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!

9-15-2014

9-15-2014

Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 09:29:46 +0800
Subject: back to the rural world
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!

This week has gone by really well.  I have been working hard to be able to find my way around here in the countryside and have just been having fun talking with my new companion.  the people here are nice and so far there's not really anything to complain about.

The week started off pretty well after we ended the fun part of Monday we had a big BBQ to go to where most of the ward would be attending, and we had a good 2-3 investigators that would be going as well, so we were really excited as that would be my chance to meet the ward.  The BBQ went really well however we only got one investigator there, but I had a good opportunity to talk with most of the ward members here (theres only about 12 really active members right now) so I was trying my best to just be able to recognize them as well as to get to know each of their circumstances.

After that we moved onto Tuesday where we would normally have our District training meeting, but because Donggang, or Dongkang as they like to spell it, is pretty far away from most of the other missionaries or other branches we are just a 2 man district with me being the District leader, but to me anyway that didn't really mean anything because there's really nobody to be worrying about or thinking about other than my companion in my district, so that's kind of funny.  But it did mean that I had to prepare a good hour and a half talk or have something to talk about with my companion.  It was kind of fun and kind of silly all at the same time.

Next was me just trying to get used to teaching the English class here.  My companion had warned me that the class here had a few kids in it, and so I just kind of figured that I would take a room that had a couple of toys, the kids would be entertained and I could teach the people who were really coming to learn English, so I made a intermediate English plan just thinking that most of the people English ability would be to a level that they could do some basic reading and writing, but when I got there I quickly realized that I was mistaken and that more than half of the class was little kids and that their English, while not bad, was not to the point where I thought it would be, so I didn't really have a plan for it, but it was fun seeing the different kind of class that I would have to be teaching.

As for the rest of the week it was pretty much missionary work as usual, working hard and trying to find as many people as we possibly can to invite to come unto Christ.  It has been lots of fun and I am enjoying my time here in Taiwan.  Although the weather is still pretty hot, we are keeping cool.

Hope that you all are having a great time. I know that the work that I am doing here is good and that this is the place that Christ want's me to be right now.  I know that this church is true and is able to help all those that choose to live by its teachings.  this is the message that I am trying to share right now and it is all going good. =)

Have a great week! Love you all

9-8-2014

9-8-2014

Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2014 13:41:34 +0800
Subject: The Mini movecall strikes!
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello Family!!!

Well this week was really good, me and my companion had a goal that we wanted to really try to hit one of our mission standards which was to get 20 lessons in a week.  We have been able to usually hit some of the other mission standards that are just a number that our mission president whinkds that every companionship should be able to hit or at least shoot for.  But because of that we figured that we would need to get at least 3 lessons every day, and so that was our plan, to give our best effort to hitting that 3 lessons a day goal, as well as to keep our already progressing investigators progressing.

It was a really fun time this week as well because one of the holidays that came around during the first part of my mission is here again, it is the mid autumn festival or the Lunar festival.  I think its something like fir first full moon in the middle of fall or something like that but basically what everybody does is just start having some fun Taiwanese barbecues, shoot off some fireworks (that we are not allowed to touch) and just be with family and friends.  So being the missionaries that we are, of course the ward is super willing to invite us to come to their family barbecues and their get together's, it has been a really fun week and one where you never really go hungry.

Theres 2 BBQ stories that come with this though, first off is you have to understand that a lot of Taiwanese people just live in apartments that have upwards of 14 or more floors, and so they usually have a lot of neighbors that they haven't met, so during the festival one of the members invited us to her apartments BBQ with the thought that she personally could just meet her neighbors and that we could just proselyte to them =) however as it turned out when we got there, everybody was huddled pretty close to their families and there was just not a lot of socializing going on, so we weren't able to get the proselyting that we were after.  But the next day we had a BBQ that some member from the other ward invited us to, we weren't really sure who the member was but all of the other missionaries were going so we decided that we could go as well.  When we got there however there was a person that we recognized, a Ms. Huang who during my second week in Tainan we had tracted into her house, she had told us that her sister was a member of our church but she lived in Mainland China, but she comes back every year for this festival and always invites the missionaries over.  We had not really met anybody in the ward at that time but we remembered the experience and finally during the BBQ what she told us had come true! crazy!

