11-24-2014

11-24-2014

Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 12:32:14 +0800
Subject: The blaze of a new companion
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello everybody!!

This week has gone by really well, it has been a little weird as we were able to kind of have 2 P-days this week which kind of threw everything here fora  little bit of a loop, but at the end of it I got a new companion, an Elder Teasdale or a 狄長老 (Di zhang lao) who is super funny, he is also from Utah, however his mother is from South America, so he has a little bit of those roots and speaks pretty good Spanish, which is fun to hear =)

Well this week went by pretty well, my old companion Elder Hansen spent most of the week just kind of trying to see those people that he would miss or that he wanted to see, so it was pretty fun just going around and saying hi to those people. so that was kind of going on throughout this whole week.

Other than that though is that right now in our mission I think I already mentioned is that we are doing a "Faith and Diligence week" to try to add more faith and power to the mission, last week the mission president invited everyone in the mission to get 6 people to come to church in this last Sunday, so me and Elder Hansen, and afterwards Elder Teasdale jumped on the invite and just started inviting everyone to come to church, which really started to help us find those people that were willing.  One person was this cool guy that Elder Hansen contacted, he is an insurance salesman and even though we had been keeping in contact with him we for the past 3 weeks were not able to get any time to meet with him, however this week, after constantly inviting him to come over to the church, we were finally able to give him a chapel tour, afterwards we shared a little bit with him about the gospel and even though he didn't really have time this week to come to church he said that he would work on finding time in the coming weeks.

The other big story that we have is there is a super cool member here by the name of Brother Xie （謝）he has been less active for a little bit because he had started smoking a little, and felt unworthy, so many elders had been working with him before, however we recently invited him to once again start trying to quite smoking and this last Tuesday he happily told us that he had finally gone 1 full week with out smoking at all.  It was a super cool experience, as I had not helped anyone up to this point to quit any addictions, but he was super excited and is now finally starting back on the path of progression!

Finally to end the week, our ward, to have more activities that people wanted to come to, decided that they wanted to have a thanksgiving activity, and so yesterday night (Sunday) the ward got together and figured out how to cook 2 turkeys (once again you have to realize that nobody in Taiwan really knows how to use an oven and many have never even seen one) and made mashed potatoes and gravy and just had a great time, so I was able to have a little bit of a thanks giving feast of some sort, we were also able to get one of our cool investigators there, a brother Chen who is really working hard on progressing in the gospel and trying to get to know Christ.

Sorry for the kind of crazy e-mail, not super organized this week, but things are going good.  Hope that you all had a great thanksgiving and that you are just all enjoying life!

加油！

11-17-2014

11-17-2014

Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 11:28:55 +0800
Subject: The Crazy Transfers
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello Family!

This week has gone by pretty well, we have been having fun and the work is going pretty well, so all in all its been a really good week!

This month, as we are having a mission tour soon and just to be able to improve morale and stuff in the mission, President Blickenstaff has decided that November would be "Faith and Diligence" month, with each week having a specific thing that he would want us to read during personal study, as well as having a specific goal that we would be trying to achieve, this week our goal was to get 50 "adds" or just to find 50 people that haven't set up a time with you, to set up a specific place and time to meet.  It was lots of fun and really got our contacting a lot more focused than it had been in awhile and I was able to enjoy a little more all of that time that we have to go outside and talk to people.  However by the end of the week we weren't able to find 50 people, but we found a good amount and I was happy with the effort =)

Here's a nice funny story from the week.  We have this investigator, she is super cool and her son is a member, she is progressing really well and her surname is Wang, the only problem that we have is that she lives in the furthest part of our area, in a secondary area called Fang shan.  Now we have already gone out there to visit her before, and it was a super cool trip that you were pretty much biking right next to the ocean and its just a super scenic bike ride, however the first time that we had done the trip it took us two and a half hours... but we were determined to keep visiting with her during the week, and so we set up a day to go out there to meet with her, and started going.  eventually we were starting to get close and were starting to see some of the land marks that we remembered from the first time that we had gone there, when suddenly we round a corner, and we had arrived, in half the amount of time that we had planned, meaning it only took us 1:15 to get there... so that left us a little bit of thinking time as we figured we didn't really need a good backup plan for travel time (bad idea) but that's kind of our funny story for the week.

Finally to explain the subject, lately the new missionaries that were going to come here to Taiwan have been having some troubles getting their visa's (not as bad as Brasil) and because of that our mission has not had new missionaries here for a good 3 months or 2 transfers or so.  But just this last week our mission president got a call that said that we would be getting missionaries on Saturday.  Now the new missionaries normally arrive on Tuesday, our president just happy that we have new missionaries decided that to best accommodate the new missionaries, he would change the transfer day from Monday to Friday, and also change P-day with it, but that we would still be e-mailing on Monday, so just to let you all know, its not my P-day right now (weird) but they did give us a little bit of notice and told us that my companion Elder Hansen would be moving, however where he is going and who my new companion is we still don't know.  but we will eventually find out.

