3-24-2014

3-24-2014

Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 11:02:00 +0800
Subject: Lots of people moving to Taibei
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!

This week went pretty well, we found some cool people, had some fun events and are preparing for our zone conference where there will be some pretty big changes in this mission because they are releasing a new "rules and clarifications" missionary hand book for the 台中 mission.  There has been a bigger push lately here to try and work with more of the less active members here and so we have been working on trying to get some less actives as well as recent converts to keep coming to church.

The week started pretty well, just business as usual just teaching and during the time between lessons finding some cool people or just making some calls.  But about Wednesday we found out that one of our RC's by the name of 楊弟兄 who got baptized right before I came into the ward, was going to be moving out to 台北 and so we spent a lot of time this week meeting with him preparing him to go to 台北, but the interesting thing is that normally when we meet with him we would usually go out to eat with him, and so because of that, and because he was leaving soon, we went to a lot more expensive places this week, so I spent a lot of money this week.  糟糕  But I'll survive =)

Other than that though I don't really have much to report on what happened this week, it was a pretty average week, nobody really special popped up this week and nobody really specifically dropped out this week.  We have been working with a couple of interesting people this week.  One is by the name of Jesse.  He goes to school at one of the colleges in our area, and is about to graduate, and is majoring in some sort of a fashion design or something like that, kind of interesting.  But he has no real religious background in his life.  He has never really heard any sort of religious stories in his life and so we are working hard on just developing his basic beliefs before moving onto other things.

Well that's all that has really gone on this week, hopefully next week will be a little more eventful and I will have a lot more to say.  The weather he is getting hotter, but as the heat increases I think the prices of fruit drops as they all slowly come into season, so I will be havinga  good time eating all of the cool fruits in the coming weeks. =)

Well hope you all have a great week.  Until next week!

3-17-2014 Pictures

3-17-2014 Pictures

3-17.2014

3-17-2014

Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 12:00:42 +0800
Subject: Preparing the Souls
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the Family!!! 你們好！！

This week has been a good one, we have been working hard trying to find lots of new people and just going at it preparing souls to hear the gospel.

As far as food goes this week, I had the chance to go to a hotpot with one of the members in another ward that goes by the name of Ryan, this hotpot was a little special because it was a lot of food but it wasn't a buffet, or in Chinese a 吃到飽 which literally means eat to full.  But rather they gave you a big bowl filled with some random veggies, meats, and other things and you do the normal hotpot thing, which is throw it into some boiling broth till its cooked.  Its actually super fun to do but sometimes I get a little impatient with it because I don't really want to wait to eat my food =)

As far as people we are working with, there's come cool people, one goes by the name of Guo or 聒 who is a college student at a university in our area.  He was found by the elders before me and Elder Wootan, but he is really cool, has heard all the lessons and is very prepared, however he wants to have a really big something for an answer before he accepts the invitation to be baptized, even though he already has gotten several spiritual "Answers" to many of his prayers... but thats okay, he is still pretty cool and is just about ready to graduate.

Another person that we have been working with is our new RC Brother Huang or 黃弟兄's mother, who has been taking the lessons with him but just hasn't decided on the whole baptism thing.  The hard thing with her is just the fact that she prefers to speak in Taiwanese or 台語 which makes it a little difficult to communicate with her, but we are working on it, and the people in relief society love talking with her so she is cool.

Well that's just about it for this week.  The people are really cool but we just haven't really had a ton of time to be finding new investigators, so heres to hoping theres a little more finding time in the next coming weeks to find some cool people that we get to meet with.

Hope that you are all having a good week and that things are just going well.

Until next week

加油！

Elder Heaton

P.S.

here is a Chinese tongue twister

吃葡萄不吐葡萄皮但是不吃葡萄吐葡萄皮

I may have gotten some characters wrong, but it should sound right =)

3-10-2014

3-10-2014

Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 09:17:13 +0800
Subject: Packed days
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!

