10-27-2014

10-27-2014

Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:47:41 +0800
Subject: 
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the Family!!

I have been doing well this week, he were trying really hard to be able to share the gospel with as many as possible and we were able to find some really cool people because of it.

This week started off really great.  On Tuesday we were really pumped up and ready to go out and to preach the gospel.  And so most of our time on Tuesdaywas spent finding.  At the end of the day we had found a couple of potential people but no body who really seemed that they were truly prepared to hear the gospel.  I was getting a little bored of finding at that point but my companion suggested that we go do some tracting.  We go to a tiny little neighborhood that's just out in the country side, turn down a tiny little road and find a small group of about 6 houses that are all close together, so we stop there, and as I'm looking around I notice that all of the houses 2nd floor is glowing with the red light of a Taoist or a Buddhist altar, so I was a little skeptical that this would work but we prayed and started going at it.  The first 3 houses were all kind of a fail, but as we got to the 4th house. We start talking to a girl and one of the first things that she says to us was, "do you want to come in and sit down?" now in Taiwanese culture it's normally polite to invite people in, so you have to be careful, but we kept talking with her and asked if we could watch a short video with them called "Finding Happiness" The girl goes to the back of the house to ask her parents if it was OK and the parents come out and invite us in.  However because the parents were a little older, they didn't know how to play a DVD on their TV and I didn't see any DVD player, so that was a bust, but afterwards they said that we could come back and share a message with them.  It was a really cool miracle.

Later that week we had already gone through a couple of days that just had no lessons and we were a little down but on Saturday we had quite a few people lined up that we could meet with.  I think my favorite one though was there was a member in the branch that needed help moving, so the branch president invited us and some other people to come help (he wanted us because the member couldn't speak Chinese, but could speak English) so we get there and what occurred was super crazy, the moving part of it was pretty normal, however as we were helping move things along, the flurry of languages came about and the people around us were speaking about 5 different dialogues of the Phillipian language, as well as Taiwanese, which neither me or my companion can speak, and probably more that I didn't understand, but it was quite the crazy bit of work just listening to all of the different languages that were going around.

And finally the biggest miracle that I think happened this week was that we have an investigator who seems really interested in the church.  He is a former investigator that has met on and off with missionaries over the past 2 years.  One of the problems that we were having with him though was that he was not really willing to come to church with us.  and I felt like that was really stopping his progression.  But this week we very specifically invited him to come, to put aside other things and to make it to church, after telling him this though he didn't really seem like he would come.  However as sacrament started my companion was bearing his testimony, and in walks our investigator.  It was super cool to be able to see him, and I know that he was blessed for it.

Well that's just about it for the week.  Hope that you all are going to have a great week!!

Love you all!

10-20-2014

10-20-2014

Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 12:59:25 +0800
Subject: 
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!!

This week has gone by fairly well, we have been working on trying to find more people to teach as our pool here has been a little small for a bit, but as we are going along, I am having fun just enjoying being with my companion and hearing all him and meeting new people.

This week started pretty good, here in our mission, in order to see what missionaries are doing here in the field for language study to improve the language program at the MTC, they are having us do a quick language survey every 3 months where we have to speak into a microphone and use Chinese to answer some random question or situation.  Its kind of weird, but as we were going to do it in the chapel, we discovered that the internet was down at the chapel, so we went to a nearby members house to do it and got to get to know them, the member family is really fun, the dad only has one arm and is quite the artist, while the wife is in a wheelchair, they are a super cool family and their kids are really fun, so as we were doing the survey I just kind of hung around their little kids and goofed off with them.

