9-30-2013

9-30-2013

Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 12:24:34 +0800
Subject: Zone Conference, and...not much else
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello Everybody!!!

Things seem to be going well down there in good ol Utah and life seems to keep moving along no matter how far away I go so that's kinda weird.  This week has actually been rather uneventful but I will try to expound as much as I can =).

I guess first off is just the food... I didn't really eat anything too interesting but I did manage to get the package from my mommy this last Wednesday (Thanks mom =) it was wonderful) and... the chocolate totally melted so I ended up with 3 really cool bricks of chocolate.  I have been enjoying that lately and the top of my desk right now is covered in chocolate dust from me and Elder Raley just breaking off pieces of the chocolate.  But we actually have plans to make cookies with the other 2 bags today so that should be good =)

So as far as the week goes, it was pretty much a usual week, on Tuesday I went on exchanges with the zone leaders, which was actually really fun, but the person I was with had just barely come to the area so we both didn't really know how to get around the town.  However he seemed to pick it up pretty well and it turned out to be a really good exchange in the end.  After we switched back Elder Raley had decided during the exchange that it was time to really work with all the former investigators that we had accumulated and try to find some cool ones to teach.  So that has been one of our focuses for this week.  However I think that the biggest thing that happened this week would probably be the fact that we had zone conference.  Which is just a really huge training meeting that is actually led by the mission president, which lasted us from 10 AM to 4 PM, it took awhile but it was also really fun and we learned a lot about repentance, how to teach it, and what it really means.  It was a good time and I enjoy further cementing the idea of what people need to do to truly repent and change their lives.

So I think I mentioned this before but lately (because Huwei is actually a college town and school is starting around now ) we have been running into a few Vietnamese people who actually only speak English and Vietnamese, so we have been working on setting up with them and getting lessons down, however its hard because English is still their second language and they don't really know "church" terms, ie. when I contacted them they had no idea what the word "missionary" meant, and I didn't really know how to explain it because usually when I say it in chinese they get it... so yeah.  Anyway that has just been a topic of discussion that we have had lately because we weren't sure if it would be worth our time at the moment to be teaching them.

Well that's really all that has happened this week, but I do want to point out one thing, which is HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARA!!!!!!!!! HOPE THAT YOU HAVE HAD AN AWESOME YEAR, THAT COLLEGE LIFE IS GOING GOOD AND THAT YOU ARE ABLE TO ENJOY EVERYTHING THAT YOU SET OUT TO DO. So yeah!

Well I guess I just want to say that I do know that the things that I am teaching these people here is true, that I know through this gospel we have the opportunity to live with our families forever, and that this is the message that can bring the most happiness to everyone's lives, I know these things to be true and I know that we have a living god that can truly help us in our daily lives. These things I know in the name of Jesus Christ Amen!

Until next week

Elder Heaton

何長老

9-23-2013

9-23-2013

Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 12:11:57 +0800
Subject: Moon Festival, and BBQ's
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family, the friends, and i guess everybody else.

This week has been a rather long week full of finding, contacting, talking to people and most importantly barbecuing... maybe I have my priorities a little out of order.

So seeing as this week (Thursday) was the moon festival the little town of Huwei got a little more exciting and has a lot of strange faces that came here to visit family.  So the interesting thing that I thought of this week is that there are missionaries that are in the cities, like Tainan, Taichung, Taipei ect. then you have the missionaries that are a little more out of the way in the random parts of the area, which is places like huwei. But I think what makes a big difference is that when you are in these more rural areas, during the festival this is the place where people come to visit their families, because this is where they grew up, whereas when your in the bigger cities during the holidays, that's where all the people leave and the town gets a lot emptier during the holidays.  kinda a subtle difference but one I noticed, as I talked to a lot of people who were from Gaoxiong, Taibei and all the other big towns here on the island.

But as far as food goes, the only real interesting thing that I ate this week was called a star fruit or a liang (the same liang as my name) pao (pronounced pow) which is a very unique fruit because well... it actually kinda looks like a star.  it is rather delicious, or I like it, but my companion isn't the biggest fan of them.  Other than that though I think the biggest part of my diet consisted of barbecuing this week as I had the opportunity to go to about 5 different ones, each one was basically eat until your full then eat a little more, and is practically only meat.  so that was fun.

Now that thats over with, I think I need to repent of my forgetfulness as last week I didn't say HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMMS!!!!!!!! I sent you a card in the mail but it might take awhile for it to get to you because the mail has all been stopped here until, well, today due to the moon festival so tell me when you get that =)

Well this week has been a rather boring one besides that, as far as the whole moon festival goes, having a BBQ and just going home to visit family is all people really do here so there wasn't that much excitement about it.  We have been working on trying to find new investigators as our progressing investigator pool is currently at 0.  So the week has been long as we have had nobody to teach. But we had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people, and got some potentials that might be willing to meet with us so I'll tell you if anything from that pans out.

