Fist week in Taiwan

​​So Tuesday morning we left the MTC to Taiwan. The flight was super long but we saw a couple miracles along the way and met some pretty great people. When we arrived Wednesday night, we were greeted by President Jergenson, his wife, and the assistants, and they're all super cool. 

We got to the mission office at like 9:30 or 10 pm and got some street food, which was super good. We stayed the night in the mission office across from the temple and it was beautiful. Taiwan is sooo beautiful. The next day we got up early and went to the Grand Hotel so more beautiful Taiwan and then I got my trainer, Elder Hammond.

Elder Hammond is super cool and is about a year and a half into his mission. He's super driven and has a lot of urgency with how he goes about the work. So yeah he's a great missionary and I'm super excited to work with him. We were assigned to labor in the area of Zhu Bei 3, which is on the west coast of Taiwan and we could actually see the ocean from our apartment, which is surprisingly nice btw. It's on the 14th so we have a great veiw of the city and even our chapel.

The people of Zhu Bei are all super friendly and it seems like everyone's cool to stop and talk to us, but it's hard to tell if they talk to us because we're Americans or because they're down to hear about the good news. Elder Hammond and I are actually opening up a new area for Elders, so we don't actually have any current investigators, so all we do is talk to people on the streets until we get to teach some lessons, but its been a great experience.

Our first night out finding we set a goal to bring 2 people to church on Sunday to try to get the ward excited about missionary work and try to create some momentum. And we talked to a lot of people. We had some good experiences and met some people interested in learning more but it seemed like no one could come to church. When Saturday night at around 9pm came around we still didn't have anyone to take to church. We decided we needed to say another prayer and pay super close attention to the spirit. The spirit led us to an intersection and then we had 2 thoughts on where to go: turn right and follow that street down or go straight then go left. We both felt inspired to choose the latter and we talked to 2 people very reluctant to here the gospel, but we kept following the spirit. We then saw a family of a father, his wife, and daughter on bikes. We love talking to families so we immediately made an effort to try to get their attention but they rode right past us. But we heard the father say "should we talk to them?" and then they stopped. It turns out they were actually members who met at the language training center in Provo and actually used to work in the MTC. But they hadn't gone to church since moving to Taiwan 3 months ago. They said that right before we saw them, they were talking about whether to go to church the next day and they agreed to go with us. They ended up following through and came to church and fit right into the ward. So that was a super great little miracle that just demonstrates the power of prayer and following the spirit.

Church the next day was pretty great and was actually the primary program. It was great, I actually understood most of it but I guess that just says that my Chinese vocabulary is that of a Chinese kid talking about the church.

But anyways sorry about the long email, its been quite the eventful week. Taiwan's great and its great to be out of the MTC, even though I kinda miss it and really really miss my district and teachers. But its great to be doing the work I was called to do.

The Taipei Temple

The Grand Hotel

I think this is the view from his apartment