1-19-2015

1-19-2015

Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 10:45:29 +0800
Subject: Blasting through the week
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello family!!!

Well this week was really good, we were able to meet with some really cool investigators, as well as to meet with more of the members, to really get to know them and to see why they joined the church.  Recently our mission president has been inviting us to get to know the full names of all of the members in the ward of branch where ever we are serving and to really get to know what they are doing, so that you will be able to greet most of the people as they come to church.  It's been a fun process and I have been lucky because the branch that I am serving in is pretty small

Other than that this week one of our investigators said that she wanted to be baptized and told us the date that it will happen, we had been working with her for a long time and we were super happy to hear it.  so now we have set our plans to make sure that she is able to get baptized on the date that she wants.

Finally I have to say one of my favorite things about Taiwanese Culture, it is something that I have really noticed recently and really makes itself manifest when you get into the more countryside of Taiwan.  So as me and my companion were traveling to one of our lessons, we decided to talk to one of the many fishermen that are usually fishing on one of the bridges in our area.  As we were talking he was being nice, however we could tell that he didn't really have that much interest.  we were about to leave when suddenly a man on his motor scooter yells hello to us, asks if we are from america, then gives us some fruit, and drives off... neither of us had ever met the man before and we were a little confused, but we just moved onto our next appointment.  Next we were just talking to people at a red light.  I turn around and there is only one person at the light, a nice old lady.  So I yell hello to her, and we figure out that she can't speak Chinese or English so there was no real way for us to talk to her, however she reaches into one of her bags and just hands us some bananas and insists that we take them.... yeah.  it really has shown me the true love that Taiwanese people have for eachother and for other people and I have been encouraged to bring more people unto Christ because of it.

Well thats pretty much it for this week.  I hope that you are all having a great time in all of your various circumstances and that you will be able to accomplish all of your goals.  The new year is started and it is a time to look onward and upward.

I know that this gospel is true and that it has been given to us by a loving heavenly father who just wants the best for us.  Hope that we can all feel that in our lives this week!!

1-12-2015

1-12-2015

Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 12:04:54 +0800
Subject: The week of miracles!
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

This week has gone by really well, we were able to meet with a good amount of people this week and were able to really develop our relationship with our ward and were able to also go on some exchanges with our zone leaders, so all in all it was a pretty good week.

Well the week started off with the Zone leader exchanges, and I was able to go back to the big city of Kaohsiung (gaoxiong) to serve in the zone leaders area for a day.  It was pretty fun, I was starting to really forget what a big city feels like, and as I stepped out of the subway station the first sight I got to see was a 4 lane road totally packed to the brim with motor scooters, and people just going to their various places, with the roar of motors.  It totally threw me off, but made me laugh all at the same time.

After the exchange my and my companion were pumped and ready to get our area up and running, and so the next day we set some goals and made plans to really try to keep in contact with all of our investigators every day, so for the next day we had a fun time going to the nearby investigator houses and just leaving them a small note with a scripture on it and inviting them all to read and just to keep going.  After that we headed out to our beach area to meet with an investigator and had a great time teaching her.

Finally at the end of the week we were able to meet with a cool new family where the husband smokes and the wife doesn't really like it, so they wanted us to share a message about getting over that, so we are excited to be able to keep working on that!

Well that's pretty much it for this week.  Hope that you are all having a great time and a great week, know that I haven't even needed to put on a jacket so far this winter and I'm just loving it!!

Until next week

1-5-2015

1-5-2015

Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2015 11:54:24 +0800
Subject: The new year comes with a BANG!!
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello Everybody!!

This week went really well, we were really enjoying ourselves and were able to have a great time.  On Tuesday we were thinking that we had a good plan set up to meet with one of our investigators that lived a little further away, however as it turns out she canceled which left us with a lot of spare time to use, and so we decided to go out and do a little bit of tracting to see what we could find.  As we were going around there was a man and his mother sitting on their porch just talking and we just started talking with them, the man invited us to sit down with him and we had a great conversation with him about a lot of things, which we eventually got turned to the gospel.  As we were asking him about his experience with Christians and churches he mentioned to us how he had heard of Christ... from Jail!  haha it really threw me off a bit but we kept talking with him and learned that he was still really into Christian churches and said that we could come back.  It was pretty fun.

The next day during our English class I was really curious about what people do for new years here, as, when your a missionary you don't really have a chance to really see what they do, so I asked everybody what their plans were, and I realized its pretty much the exact same thing as America. There's big parties everywhere and sometimes people go to hang out with their families, but a lot of people also don't really care about it, which I felt was a little sad... But it was OK

The last thing that happened this week was we had a member invite us to dinner on Saturday, so we get there, and one of the things that he was serving was a little red, rectangular box thing, which the member kept insisting that we eat. So I took one and it tasted like I was just eating a block of salt.  Not my favorite thing, but the member mentioned to me that it is one of his favorite foods, after asking what it was he told us that it was some sort of fish eggs made into a cake... so that was the interesting thing that I got to eat this week..