Later in the week, I think I had one of the more crazy experiences in Taiwan.  A couple of weeks ago we had gotten a referral from a Sister who had just barely gotten off of her mission in Taipei, however the problem was that when I called the number that she gave us a woman would answer that seemed to only speak Taiwanese, and so I had no idea what she was saying every time I called her until she would just get annoyed and just hang up on me.  So we asked this sister to set up the appointment for us as I was having the communication problem.  This week she called us up and asked us if we would be able to go to our furthest secondary area to go meet with this referral, of course we were willing and so when the day came, we hopped on the bus and took the 1.5 hour bus ride out to this tiny little town to visit this person.  When we got there, the Sister showed us to the house, and as I saw it, I was in a little bit of shock, mostly because it had a fence around it and within the fence was just tons and tons of barking, seemingly angry dogs.  It was a little dark at this time and she told us that her father would come and help us get through the gate and into the house.  When the dad arrived he was on a motor scooter and we just went in kind of a small circle, with dogs surrounding us and just barking at it.  It was super crazy, but when we got in the man was super cool, he had been christian all his life and was just kind of like a normal old guy, constantly telling you the same thing over and over again, and just having fun.  So it was totally worth it =)

And finally the last thing that happened this week was that this last Saturday, we had an appointment with one of our RC's at his house, so we were heading down to his house, about a 30 min bike ride away, and as we were about 10 minutes away from his house he calls us up and asks if he could reschedule to another day.  We talked a little bit and finally he canceled on us, and we decided that we would just head to a nearby town and just start tracting it up, so we start biking and not 10 seconds after we start heading out to the area, we head a loud popping noise and air leaking out of my companions tire... Lots of fun! So we started walking around and asking for the nearest bike shop that could help us fix the bike, which lead us to this old mans house who had a sign on his door that said "bike repairs." seeing as we didn't really have any other nearby option we had this man who couldn't really speak any Chinese start fixing my companions tire, in the end he got a new inner tube and a new outer tire, so we start heading back to our main area because we had a lesson at the church, and about 10 minutes later, my companion yells for me to stop, as his tire is flat again! Super crazy, so we walked back to our area and finally got the tire fixed at a little more professional place, but it was still quite the fun little walk =)

Well that's about it for this week, things are going well and the people that are willing to meet with us are still pretty cool.  Hope you are all having a great week!

Love you all!

Elder Heaton

10-13-2014

10-13-2014

Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 11:46:36 +0800
Subject: Running to and from Kaohsiung
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!!!

Well this week has gone by really fast, I can hardly believe its already been a week, but we have been just kind of going all week, and with this week ending in conference (for me) I can't think of anything better to be doing! =)

Well looking up at the subject, this week we spent quite a lot of time just traveling up to our stake center in Kaohsiung (Gaoxiong) just because we had quite a lot of activities, starting on Tuesdaywhich was a Zone Training Meeting, so we took the hour bus ride to get down there and because we were down there we decided to find something interesting to eat that we couldn't really find in our area, which made us arrive a little late to the Meeting, however the thing that I didn't know was that our Mission President was going to be there, so I was a little put off by that, but it was a really good meeting.  But after that we went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders.

The next was really good, I was able to have some fun with the Zone Leader and we got to accomplish quite a lot, were able to find some new people to teach ect. but of course to end the exchange we had to go back to Kaohsiung, so that was a little more time out of our proselyting schedule.

Then of course we discovered on Monday that we would be having interviews with the mission president on Thursday, and so the next day after our exchanges, we went back up to Kaohsiung to the stake center to be able to do those interviews, which was ok but took a good amount of time out of our area, but we were able to get back early enough to be able to quickly refocus and to get back to work.

And finally the nail in the head for taking time out of our area was while we were watching General Conference, our branch president walked up to us and reminded us that the priesthood session of conference would be held up in Kaohsiung... so that was once again another trip up there...

But within all of that traveling we were still able to get quite a lot of work done and I was really pleased to be able to work with one of our really cool investigators.  He is a brother Chen who is a bit of a lazy guy, and so when we noticed that he didn't come to conference on Sunday we decided to go to his house and see why.  what came of it was a really cool lesson that we were able to have with him, to be able to really clearly invite him to come unto Christ, and we were able to get a real true and solid commitment out of him.  It was one of the better lessons that I have had on my mission and I can't wait to see what comes from it.

Well that's just about it for this week, hope that you are all having a great week, Love you all!!

Elder Heaton

10-6-2014

10-6-2014

Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 11:30:33 +0800
Subject: A week of efficiency!
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello family!

