12-15-2014

12-15-2014

Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 13:17:39 +0800
Subject: Blasting through the week
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!!

This week has gone by pretty good, the whole mission is getting ready for Christmas and we are getting really excited as this month we will probably be having the most baptisms in a month than we have had in quite awhile.  Also we here in Donggang are still looking forward to be able to try to get a baptism this month, however we might not be able to... we will see more on that in just a little bit.

This week started off pretty good, we were really trying to focus on our person that wanted to get baptized this next Sunday, and so we wanted to meet with her twice this week, outside of Church to really try to teach her everything that she needed to know. So we met with her on Tuesday and have a good lesson with her, however later the next day, she sends us a texts telling us that she is beginning to see that she doesn't quite know enough about the gospel yet and wants to delay the baptism to a little later.  Naturally we were a little bit sad about it, but we understood what she wanted, and so we visited her the next day and tried to firm up some of the doctrine for her, it was also a good lesson, however she has not quite set the new date for the baptism quite yet.  but I am hopeful that she will be ready for this by the 27th.

Other than that this week we had a bit of a funny story.  One of our biggest goals that we had this week was that we wanted to be doing a little bit better with our finding of new investigators, and so we were trying to think of good ways to find people, and we decided to do some music contacting.  It was kind of fun, however there weren't many people who really wanted anyone singing to them on the road, so we reevaluated and decided to try again on the beach, as there is a bit of a beach in our area with a lot of fishermen, so we head out there and are walking along talking to everyone that we pass or see, but we reach this stretch of beach with nobody there, however there were a bunch of palm trees... with some good ripe-ish coconuts (they were still green but everyone sells green coconuts here) hanging from the tree.  So my companion grabs a rock and chucks it at the tree and manages to knock one down, and so I follow suit and do the same.  afterwards we find ourselves a rock and break open the coconut for some delicious coconut water. It was a lot of fun, I'll send you pictures of it next week =)

Finally this week we were able to able to find a cool new investigator by the name of Amanda Chen, she is someone that we met through our English class and she was willing to meet with us later in the week about the gospel, it turns out that she is really interested in religion and that she is very wiling to learn more about us, so we will see what comes from that.

Well that's about it for this week, not super exciting but there was still some fun stuff that happened, hope that you all had a great week!

Love you all!!

12-8-2014

12-8-2014

Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2014 12:56:22 +0800
Subject: The Party and other things
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!!

This week has gone by really well, we were able to work really hard but also able to have a lot of time to relax and to just be able to think of what we need to do.

The week started really on Tuesday where we were able to have our ZTM or zone training meeting, which means that we had to take a good couple of hours out of our day in order to be able to go to that, and afterwards the zone leaders wanted to go on exchanges with us which meant that the next day would have some time taken out of it in order to be able to accommodate for that, but it was really fun and I learned a lot about just making sure to talk to everyone no matter the situation or what they are doing, you never know when you will run into a prepared soul.

After that however my week jumps over to Thursday which we figured out was going to our Christmas party!!  We woke up early in the morning and headed out to a place called Fo Guang Shan or the Buddhist light mountain, if you translate it.  Its an interesting place, really just a giant Buddhist temple, but our mission president took us there for the day to tour it and to be able to just talk with all of the missionaries, it also gave me the chance to get some good presents for everyone so you can all look forward to that.  But it was lots of fun and I got to see most of the missionaries that I had been able to meet during the time that I have been out, and it was just a good chance to be able to relax.

Finally the coolest thing that we had happen this week was with one of our investigators, a Sister Wang, we have been working with her for a little bit, and lately had been trying to focus the teaching on Baptism, so we went up to her house on Friday and shared a good message on baptism and she mentioned that she was a little bit worried that her step parents would oppose her changing her religion, but then her son turns to her and just goes off on a shpeal saying that the worries that she has are mostly in her head and any of them that are real can easily be fixed if she just has enough faith and courage to take the next step and to "Give herself to Christ" it was a little shocking to me to see such boldness from him, but afterwards we asked her to set a baptismal date, she promised us that she would pray about it.  The following Sunday she comes up to us and says that she has gotten her answer and that she would like to be baptized on the 21st!! I can definitely say that it was an answer to both our prayer and hers that she got that answer and that I am totally excited to be able to keep working with her.  I love the gospel and how it can truly change peoples lives. 

That's about it for this week, I hope that you are all enjoying your time down there in the good old US of A and know that I'm doing good here as well.

Love you all!

12-1-2014

12-1-2014

Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2014 12:06:17 +0800
Subject: The tour of the mission and the invite to be Baptized!
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the Family!

This week was really good, I have been having a good time with my new companion, and we have just been tearing it up here in Dong gang, the week has been kind of fun just traveling to and from some activities, but in the end we were sill able to get a lot of good work done.

Well the week started out with a Mission Tour where Elder Gong, one of the 70's who is president of the Asia Area came and visited our mission.  As part of his visit he invited every missionary in the mission to memorize the baptismal invite in PMG as well as the first vision, word for word, so I put a little more effort in really getting it down word for word and we had a really good meeting.  One of the biggest things that I got from the whole meeting was to make sure that everyone knows what our purpose is when we meet with them, and why we are in Taiwan, and so throughout the rest of the week we refocused and were more direct in inviting all to come unto Christ and to be Baptized!

After the mission tour things kind of continued as normal until we get to English class on Wednesday night, where we were able to have some new students arrive that were happy to be able to come and meet with us later in the week.  As it turns out one of the people that we talked to from the English class had been to Temple Square before and was really interested in learning more about the church, so we are now working with her to really get her to understand what the church is all about as well as to get her to really come to know Heavenly Father.

Finally the last big thing that happened this week was on Saturday.  Our branch president invited us to to up to Kaohsiung with him to participate in a Stake History Exhibit, it was kind of fun to be able to learn about the history of the Stake here in Taiwan and how before there was a temple in Taiwan people used to have to go to the Tokyo Japan temple in order to do all of those ordinances.  There was a man there who really liked to collect things, and he brought out a flier talking about how to get to the Temple there, it made me really grateful that I have always been able to have a temple really close to where I live as well as to be able to get their quite easily.

Well that's just about it for this week.  Hope that you are all having a great week! Know that I'm still sweating bullets out here. But it is truly the promised land for me and these people here, so I am having a great time.

Love you all!