Well now for what the subject is talking about, the Mini Move Call.  Because missionaries in the office have to have a 3 week training period to be able to effectively do the missionary work there, they will sometimes have a transfer 3 weeks into the transfer, which normally only moves a few people, however this time I got moved and and now living further south than I was before. I have been moved to the furthest county south called Ping Dong ( ) in a city called Dong Gang ( ) which is right next to the beach, with my new companion Elder Hansen, I was super sad to get the call that I was leaving Tainan, but I am also excited to be able to work here in Dong gang because its a lot like my first area, but a little more rural.

Well its a bit of a longer E-mail this week but I'm doing good and having a great time.  Hopefully you are all doing well.  Love you all

Have a great week!!!

9-1-2014

9-1-2014

Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2014 12:03:47 +0800
Subject: The busy week
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!

This week we were nice and busy, working hard to hit some of the goals that we had personally set for the week and just trying to work hard.  It was a lot of fun and we saw a ton of success because of it.

The week started with a really good P-day where afterwards we were able to get 2 really good lessons as well as being able to find a new investigator.  However the day before that (Sunday) my companions tire had popped, and as neither of us (or most of the missionaries in the mission) had a patch kit, we had to wait for what we thought would be Monday to fix the patch, but in the end we didn't have any time to get it fixed on that day.

Now in Taiwan there are 2 really big bike brands that most people buy their stuff from, the bigger one is easily Giant, which you will see all over Taiwan, its really easy to find and a lot of random bike shops are supported by giant.  Then there is the other one which is Merida.  There are a lot less of those stores around but they still make good quality stuff.  So these two companies are in a huge competition and so sometimes if you go to say a Giant store with a Merida bike the staff will sometimes be a little less helpful with you because you bought the competitions bike.  Kind of weird but thats just kind of how business works I guess.  Anyway almost all of the missionary bikes are the Giant brand bikes, but my companions is the Merida and he personally has found that a lot of Giant stores are just like that, so we spend some time biking a bit out of the way to find a Merida store to be able to fix his bike, but the cool thing is that when we got there, we discovered that the owner is super cool as well as the people that go there and we were able to share a short message with all of the people in the bike store.  Lots of fun =)

Finally as for the last story, down here in Tainan the missionaries have planned out that they would play basketball every Saturday, just to have something to do as well as to have an activity to invite investigators to come to.  However my companion he loves to play soccer, and lately we have been able to find a group of people that would meet at the exact same time as the elders normally play Basketball, and they all get together and play soccer, so this week we decided to have a bit of a contacting activity by going out with them to play some soccer, we had tried to do this quite a few times before however each time that we really have time to be able to join them, the people that we were able to meet that go to the soccer activity decided that they weren't going to go that week, so we haven't been able to do that for awhile.  But this week my companion decided that regardless of weather or not our contacts are going there we were going to go there and just play with whoever is playing soccer there.  Saddly as we arrived there was no one on the field, but we were able to find some guys nearby that were playing volleyball and were able to play a bit with them as well as invite them to come to church.

Well that's about it for this week, it's been mostly missionary work without a ton of other things, but it has been a good week and I'm doing well.  Hope that you all are having a great week!!

Love you all!

Elder Heaton

8-25-2014

8-25-2014

Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 13:07:54 +0800
Subject: The week of work
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!!

This week has gone by pretty well, working hard and finding new people, and seeing blessings because of it.

This last week was the first week of the Move call and so there were a bunch of new faces to be seen in the district, however of the 4 companions in the district me and my companion were the only ones that stayed the same where the other 3 got a new companion.  It has been interesting getting to know all of the new missionaries that have arrived as well as just being able to do the work here.

This week started off pretty good, on Tuesday we didn't really have very many lessons and so we decided to head up to one of the more northern parts of our mission and try a little bit of tracting to see what we could find. After that we met 3-4 different cool families that said we could probably come back and share a message with them, so that was cool.  Later that week we were able to visit with one of them and talk a little bit about how the gospel has blessed our families. It was a good lesson though they personally didn't have much interest at that time.