This week has gone by really well, me and my companion have been working hard and just having fun, enjoying the time that we have to spend here in Donggang and just smiling all the time.  We have been working hard to find new investigators as well as just to be able to keep this area going and it has been really fun =)

This last week was actually the first week of transfers although it didn't really feel like it to me or my companion because I moved halfway through last transfer, but during the beginning of the transfer we set some goals to try to be a bit more effective with our time and with what we were doing, and so we decided that we really wanted to try to not waste any time.  It has been quite the experience and rather tiring all at the same time, but I have found that there is so much more that you can accomplish when you are always trying to keep doing something rather than take a good 5 minutes after a lesson to just think before blazing back out into the heat again and we were able to see the blessings of doing so =)

One thing that we have really been working on improving this week has been our contacting skills, as we have been having a little bit of trouble lately finding some new people to teach we were trying to decide on something new to do, and what we ended up on was to do what we called power boarding, which is just that we made a sign that had 2 good thought provoking questions and we just went around one of the more populated streets in our area and just started asking everybody about it.  it was lots of fun and I found that it really made talking to people a lot more natural and a lot more fun, however I also realized that there were a ton of people who didn't really bother to read the sign and were just assuming that we were after money or something like that.  As we were doing it we walked up to some guy who was just relaxing in one of the super common blue Taiwanese trucks (I'll have to send you a picture of that someday) and we tried to ask him to read the question on the board and all he kept saying was "You should go talk to my boss over there, he's got more money, he's got time ect." it made me laugh a little bit just because that really is what most people think when someone that they haven't met just walks up and starts talking to them, they just want money, but we are trying to fix that =)

There have been a couple of people that we are really working with here now that are super cool, one of them is this really funny guy who is studying to become a nurse right now, it has been really cool to talk to him because he likes to just chat, but once you start talking about the gospel he listens super intently, and he is just super willing to believe what is being taught, unfortunately he doesn't really have too much time lately because as part of the whole nursing program here you have to spend most of your time in the hospital working with the doctors there, learning all that you can and you are always on call (like a normal doctor I guess) and so he has been having a lot of trouble finding time to meet with us or to come to church, but it's really cool to be able to see as we share about Christs atonement or as we share about Joseph Smith with him that you can truly see the spirit working in him and testifying to him, so I have been really enjoying the time that I have to meet with him.

Other than that though I don't really have too much to share about, this week has really just been normal missionary work, there wasn't really anything really special that happened this week or anything like that, just lots of hard work and trying to follow the spirit while doing so.  It has been really good and we have been having lots of fun! Hope that everyone else is doing great!

Love you all, have a good week!!

9-29-2014

9-29-2014

Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 11:57:11 +0800
Subject: If I could bike 100 Miles...
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello Family!!

Well this week has gone fairly well and I have been enjoying the time down here.  Sometime during the week I remember looking at my companion as we were biking down one of the long roads that are around here and just mentioning that it still feels like its pretty much summer here.  The heat here is still nice and warm and I am still sporting short sleeves and coming home covered in sweat every day, but its tons of fun and I enjoy being able to meet with all of the interesting people that are around here.

So this week was the last week of the Move call or transfers, and because of that we normally, for our English class, hold a small party, which we call an evaluation night.  We decided that this time we would have a small movie night, as well as make some cookies for all of the students, however, our English class in on Wednesday and we only really finalized our plans to actually have this party the day before.  So we had a fun time trying to find and prepare everything for the English party, which was quite interesting, and then as we get to the English class we realized that we hadn't really told anybody about the whole English party, so we just kind of told them as they walked in the door, and they just rolled with it, I thought it was really funny.

