1 Year Left

A Favorite -- Curry Pork!

Hello everyone!

How's it going?  Once again, it is a wonderful "eternal spring" day and a such a wonderful time to be a missionary.  First of all, Dad, congrats on the BIG 49.  Happy Birthday!  I hope you enjoyed some ice cream cake as well as my homemade postcard.  Landon, congrats on graduating from elementary school.  It only gets better and better from here on out. I also heard you made a soccer team...  Enjoy!  I hope you have fun playing and hope to have somebody to practice up with when I get back.  I don't know how good my soccer skills are now so you might have to re-teach me.  This week has been so awesome and I'm so excited to share with you what we have experienced this week. 

It all began on Thursday...

Thursday morning during language study we got a phone call from some random kid talking about english class and then also stated that he interested in this gospel related stuff and wanted to meet with us.  We set up a few times but because of his work and a few other things we had to re-setup and he was willing to come to church.  Sunday, during the middle of sacrament meeting, he called and said he wasn't able to come to church but still wanted to meet with us.  Sunday after lunch we sat down with this young fella.  He is such an interesting kid, but really wants to bring happiness into the lives of his family, and wants the strength to overcome thinngs in his life.  Well, turns out the gospel of Jesus Christ is here to help us with all that.  We were able to teach him the Message of the Restoration and he was so surprised that our church was different than all the others and that we have ALL the truth.  He then shared how his friends have always tried to drag him to church and force him to believe and he always had this "disgusting" feeling, but as he entered the church he had this special feeling come.  He also shared that before he said the prayer he didn't know what to say, but as he started the words just flowed from his mouth.  We testfied that it was the Holy Ghost and that he can have those feelings and same experiences happen each and every time. 

Thursday night we did a follow up call with our eternal investigator Klara.  She had mentioned she was sick and so that's why we hadn't been able to get a hold of her during the week.  As I was talking with her I just had these small little promptings to ask how her reading and praying has been.  Of course I started fighting off that prompting, "No, I'll just ask her when we visit her."  Well, it's a good thing I did because she mentioned that she just had this feeling that the Book of Mormon was true.  She felt that she didn't need to pray about it anymore cause she said she knows its true.  We just need to help her to come to know that if the Book of Mormon is true, then everything else will fall right on into place.  She also brought up to really really important questions, "Why is baptism necessary?" and "Why do we want to live with our Heavenly Father forever?"  We are so excited to help her make the connection that the Book of Mormon is the "keystone" of this religion and that everything falls into place if it is true.  We're also excited to help her help herself answer those questions so that sheknows why baptism is necessary and why we want to return to live with God.

These are just two small experiences that have given me and my companion hope.  A hope that these two have been prepared for this time.  A hope that these to people are our "miracles." 

As I was writing this I just realized that I only have 1 year left.  1 year left to serve on the beautiful island of Taiwan.  I was thinking about the time that has already gone by as a missionary and the growth that I've seen in others, as well as myself.  I'm looking foward to this next and last year that I have to do the same.  To help these wonderful people to change and grow in the gospel, and to do the same to myself.  To help myself change and grow to help me become the man I will be for eternity.  I love this work, I love this gospel, and I love Taiwan. 

Love the One and Only,

司馬長老