So I don't think that I mentioned this last week but last week was movecall.  I'm still with my companion so there's nothing really new but just so you know another movecall has come and gone and so I still have a good 6 weeks left here in Gaoxiong. =)

This week has been pretty eventful, the start of the week was pretty boring, just normal missionary work, but around Wednesday or so things really started to pick up, suddenly everybody seemed to have time to meet with us, and our schedule was totally packed till the end of the week.  We were able to meet with a lot of cool new people and keep teaching. However sadly one of our investigators that was preparing to be baptized on this coming Saturday decided that he wasn't ready yet and dropped his goal, and he just told us that he will be moving out to Taibei after this week so we wont really have the chance to keep meeting with him.  But such is the the story of missionary work I guess.

Other than that though this week we were able to bring another person into the waters of baptism by the name of Brother Huang or 黃弟兄, He is a super cool person however he is handicapped and only has strength in his left arm.  However he is super cool and has already read through the Book of Mormon once and is now working on it for a second time.  interestingly our mission president was also really interested in the baptism because he had heard about him form other missionaries, and so they also decided that they wanted to attend the baptism.  It was kind of interesting having them there because the ward didn't really know what to do with them, so they just made sure that they had a chance to speak at every chance that came up.

Beyond that though we have found some interesting investigators, one of them is a really cool guy that lives out in one of our further away areas, he runs a computer store and is totally willing to meet with us and keep his commitments.  However we weren't able to meet with him this week because his wife just barely gave birth to his first kid, so we kind of forgave him for that.  But just a little bit =)

Well thats all for this week. hopefully there's more to say in the coming weeks but things are OK for now.

Have a good week =)

Elder Heaton

何長老

3-3-2014

3-3-2014

Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2014 11:06:07 +0800
Subject: Wheel chairs and the four flights of stairs
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the Family and everyone else.

This week has been a fun one.  We have been working hard and making sure we have been staying busy, so that's always fun.  There's been lots of interesting things that have been happening and some cool people that we have been able to meet.

So first of all one of the things that I have been eating a lot lately is actually fruit smoothies, they are so good.  I first started buying them because one of the other elders in my ward seems to buy a cup of watermelon juice (just blended watermelon with water and ice) every day which is really good, and so I decided that I wanted to start buying some more random fruit drinks, as there are tons of fruit stands just all over the place here you can usually find a place nearby that will sell some blended fruit.  So good

This week we also found a cool investigator that lives in one of our further away secondary areas called 大樹 which just means big tree... yeah but the guy is really cool by the name of 李, he owns a computer store so I always enjoy going down there even though its about a 40 minute bike ride down to his house.  He has been to other churches before but he has never met with missionaries before, and so he is really happy and willing to meet with us and discuss what scriptures mean because he told us that he doesn't really understand them.

Other than that we have a couple of other cool people that we are working with, I think I mentioned before that we have a brother 黃 that we are working with, who doesn't have any strength in his right arm and both of his legs, and so for the past 3 weeks or so we have been carrying him in a wheelchair down 4 flights of stairs because he lives on the fourth floor of an apartment building that doesn't have an elevator.  So while we have been doing this, we have been relying on one the the members in the ward (the ward mission leader) to drive us to his house, and help us carry him down and up the stars so that he can get to church, but yesterday he didn't have time to take him back home after church, so we tried to get him up the stars with just us two (Elder Wootan and myself) and it didn't really work very well, but then his really old father came out and helped us and we managed to get him back to the fourth floor safely.

Well there's not really much else that has happened this week, just more lessons and cool people that we have been meeting with, trying to stay focused on the work and have lots of fun while doing so.  Hope that you all are having a great week and I will talk to you all again next week

Have a good one, and remember to keep smiling!

Elder Heaton 

何長老

一個在飛的猴子。。。吧

我愛你！

2-24-2014

2-24-2014

The bottom salutation translates to:

He Elder 

Kaohsiung missionaries 

Taichung missionary 

Very happy man!

