4-26-2014

4-26-2014

Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 18:09:02 +0800
Subject: Interviews and a road trip
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello everybody,

things are doing ok this week, been working pretty hard and just spending some good quality time recovering and trying to get my body to heal as fast as possible so that I can get back to some normal missionary work, but until then I'm still here and doing my best to be useful.

Thats super sad to hear about buddy... i can't really think of the words to describe how I feel right now, its also really unfortunate that it had to happen right during a time that should have been spent in relative happiness.  Buddy was a great little pooch and he will be sorely missed.

This week one of the more interesing places that i went to is a place called "The Stone" or "shitou" (shr tow) which is an all you can eat barbecued meat place.  The interesting thing about this place is that when you go there, they sit you down at a table with a grill in the middle of it (with coals and everything) then you order what kinds of meat you want of their various different selections, then they bring you just a bunch of these raw meat strips and you just go out and barbecue them however you like, its kind of fun and you can order as much as you want because it is a buffet.

outside of that this week was kind of interesting as it was interview week and so I spent most of my time in a van filled with a bunch of missionary supplies that the whole mission ordered, going throughout most of southern Taiwan and delivering these bags as well as spending  alot of time looking at random apartments that the mission is thinking of renting to see if they were any good, it was kind of a fun week and it was just kind of like a big road trip going to all these places with all out clothes packed in a bag and just sleeping with missionaries that were in the nearby area.

Finally an interesting little thing that i noticed this week is that today for our p-day we went to a place called "fo guang shan" which literally means "Buddha Light Mountain" which is just a SUPER BIG Buddhist temple in southern taiwan.  It was really interesting place where we got to see and read a little bit more about Buddhism and what they believe.  but i think the most interesting thing i saw there was a short clip on the history of the temple, and though it was kind of interesting I really didn't understand almost anything that they were talking about.  As we walked away from the clip one of the people i was with made a comment about how "now he knows how an investigator feels when he hears about the restoration" while another person said, "yeah... but we have the spirit" which is just a really cool thing, we are able to effectively teach these people not because we are super persuasive but rather because we have the spirit. I know this to be true.

Well thats about all my time that I have for this e-mail, love you all and just have a great regardless of the circumstances, I know that that is truly what God wants.

4-19-2014

4-19-2014

Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 17:45:21 +0800
Subject: Different P-day!
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!

Well theres a little bit of news that i didn't know at the time that I was doing my e-mails last week and that's just that for the duration that i'm in the office, my P-days will me on Saturday because... thats just kind of how it works, so sorry I didn't tell you last week =(

So this week went by fairly quickly, I spent most of the week just getting used to life in the office and seeing what life is like down here.  I gotta say its rather interesting, not really anything like what I've had to do on my mission up to this point, so lets just jump right in.

First off I think the biggest thing that everyone wants to know is that my arm and back are doing great.  Theres not really any pain at this point unless i'm really trying to move the injured points around, so thats good, also more good news is that my penmanship in my right hand is improving to the point that you can read what i'm writing pretty easily =) so things are just getting better.

Aside from that there's not really much to talk about, mostly the people in the office will always have some odd job for me to do or something like that so that i'm not getting too bored and fairly often the people who are kind of my companions (Elder Noll and elder Liu) will often go off on road trips so i'm getting the chance to see a lot more of Taiwan, so i'm having a good amount of fun,  I', also enjoying having the chance to be a tech monkey right now as some of the office elders have asked me to try to fix some of their computer problems =)

Well I hope that you are all doing good and having a lot of fun just hanging out at the good old hometown,  Sorry that I didn't really get a huge chance to tell you all about the whole P-day change but there's always next week!  Until then hope you all have a good week and are just always smiling =)

Also Mommy I did get the package and i'm totally loving all the little goodies! THANKYOU SOO MUCH! I LOVE YOU!

4-14-2014

4-14-2014

Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2014 18:01:17 +0800
Subject: humpty dumpty sat on a wall...
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Dear the family and every body else...

Let me start by saying that all the rumors are true and that I did in fact fall from a bridge and get a small compression fracture on my elbow as well as in my lumbar spine, I believe they said it was the L1.  Let me continue by saying that I'm doing well not in too much pain (unless I am sitting or standing for too long) and all in all its not too bad.  because the injury happened on the last week of move call President decided to move me to the office to rest for the next 3-6 weeks until I heal up and am able to continue proselyting.  and lastly sorry if my e-mails are a little short in the coming weeks as I only have one hand to be typing everything up... so lets get it started.

So here's the story, me and my companion were bored after we had eaten with our district, it was about 4:00 and we were just thinking about what we could to do to finish the rest of our p-day.  So we decided to go to a ropes course that we saw the week before and just see how it was.  So we get there, it was $2 to get in (or 60NT) and we go in and just look around.  in the end the place was a little boring, and there wasn't much to do without a big group.  But we didnt give up and saw these big rope bridges that were at the front of the place, so we go up and just start walking across the bridge.  my companion went first and made it across just fine but as was going across about half way through the bridge and the ropes underneath me broke and I fell through.  the fall was about 40 feet and right when I hit the ground my left arm and back were hurting.  so my companion comes down and asks if I'm ok, I just tell him to get the park people, and after that they called and ambulance.  so theirs the story of my fall. 

As the injury happened on Monday night, there wasn't too much that happened this week.  After telling president about the fall, he told me that I should try to take it easy this week and that he didn't want me up and walking around.  But even with that we had some members drive us to the chapel, where we had the chance to meet with some people but that was just normal missionary work.  Other than that though we had the chance to baptize a super cool old lady by the name of Sister Huang, she is the mother of brother Huang who we helped baptize last month.  It was a great experience to be able to meet her and see her change.  I think the most interesting thing with her was just the fact that she doesn't really speak Chinese very well, as her first language is Taiwanese, and she doesn't totally understand everything about the church, but because she saw that the church was good for her son, and that she liked the people she met in the church, she decided to be baptized.