The new move call has started, seeing as I'm still in training I didn't switch companions or areas, but the effects of the move call made my companion the new district leader, which so far really only mean's that he's on the phone a little longer than normal, but that might be because our district only has 6 people in it. But things are going well here and I'm happy to be doing the work.

Sorry for the lack luster e-mail but I hope that everyone is doing all right, the weather here is cooling down and the taiphoon season is starting to come to an end so all in all, everything seems to be going good.

Until next week

Elder Heaton

9-16-2013

Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 12:16:09 +0800
Subject: Xili Hui, baking cookies, and Taiwan...
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello Family, Dajia hao

So this week has been one full of eventful things, fun stuff and cookies! so lets get started.

This week on the food market, I didn't really eat anything really interesting, but I guess the one thing that I did eat was a drink called duoduo.  Its a kinda yogurt flavored drink that is quite delicious, but whats better than a plain duoduo is actually mixing it with other random stuff, so me and my companion bought a 1 liter bottle of it, and we got a big 2-3, i'm not actually sure, liter bottle of sprite and we mixed it, it was pretty good but we have been experimenting with that, we also tried it with just plain water, and dongguo tea (or winter melon tea) which were all pretty good. beyond that though there wasn't really much to talk about.

So the biggest thing that happened this week would have to have been that I had a baptism, which happened this last Saturday and it was really cool.  While we were talking to her about who she wanted to do what, we asked her who she wanted to give the talks at the event and she picked two people that helped with her lessons (we call them peike's) and we originally thought that she was going to pick the member that helped out with most of the lessons we taught her, but she actually picked him for the talk and thought that it would be kinda weird if he did two things and so she actually picked me to perform the baptism!!! So weird but it was a really cool and interesting experience.  I'm really glad that I was able to participate in that and hearing her testimony about it afterwards was really cool.  And as a really cool way to kinda finish her baptism, right after the event they had a... I think it was a relief society meeting but everyone just attended, but they watched "The Other Side of Heaven" which was just a really cool way to end the night even though I wasn't able to stay to watch the whole thing.

So beyond that, as this was the last week of this transfer, our English class had a party, and for that party we did two things, the first was a talent show and the other we baked cookies!! now the reason that that is so cool here is that nobody here actually owns an oven, and a lot of people actually have never seen one before, so nobody bakes anything which means that the whole baking cookies things was a totally new experience for just about everybody who attended.  it was lots of fun and we actually had a some luck in finding all the ingredient's that we needed, but in the end I think we bought the wrong kind of brown sugar which made the dough look like a chocolate dough, but all in all it was really good and all the people really seemed to enjoy it, and the talent show afterwards was awesome, except for our part because we didn't really prepare a talent.

Also this week during contacting just last night we ran into a group of college students ( Huwei is actually like a college town, which is really weird and makes a lot of our LA's that we have here impossible to find because they just lived in student housing but have moved out now ) who were all from Vietnam, they were really cool invited us in and took some pictures with us ( cause we are white ) and just talked with them for a bit, but it was a little interesting because their first language is Vietnamese and I think the one who had been there the longest had only lived there for only 2 years or so, so they couldn't read Chinese, and definitely didn't speak any English, but they were really nice and gave us a box of moon cakes after all was said and done, and were going to meet up with some time to play soccer so what was cool.

Well thats all that has really happened this week, I have enjoyed it, time is kinda flying by, my first transfer has just ended and one of the cool guys in my district is going to my companions first area.  This also means that my training is slowly coming to an end and one of the privilages of being trained is that you get an hour for dinner for language study for your first transfer, that is now over.  But I know that things are going great. the people are awesome, the sights are amazing, and the temperature is cooling down so thats where I am now woo!

Elder Heaton

PS I finally got a full Chinese name, it was kinda weird for me because a couple of times people asked me whats my name and I had to tell them that I only had a last name, so I asked a member to give me a name, and it is...