---

Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 11:34:49 +0800
Subject: Power Week and mission conference
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family! and everybody else

Its been another exciting week here in the 台中mission as the mission president decided that it would be a good time to have a power week to see how well the mission does.  Aside from that we have been working with some less actives, trying new food and we had a great mission conference, so lets jump in.

As far as food goes this week we became really familiar with the bakeries around here as well as all of the convenience stores that they have.  Due to it being power week (more on that below) they wanted us to have as much time proselyting as possible so they said that they wanted us to have all of our meals on the go, so try to eat it on your bike or while contacting people, a little difficult but as we found random rolls and stuff like that we made it through the week.  the funny thing about Taiwanese bread though is I feel like its all a huge trap.  You sometimes would see a nice looking roll that has a little slice in it with some sort of cream coming out of it and you think "Oh that must be filled with cream, that sounds good" so you buy it, now after you have left the store and take a bite you realize that there is just that little bit of cream that you can see on the top of the bread... kinda funny =)

So Power week has come and gone.  What we did for it is for each day the president gave us a goal, either to have two on the spot sit downs from tracting to finding 20 people in a day that set up a time to meet with us later in the week.  It was kind of fun having the goals but as I mentioned above he cut down our eating time as well as had our personal study and companion study down to 30 minutes a day, and said no language study for the week.  It was a change, but fun all the same. I was happy that I was able to see a lot of miracles from it and this week will be a lot busier because of it.

Finally just this last Sunday we had our Mission Conference with the great guest speaker Bishop Stevenson, the presiding Bishop of the Church.  He was super cool and served somewhere in Japan on his mission as well as a mission president later in his life.  he gave us a great talk about extending invitations, helping people through the atonement and following the spirit.  It was so much fun to be there and to see all of the missionaries there listening and taking notes.

Well that's about it for this week.  the work is moving along and we have some great people that we are working with.  Hopefully there's more news on them next week, but until then remember to keep smiling!

何長老

高雄的傳教士

台中的傳教士

很快樂的人！

Elder Heaton

2-17-2014

2-17-2014

Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2014 11:41:40 +0800
Subject: 
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello everybody!

Things have been going well this week.  Meeting with people that we have been finding.  Making sure that we are always finding so that we will always have people to teach and trying to have fun while doing it.

I feel like there hasn't been anything really special this week just missionary work as usual.  We have been working with two specific people who really seem to be prepared and ready to learn more about the message, and have had a couple of other people who seem to just appear out of nowhere and want to meet with us its kinda interesting.

So the first person that we are meeting with is a man by the name of Raymond.  He is currently working on finding a job and while doing so is trying to learn new things and meet new people.  We met him through the English class that we hold and talking to him after class we were able to set him up for the missionary discussions.  He has pretty good English and a lot of the time we teach in English and translate when we need to, but he seems to be accepting the message and has been to church two times.

The other big investigator that we are working with is actually a handicapped man by the name of 黃弟兄 or Brother Huang, or Brother Yellow if you want.  He has no strength in either of his legs, and no strength in his right arm.  He has been meeting with missionaries since before I got here, and has really accepted the things that we are teaching him.  He has already read through the book of Mormon is starting it for the second time right now.  Lately the only problem that he has is getting to church, as he lives on the 4th floor of a building with no elevator.  So we have been spending a lot of time trying to find a way that we can get to church and this week he was able to attend.  We found him a wheel chair, a member gave him a ride and helped us carry him down the 4 flights of stairs, it was a really fun and great experience.

Also at church this week it was stake conference, so 黃弟兄 was able to meet a lot of new people including our mission president, his wife and Elder Randy Funk of the 70.  It was awesome to see the reception of the ward in talking to him and just being his friend.  People were all willing to talk to him and gave him a spot right at the front of the chapel to sit and attend church.

Well that is about it for things that has happened this week.  Things are going well and we are having fun spreading the gospel.  Hope that you all have a great week.

Love you all!

Don't forget to keep smiling!

Elder Heaton

何長老