Well that's all that I really got for this week.  Hope that everyone is having a great time and is just loving life!!  Have a great New Year!!

12-29-2014

12-29-2014

Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 12:07:40 +0800
Subject: The crazy Christmas and going until next year!!!
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the Family!!

Well this week went by really well, and we were able to accomplish a ton, I really enjoyed being able to see all of you on Skype this last Friday (Thursday for all of you) and just be able to have a ton of fun.  The Christmas season really pumped me up this week and we were able to have a ton of fun so lets get started!!

Well the week started really well, we decided that we wanted to share a ton of Christmas joy, and so what do we do?  We get a picture of my companion dressed in a Santa suit and start writing messages to all of the members as well as some of our investigators, it was a ton of fun and we were just having a blast sending those off.

Next on the awesome week happened right on Christmas day.  We wanted to have a good Christmas day, full of lessons, and so we made tons of plans, we were looking forward to it and we had a good afternoon and night planned, however we didn't really have anything planned for the morning.  We were sitting around in companion study and thinking how best to spend the morning when we have a random person call us, a member from another ward, saying that he has a referral for us, and that we should come right away.  So we hop onto our bikes and get out there for a good lesson in the morning, followed by the member that was going to help us skype call us up to be able to get that all ready.  After that we took the long bike ride out to one of our further away areas to meet with Sister Wang, an awesome investigator who we invited to be baptized, she accepted and is probably going to be baptized in January!! after that we headed home and were able to finish the day off with another lesson with a cool guy who wanted to hear a little bit about the Plan of Salvation.  Christmas was awesome!!

However as expected the best part of the week was being able to see the whole family and to be able to just chat with all of you!!  Your all looking really good!  I loved being able to just talk with all of you and to be able to just hear your voices,. just makes me think of how important families are and why I'm out here in the first place!!

Well to end the week we had a really great time at church.  I was able to get the Christmas package the day after I skyped everyone, and there was one thing that I was really looking forward to going.  In Taiwan they have one really weird thing about them, which is that they don't really eat really sweet things that often, they have sweets but nothing that really compares to American sweets.  So I decided that I wanted to share a little bit of the divinity with a couple of people just to see their reactions.  It was hilarious to just watch them kind of squirm around while eating it, they enjoyed it, but after they finished half a ball of divinity they just said it was too sweet then gave it to another person, who did the same thing!  Thanks family for the awesome treats!!

Well that's pretty much it for my week, the new year is coming along and I'm working on setting some goals for the new year, hope that you are all doing the same!!

Love you a ll!!

12-22-2014

12-22-2014

Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 12:01:11 +0800
Subject: The winds of change.
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!!

Well this week has gone by really well, super fast, but also pretty weird all at the same time.  But our spirits are high and we are happily doing the lords work here in Dong gang.

To start off the week we had a wonderful Monday, however this Monday was a little different from other Mondays because it wasn't really P-day, as they had changed it due to some visa problems with the new missionaries.  This Monday we were really able to get a little bit of good proselyting, and were able to have a good time teaching the gospel.

I think the biggest things that happened this week however happened on Wednesday night and throughout most of Sunday.  First off Wednesday night as you might know by now is our English class, and usually the week before transfers we would have an English Party, so that if you think you are going to leave you can take a picture with the people that you like, or just get a good last invitation out to them.  This month we decided that we (of course) wanted to have a Christmas party, and just celebrate Christmas because people here don't really do that, so we had a fun time having a paper snowball fight, we made paper snowflakes, had a gift exchange, sang some songs and finally had the nativity acted out.  It was lots of fun =)

Then on Sunday the other big thing happened, our branch also had an awesome Christmas party, the initial plan was that there would be a potluck, so everyone could come and just bring a dish, which should be enough for everyone and as missionaries we did our part in inviting everyone that we talked to to come to it as well.  It was lots of fun, with a lot of good Taiwanese food, then after that we were able to all go out and do some crazy Christmas caroling.  That was lots of fun, we were able to see a ton of people, and my companion dressed up as Santa Clause so everybody wanted to take a picture with him.  =)

Finally this week we were able to meet with a cool new person who runs a drink stand, we are looking forward to working more with her, but for now I still don't know much about her situation, all I really know is that she used to be part of the Presbyterian Church, but was starting to go a little less active there, so a member invited her to meet with us, and she accepted, so we will be meeting with her in the coming week.

Well I'm totally looking forward to skyping you all this Christmas (Friday for me) Hope that you all have a great week and some happy holidays.  Remember that Christ is the reason for the season and to just have a great time giving to all.

Love you all! 

-- 

Elder Heaton

何長老

P.S. Have you gotten my Christmas Package yet?  I sent it off 2 weeks ago so it should be arriving soon, keep an eye out for it.  I'm still waiting for my package, but there have been transfers and so they usually don't forward mail from the office during the week of transfers to prevent it from going to the wrong place.

Merry Christmas!!

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!