He Liang Xing

Liang - shining

Xing - star

He - doesn't really have any meaning

so yeah

From

He Liang Xing

9-9-2013

Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2013 12:06:55 +0800
Subject: Contacting contacting, rice and a Baptism
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com; jessjeanh@gmail.com

Hello family friends and other (I'm not quite sure who other is yet)

This week has been a really interesting one, with two real extremes through it.  But first off the food =)

So I think the main interesting that I ate today was called blood rice... yeah, we were eating with a member who had just come back from a trip (really cool guy and had been gone all week) and he wanted to eat dinner with us, so we go off to a ji pai (fried chicken) stand and then he says something to my companion and hes just like "no man I dont like blood rice" so then he looks at me and I just kinda say why not.  So I got me a little bag of blood rice, which is these little cubes of rice held together with something (blood maybe, but I'm not sure) and had a little sauce in the bottom.  it wasn't really that great and I probably wouldn't order it very much if at all, but now I can say that I have eaten that, which is cool.  The other food thing that I want to expound on that I mentioned before is the kao rou (cow row is how its pronounced) which is a Taiwanese barbecue, so yesterday while we were out contacting we ran into a small group of students that were just sitting outside their house, they had two tiny little grills ( both were smaller than the size of my laptop ) with some hot coals under it, so we go talk to them, and we just kinda joined in for a little bit, we couldn't stay for long because it was about 8:30 but they just kinda let us come, sit down, they gave us a little meat and it was kinda cool.

So that leads off onto what I did this week.  So work has been moving along really slow here.  We really only had 1 progressing investigator and so that left us with a ton of free time to just do some quality contacting.... which is really really boring, especially when you don't totally understand what people are saying when you ask them questions, but I think we had a good like 3 days this week where that was really most of what we did.  So it was a bit of a boring week, but to kinda improve that and on the other side of the coin we had a person this last Saturday that just passed her baptismal interview!!!!  So that was totally exciting and I can't wait for next Saturday for the actual event to happen.  And she is really excited for it as well.

Well that's really all that has happened this week, I am working hard on learning the language and have been slowly seeing the improvements here and there as I understand more and more of this mysterious way of talking that these people have.  The scriptures are cool and I think at the end of Alma 26 (it should be a really short chapter if I'm right) there was a really cool quote of the difference between people who have the gospel in their lives and those that don't, see if you can find it

From that one guy in the Taiwan area

Elder Heaton 

9-2-2013

Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2013 12:14:42 +0800

Subject: Rain Rain Go Away... or not

From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net

To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello everyone, everybody and... that's all.

So this week was full of so many things, but I think the biggest thing it was full of was travel time... Let me explain

So this week there were 3 things that we really needed to travel to that were out of the normal...rotation, first of all on Tuesday we wanted our district leader to go to one of our investigators houses to do a baptismal interview, but the investigator lives a little out in the boonies so we decided to do a transfer for that but that meant that I needed to go to Douliu for a day because if I had to lead the way in my area I would probably get lost.  So I got to do transfers for that, really fun and the person I worked with in Douliu liked that I had an extra 30 mins for LS at dinner (because I'm still on my first transfer.)

That's one, next, which was the day after (Thursday...i think) they had a meeting for all the companionship's that were getting/training, but the meeting was in GaoXiong (or KaoShiong, I'm not really sure how they spell it)  Which is near the far south part of the island, the only problem was that there was a Taiphoon going on and so everything was totally flooded, including the normal train tracks, so there wasn't anything leaving from our train station, so we called and were about to go home but then the zone leaders called us and told us we had permission to take a taxi. However the taxi's weren't running because of the taiphoon so we were kinda out of luck, but then the sisters called us and told us that they found a taxi, and were given permission to join them to get to the high-speed train that would take us to Gaoxiong.  So that was an awesome adventure.

And finally the 3rd one was that the day after that (Friday) the zone leaders decided to do exchanges with us and so I got to go to JiaYi (Chiai...) for another day for transfers, and that was also really fun, but to get to Jaiyi we had to take another train which from dounan to Jaiyi is a good 40 or so mins.  So that went well.  Also the day after that the zone leader that I was with was asked to do a baptismal interview and because we didn't really have time to switch back I got to join him and go to another town called Taibao.

And I think the most important detail about all this traveling was that there was a taiphoon all this week and so that means that there was just a ton of rain. during the whole time.  It has finally stopped but thta was an adventure.

This week I really only ate like one interesting thing which was called "Chou DouFu" or Stinky Tofu, which smells a little bit like a sewer, but it doesn't taste too bad.  So that was good fun, my companion likes it but I thought that it was just ok.

Another interesting thing about Taiwan is that Bowling here is really really cheep.  its about 100NT for 2 games or so which is about $3 or so.  But I haven't bowled here yet, they had a ward activity but I was on transfers during the time.

Well that's about it.  Know that I am doing well, the rain has stopped, the moon festival is coming up (I'm not sure what day it is but it sounds fun) and the people are really cool, even the ones with no interest.  Speaking of which, last night we were contacting and we ran into a guy at the bus station and were talking about how our ward was having a BBQ and invited him to it, he said he was actually holding a BBQ of his own on that day and totally invited us to it.  So we are going for it and are going to have 2 Taiwan Barbecues in one day, Woo

Well that's pretty much it Love you all

Elder Heaton