an awesome day.  Well, going through all those photos of the family with Anthony kind of made me a little trunky.  But I'm over it now.  So this past week was what we call "Power Week" and we focused on certain things for each day, so lets get right on into it.
Tuesday was "baptismal goal day."  Pretty much the entire day was spent giving out as many baptismal goals as we could.  One individual in particular was named Charles.  He is a former investigator who has met with missionaries for over 15 years.  He was taught everything and has been to church a ton so we tried giving him a goal to be baptized.  His excuse for not being baptized was his doctor told him he could not get water in his "inflammatory ears."  We thought of a ton of solutions to overcome this problem: ear plugs, finding some heavy duty head gear to cover his ears with the ear plugs in, all the way down to wearing scuba gear.  For all of these solutions he said, "bu yi ding" which means it's not certain that water won't enter in.  He told us we could ask his doctor if we could baptize him, and so that was Friday's activity..
Wednesday was "invite recent converts to attend the temple day."  We were able to give all our recent converts goals to attend the temple and get their recommends which was awesome, especially our newest convert Wu dixiong. 
Thursday was "place 10 Books of Mormon day," and also Thanksgiving!!!  The closest thing I got to eating thanksgiving food was an apple pie and sundae from McDonalds.  So our goal for this day was to give out 10 Books of Mormon as a companionship, which means 1000+ as an entire mission.  We were able to sit down with 7 new people and give them all a Book of Mormon.  Our entire mission was able to give out 1023 Books of Mormon which is a ton.  Just think of all 1000 of these people got baptized... That would be cool!
Friday was "member switch day," and we were supposed to go out with a ward member and proselyte.  Well, all our ward members either had work our school, so it kinda didn't happen for us.  However, I went on zone leader exchanges and had two Taiwanese as my companions.  Having them with me really helped a lot with the language. 
That was pretty much how my week went!  However, there is something I want to share especially with Anthony.  So this week we sat down with an RM (came home the Thursday before you did) and taught a few of his friends here at school.  He expressed to us that serving a mission changed his life, and he wants this same change to happen to his friends.  Even though he was released last week as a missionary, he continues to go on with the work.  I know a lot of your friends are on missions right now, but never forget that you can still share the gospel.  That is one commitment we made when we got baptized.  So have fun watching your movies, listening to music, and relaxing until school starts, but don't forget you can still share the gospel.  It may not be in Spanish that you are used to sharing it in, but you can do it!
Well I love you all, and hope all is well with an RM in the home. 
Love, Elder Smith
p.s. Dad, the best way to give me those files is to put it on a CD and send it to me.  Thanks!  Record Anthony's homecoming talk as well, I would love to hear it!