Other than that though things are going good, I'll just be resting for the next couple of weeks and trying not to be too bored. =)

4-7-2014

4-7-2014

Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2014 11:30:46 +0800

Subject: Another week has come and gone

From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net

To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!

This week has been good.  We are winding down to the end of another move call here in the 台中 mission, and we have been working hard to keep our focus on the work.  My companion has been telling everybody in the area that he will not be moving, and in turn we are actually expecting to be together here for another move call, but who knows and we will find out who goes where next week.

Lately our mission president has been encouraging us to be working harder with the ward members and making sure that they are involved in all of the missionary work therefore during our DTM's as well and just during our daily plans we have been trying to think of good ways to do just that.  What we have come up with is a game night with the missionaries which we invite the ward to come to as well as we invite investigators so that they all have a chance to meet outside of a lesson situation.  It's kind of interesting but it hasn't really taken off yet, but we are still trying.

Other than that though, this weekend here was what the taiwanese people call 掃墓 or just a day for the Taiwanese people to go to their ancestors graves, clean them up a bit then do some traditional "Bye byeing" which is their form of praying here.  But as a tradition in the mission we got together with a ton of missionaries, went to a nearby graveyard and cleaned up a lot of the old graves that didn't have someone consistently coming and cleaning it up. it was kind of fun and gave us a chance to do a little service for the people here.  Attatched should be some pictures of that =)

Other than that though we have just been doing missionary work as it comes along and hopefully next week we will be able to see some of the fruits of that as we have a baptism scheduled for this next Saturday, so pray that our investigator will be able to say faithful till then =)

That's pretty much it for this week, hope that you are all having a great week and I will talk to you next week!!!!

Love you all

Elder Heaton

何長老

最好吃的在高雄的外國人 =)

4-7-2014

4-7-2014

4-7-2014

4-7-2014

Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2014 11:30:46 +0800

Subject: Another week has come and gone

From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net

To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!

This week has been good.  We are winding down to the end of another move call here in the 台中 mission, and we have been working hard to keep our focus on the work.  My companion has been telling everybody in the area that he will not be moving, and in turn we are actually expecting to be together here for another move call, but who knows and we will find out who goes where next week.

Lately our mission president has been encouraging us to be working harder with the ward members and making sure that they are involved in all of the missionary work therefore during our DTM's as well and just during our daily plans we have been trying to think of good ways to do just that.  What we have come up with is a game night with the missionaries which we invite the ward to come to as well as we invite investigators so that they all have a chance to meet outside of a lesson situation.  It's kind of interesting but it hasn't really taken off yet, but we are still trying.

Other than that though, this weekend here was what the taiwanese people call 掃墓 or just a day for the Taiwanese people to go to their ancestors graves, clean them up a bit then do some traditional "Bye byeing" which is their form of praying here.  But as a tradition in the mission we got together with a ton of missionaries, went to a nearby graveyard and cleaned up a lot of the old graves that didn't have someone consistently coming and cleaning it up. it was kind of fun and gave us a chance to do a little service for the people here.  Attatched should be some pictures of that =)

Other than that though we have just been doing missionary work as it comes along and hopefully next week we will be able to see some of the fruits of that as we have a baptism scheduled for this next Saturday, so pray that our investigator will be able to say faithful till then =)

That's pretty much it for this week, hope that you are all having a great week and I will talk to you next week!!!!

Love you all

Elder Heaton

何長老

最好吃的在高雄的外國人 =)

3-31-2014

3-31-2014

3-31-2014

3-31-2014

Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 11:33:04 +0800
Subject: Another weekly e-mail!
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family, and everyone else!

This week has been going really good, we had a nice zone conference, a chance to go on exhanges with the zone leaders as well as just meet with a lot of cool people.  The area is doing really well and things are just going pretty good.

So to start off the week, we were able to have a really nice zone conference, which made few minor changes to some of the rules that were already in place as well as change a little bit how we are supposed to work with the mission office.  One of the main focuses was on the last conference talks by Elder S. Gifford Nielsen Titled "Hastening the Lords Game Plan" and how we want to start working with the ward and inviting them to use the three invitations that are in his talk.  Rather interesting but we personally still haven't had much of a chance to do that quite yet.

Now later on during the week we have been working on just trying to visit active members, mostly for the purpose of asking for referrals, but also to share a quick message with them, and so as we were meeting with one of the members, by the name of 黃 or yellow, we decided that we were going to just have dinner with him, and so we met at a subway, which is the first time I had been to Subway in Taiwan, it was pretty much like the one in America... just less stuff that you can put on your sandwiches and all in Chinese =)

After that though we had a cool miracle that I wasn't really a part of but cool none the less, so we went on exchanges with our zone leaders, I went to their area, and one of them went to our area, and they went out and met with 黃媽媽 our recent converts mother, if you remember her.  Lately every time we have gone to visit her she has told us that she is thinking about baptism but still hasn't made up her mind and so she wouldn't set a goal, but this week as the Zone leader was out there she finally decided that she was ready and set the goal to be baptized! Woo super cool and we are working hard with her to make sure that she is ready!

Well that's pretty much the highlights of the week.  We have been doing good, having a lot of fun and just being Bold and inviting missionaries!

Hope that you are all having a good week and I will talk to you next week!

Love ya!