Well one thing about our area, or just most of the rural areas in the mission is that the boundaries are usually really big, so that you have more people that you can work with, so this week we had 3 lessons on 3 consecutive days all in one of our further away areas, that takes about an hour and a half to be able to bike to there.  So on Thursday we biked down there to be able to meet with a less active couple, who were both really cool but both had some reasons that they didn't really want to go to church.  So we shared some scriptures with them and then left. It was pretty fun and they were really nice.  But then the next day (Friday) we had another lesson with an investigator family, who just make me laugh every time I go there, the whole family is really fun and are really willing to sit down with us, however that also meant that we had another long bike ride way up there to be able to meet with them.  Then finally on Saturday we were set up with one of our RC's that lived in a different secondary area in the other direction so we biked down there which takes a good 45 minutes to get there and to be able to talk to him.  So that was my biking experience for the week =)

Finally to end the week we had church which always is a good time, however on Sunday morning we were spending a lot of time just trying to find someone who would be willing to go with us to Church, and even though we called everyone that we were meeting with we didn't get anyone to come.  I was feeling a little bit down about the whole thing, but after sacrament ended, I randomly got a call from one of our investigators that we hadn't really been able to meet with lately because he was working a lot and he said that he had made it to church.  It was super cool so see how all of the work that we had done paid off ad we were able to see a little success for the things that we were working for.

Well thats about it for this week, there wasn't really anything that was super special about it but I had fun. Things are going well here and I hope that the heat will quickly begin to fade away, but for now I'm still alright and we are doing well.  I know that this is the place that God wants me to be in right now and that this church is true.

Love you all, have a great week!!!

9-22-2014

9-22-2014

Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 11:38:44 +0800
Subject: The wise man built his house upon a rock
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello Family!!!

This went by really well, we were working hard were able to do some crazy traveling and biking and were just having fun talking to each other and doing the work.

This week started off pretty well, I e-mailed a little earlier last week because here in Donggang there is a small island that is in our area called xiao liu qiu or something like little flowing ball, but it is just a small island that we can go to, so we left the door a little early to head out to there.  We went there with a really cool member and were able to explore a lot of that, I'll put those pictures out in dropbox so you can all see them.  But once that was over it was time to jump into some real missionary work.

So this week really had about 3 really big events that happened, the first one being that this week was Zone Conference, which was really good.  Our Mission President wanted the Conference to be focused on the missionary purpose and why we are doing all the things that we do during our day.  I really liked from is was that the missionary purpose that is at the very beginning of PMG "Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, Baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end" was just a summary of was we are trying to do, and with a little more study we can really learn what that truly means to us as missionaries as well as to everyone, which after telling us this he went on to say that everything that we do here in missionary work is all supposed to be a means to an end, we are contacting people not just so that we have a lot of people to teach but rather so that we can find those people that are prepared to come unto Christ.  We teach not to increase our numbers or so that people can learn about church, but rather so that people can come unto Christ and can change their lives.  It really got me thinking why I was here and why I was doing each of these activities, are they just the "end" for me, just finding so that I can say that I did or was I truly trying to bring people unto Christ. Things to think about.

But after that inspirational Zone Conference we also had the chance to have Stake Conference in our stake, which required an hour long bus drive out to Kaohsiung to be able to get to the stake center that is out there... or at least it would have required it if a Taiphoon didn't hit PingDong this week end which because of it they actually canceled stake conference and church for the day... super weird, but that was one of my special experiences this week was that for the first Sunday on my mission I was not able to go to church of any sort because they canceled it... But it was ok because we had a little more time to look through our records that we had at the house and were able to find some really cool people that we were able to set up with during this next week, so I was happy with it.

Finally I just want to mention one of our investigators here because it has been interesting to be able to see the change that is going on with him.  It is guy that my companion and the elder that I replaced found and had met with one time, he goes by the name of Brother Chen and is really cool, the first time that I met with him we had a plan that we wanted to share with him the Plan of Salvation, and just see what he thought of it, but as we were starting it off we realized that it was going to be a bit of an out of control lesson, he would make some random comment and go off on a tangent to the point that I think we ended our first meeting discussing with him weather or not Vampires existed ( not really sure how the topic got changed to that =/ ) but as we have continued meeting with him we have been able to see that he is slowly getting more focused in what we are teaching him and he seems to go on less and less tangents as we continue discussing the church with him and I am excited to be able to help him come unto Christ.

Well that is pretty much all for this week, hope that you are all having a great time and are planning on having a great week!

Love you all!