Elder Andrew Erickson's Taiwan Taipei Mission

H APPY NEW YEAR... again So its Chinese New Year here in Taiwan and like every other Chinese place, and its so much fun.  The whole island kinda like shuts down. All the stores close and everyone just stays inside with their families. So  on Friday  we took a train over to Taipei for a mission conference and the Taipei main station was like empty at  7:30am  which is usually the busiest time of the day. And when we got on the MRT (subway) there was actually room for everyone to sit down. It was crazy.  But yeah probably the best part of Chinese New Year is that we get fed by the members everyday for lunch and dinner. There's so much food! Its a super great time to just sit down and talk with members about their efforts in sharing the gospel. And the members have been really good about inviting less active and non members. So yeah so many opportunities to spark or respark the light of Christ in peoples lives during this super happy time of the yea...

I (Mom) woke up missing Elder Erickson today and did some searching. I found a blog for one of the Sister Missionaries who was with Andrew in the Missionary Training Center and she had a ton of pictures. Thank you Sister Clyde! These pictures are from September - November 2016 in no particular order.  The last few are from getting to and arriving in Taipei. MTC cafeteria Where is Elder Erickson? He's hiding. MTC line-up Sister Clyde (on the left) got pies from her Mom.  The zone was happy. The required map photo.  Headed to the airport early in the morning. Walking to the Taiwan, Taipei mission dedicatory site. Group photo with President and Sister Jergensen. Last MTC zone group photo before heading off with their new companions.

This week was dang good!  We really keep putting in the work with the members. What we started to do now is start visiting members and member families and only take about 10-15 minutes while with them. We share a 4-minute version of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Before we do we promise them that while we share the message, they will have certain people that come to their mind that they can share the gospel with and then we tell them that afterwards we would like to talk a little bit about those people. The results have been awesome! We walked away this week with so many new names and people to work with! There was one sick family that we met with and after sharing the 4 minute message, we applied it to them and asked "Who do you know that could benefit from The Restored Gospel like your family has?" The family of 7 then each gave us a name of someone that they were trying to work with. The mom gave us a name of a friend and then Elder Aiono and I looked ...

Elder Aiono and Elder Erickson being cute.  Here are Elders Erickson and Aiano and a Sister missionary with Dr. SU. He is such a great doctor he also treats the President of Taiwan.  He told the Mission Nurse Sister Vatcher that the Book of Mormon they had given him on a prior visit brings him peace.   Checking his foot that he hurt 2 days before he left to Taiwan to see how it is healing.

So these past two weeks have been super fun but surprisingly cold (didn't that would ever be a problem in Taiwan). Last Wednesday was temple day, so we got to get on a train to Taipei and do some temple work. At the MTC we got to go the temple every Wednesday  and it just kind of became part of my life. But out in the field it was a much less common occurrence. So getting that opportunity really brought back that spirit of the temple and made me regret not taking advantage of having a temple just a 30 minute drive away back home.  Things here in Zhubei are still going pretty great. We met the Liao family on the street last month and they actually came to church on Christmas. They've been coming to church since and the members have just been swarming them. They love church and have really seen the difference the church has made in the member's lives.   On Saturday   we met with them at Starbucks and brought Sister Xie (Charlie and Yvonne's mom) with us and she b...

Elder Erickson had the chance to attend the Taipei Temple today and only wrote a short message to me (mom) in response to something I wrote about fasting. Then he added " PS I think I'll just attach the one pic from this past week here just in case I don't get to email in Taipei today.​" My guess is he was able to baptize a young lady the sister missionaries had been teaching.

Also my new companion that I also training is Elder Erickson! He is from New Mexico and is one 帥哥. I will let him introduce himself!: Well as Elder Aiono said, I'm from new mexico and did a year at UNM before the mission. I have 1 older brother who lives in LA and 2 younger brothers that currently reside in Arizona with my parents. And yeah I just got on the island and was being trained by my birth father Elder Hammond until he abandoned me last week. But it's cool, I'm super excited to work with my new dad, the great Elder Aiono. It's his last transfer so he's like a wise old man now and I have a lot to learn from him before he dies next month. Well there you have it. Elder Hammond left to go be the new assistant to the president and I came down to finish training my new son Elder Erickson! In missionary terms, that means my son has 2 dads...And the other one is one of my old companions... You know.. after Elder hammond and I split, we finally agreed th...

So last week was Christmas and it was lit. We had 10 investigators at church! And then the super cool Sister Ni had a super cool caroling activity at her house and she invited like 3 families and let us go door to door with like 25 members/nonmembers in her neighborhood, which is a neighborhood that would never be allowed in if we didn't have Sister Ni. So it was just an wonderful day full of wonderful people.  But anyways, last Wednesday during lunch Elder Hammond and I got a little surprise phone call from the mission president. And after making sure we weren't busy and then said he was "about to flip our world upside down." He then proceeded to ask Elder Hammond to come be his assistant in the office and my new companion was going to be Elder Aiono, the AP Elder Hammond would be replacing.  Because we were in the middle of training which is two transfer, we were supposed to be guaranteed 2 transfers together to complete training. So this came as quite a sur...