Well that's just about it for this week, the weather is finally starting to cool off a little bit and maybe I might even start wearing a light jacket soon or long sleeve shirts, I don't know but until then keep cool!

Love you all

Elder Heaton

11-10-2014

11-10-2014

Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 11:54:56 +0800
Subject: Off to the beach!!
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!!

This week has gone by pretty well, we were able to have some fun at ZTM and to be able to to off to Kaohsiung, later in the week there was some pretty crazy traveling which has left me sore up until now and to end it off we had a great Sunday, so lets start it off.

First off for some interesting Taiwanese culture, one of the more common of Taiwanese restaurants for a family to go eat at includes a biggish round table with a round part in the middle of the table that can spin, then each person would get a small bowl of usually white rice, and they would put everything else that will be eaten in the middle of the table then when you want to eat something you just turn the middle part of the table till the thing you want is in front of you and you would put it on your rice or on a small plate that you have.  This week we had a member treat us to one of these which is always kind of fun, and the member really loves to eat fish, and so he ordered a ton of fish including sashimi, which is just raw fish, really good, but that was just kind of a fun little thing that I ate this week.

The next day was our English class, and because this week was technically the last week of transfers, we had our Halloween English party, which was pretty fun, we put some members in the various classrooms in the church and had people go around and "trick or treat" and in each room there was a small game for them to play and some candy. Of course me and my companion had to dress up and so I found an old dirty white shirt in our apartment, ripped it up and was a zombie, while my companion found a cloak and was going to be Gandalf, but in the end I think he told everybody that he was Moses, (pictures are in dropbox) But it was a lot of fun and we are slowly starting to get the people that are attending English class to start meeting with us, woo!

finally I think the biggest thing that we did this week was our massive bike ride.  Last Sunday we had a new Member move in, and as he came to church last week he brought his mother with him who was a non-member, we talked with them and set up a time to meet with them, then we found out that they lived in the furthest part of our area.  So we found our most empty day (Thursday) and just started biking down there, it was a ton of fun, and that part of our area is pretty much nothing but beach, and so you just got to bike down starting out at the ocean.  When we finally got to their house we had a great lesson with her and got her to pray, which actually caused her to really feel the spirit, and to begin to cry.  It was truly the experience for me to see the spirit work on someone even during their first prayer.

Well that was just about it for this week, things are going well and we are working on finding fun ways of finding new people.  Hope that everyone is having a great week and is all getting over their colds! 

Love you all!

11-3-2014

11-3-2014

Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2014 11:57:55 +0800
Subject: The Holidays
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!!

Well this week has gone by fairly well,  we were working hard to be able to keep in contact will all of our current investigators as well as trying to find some new ones that would have time to meet with us, all in all we were able to see a lot of people and a lot of success.  I have been pretty happy with the week and with how the area is progressing right now!

Well this week started off pretty good, lately we have really been working on improving the English class that we offer here in Donggang and so with that we have been really focused on trying to get more people to come and to make sure that we are both prepared with a good amount of material as well as a good spiritual share that would help people come to church.  And so as part of that we have been spending about an hour a week trying to get as many people to come to our English class as possible, and it paid off, this last week the class that I taught had around 20 people who are all trying to start learning English, to say I was a little nervous would be an understatement but it was lots of fun to be able to teach a little bit of English, and in the end I was able to have a good discussion about prayer and communicating with God, the people there loved it and we are starting to see a little bit of success because of it.

Later in the week, because we were able to see such a good turn out from the English class we decided to try to take the methods that we were using to advertise the English class and try to get some people excited to come and just tour the church, so we made a poster, asking some basic questions about the gospel and just started going to work, it was a little crazy and didn't work quite as I was imagining that it would work, however at the end of the time that we spent, we were able to find a couple of prepared people that said that they would try to find some time to meet with us. it was lots of fun and we were enjoying it.

Finally to end the week, as we were going to church on Sunday, we normally go about an hour early to start up the AC and to set up some of the chairs.  While we were doing this however, 2 people came into the chapel, a brother Li who was a member in Taichung city (or Taizhong city) but had moved to our little town because we was waiting to start his military service, (in Taiwan every male has to spend 1 year in military service as part of their laws, people normally do it right after highschool but you can wait till after you have graduated college if you want) but the really cool thing was that he also brought his mother with him, who happened to be a non-member, so we wasted no time in getting to know them both and giving the mother a basic introduction of the gospel and we were able to set up a time with them later in the week that we would go share more with them, so I am excited for that!

Well thats about all that happened this week, Hope that everyone else is having a great time

Elder Heaton

何長老