Later in the week though we had a lot of lessons planned to meet with a lot of new people, and were able to meet with a couple of really cool guys, one was a man that goes by Keanu a nice guy that likes to workout as well as go swimming.  However he told us while we were meeting with him that he wanted to meet with us because he had seen some of his other "Christian Friends" change and just have a better attitude about life and so he wanted to see if church is what made that change.  He was a super prepared guy and Hopefully we can get him prepared to be baptized in the coming weeks.  

The other guy that we met is a cool guy called Mr. Dai who runs a pet store of sorts, it was a very interesting first visit, as we went to his house and discovered that he already had 2 of our "no success can compensate for failure in the home" stickers hanging around the house and we were really curious as to where he got those.  He had told us that he met missionaries before but we didn't think much of it at that time.  We started teaching him the first lesson, however it was hard to keep focused as his house was full of just random animals (he had 4 different birds, a big dog, a couple of spiders and some other animals) so our lesson got cut a little short but he was really willing to listen and just talk about his life and his thoughts.

Now for the coolest thing that happened this week, it happened on Saturday night, there was a small concert that was sponsored by the church where they had a member of the church from Hawaii come over and play the piano for all of us to hear.  It was a super cool event especially considering who the person was. you can check out who by just clicking on this short Mormon message right here.

https://www.lds.org/youth/video/kuhaos-extraordinary-gift?lang=eng

Anyway thats about it for what happened to me this week.  Hopefully you are all having a great week and I will talk to you guys next week!!!

Love you all!

8-18-2014

8-18-2014

Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 14:44:30 +0800
Subject: Move call has arrived. Another misionary down.
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!!

this week has gone by pretty well. As we were in a 3-some with an Elder from another area, we learned that his area was pretty much our area for the week and so we wanted to spend the week trying to visit some of the furthest places in our area, it went quite well and to finish the week we not only had a baptism of a happy go lucky little girl but we also had stake conference.  Lots of fun to be had and more to be made =)

First of all as we started the week, we learned that Taiphoon season has really started, as I think two different ones simultaneously hit Taiwan and there was TONS of rain for the whole first half of the week, in fact on Tuesday we normally do our "English class proselyting" where we take one hour and just tell people about or English class and invite them to come to that, however this week as we were our handing out the fliers and talking to people, the rain was coming down so hard that all of our fliers were just kind of coming apart and the ink started to bleed off of the fliers till they were nothing but long white rectangles.  It was kind of funny but also kind of annoying all at the same time.

Next on Wednesday we didn't really have anything set up and so we decided to go to the furthest area in our newly acquired area, an area that goes so far down south that is actually is considered Kaohsiung rather than Tainan, but we decided to do it. However as wee were going there disaster struck, we were biking down a patch of road next to the ocean, really nice view, and we hear this really loud POP, next thing I know I'm riding on a flat tire, and we are scrambling to find a bike store who can replace it for us cheaply.  It was kind of a downer but we got it fixed fast enough to continue with most of our plans, just not the trip to Kaohsiung.

Next big thing that happened was last Friday we had the awesome baptism.  We had it on friday because Saturday and Sunday would both be part of the whole stake conference, and nobody (especially the bishop) would have been able to come, so we got it all done on Friday and things turned out pretty well.

And finally to end the week we had a really cool stake conference where there were a lot of cool speakers, including a missionary who had just returned from the Temple Square mission, our mission president President Blickenstaff, and a person from Hong Kong who spoke some Cantonese for us to hear, it was a really cool thing to listen to and I loved a small example that he gave us a cool example by showing us two Chinese characters, one was 盲 the other was 忙 the first one is pronounced "Mang" with the bottom half of the character being another character that means "Eye" and the top being a character meaning "dead" so put it together and the character means "Blind" now if you look at the other character the right half of the character is the same as the top of the first character which means "dead" and the left half of the character is another character that means "heart" it is also pronounced "Mang" and it means busy, so he explained that if we are too busy for spiritual things then it is as if our hearts are dead.  and so to always try to have some free time and be available to receive revelation.

That is pretty much it for me though, Hope that you all have a great next week!

Love you all!

Elder Heaton

何長老