December 18, 2016

Hey!

For skyping could we do it Monday morning 7:30 my time? I think that would be the evening of the 25th for you.

Thank you for sending that package a few weeks ago, It has been a ton of fun opening one every day. I think one of my favorites has been the taco seasoning. It made us both laugh.

This month our entire mission has been participating in the 25 day Christmas challenge thing but it has been modified a little so that we could do everything as missionaries. Today one of the things I need to do is "Remind my parents about emergency preparation." So, there it is. You have been reminded. 

This week has been a lot of fun. On Friday we were doing weekly planning when we got a phone call from President Teh and he said that we was coming down for the weekend and wanted to take us out to dinner. It was supper unexpected. It takes about 7-8 hours to travel from our area to the mission home, we are the furthest elders away so this area never gets any visits from anyone, let alone the mission president. On Sunday he came to church and I got to translate for him. He has pretty sophisticated English so it was a bit of a struggle translating a few things he said. My favorite line I attempted to translate was "Missionary work is the lifeblood of the church." My companion started laughing in the congregation when our President said that because he knew I was clueless as to how to translate that. In the end it ended up going all right though. After church on Sunday they came to inspect our apartment and I also had to renew my temple recommend so we ended up doing that in a really small spare room we use as storage space and a changing room. It was an interesting experience. It all ended up being a ton of fun and I was really glad we got to spend a little time with them this weekend.

This next week is going to be really packed. We will be going on exchanges, we are going to a zone conference, our branch has a Christmas party and we already have a bunch of lessons set up for next week. It should be a lot of fun.

I hope you both have a Christmas week! I love you both!

Elder Wills

January 1, 2017

Hello!

I didn't actually know that my release date was changing until about 5 min ago. I don't really know how that is going to work because we will still be a week away from the end of the transfer. But I still have a while before I need to worry about that....right?

Dad, It was fun to hear about your experience with the ward choir. It made me smile :)

Do you have any more solid Ideas for what we will be doing as a family when I get back?

This week we saw a pretty cool rainbow and sunset. I thought I would include pictures.

I'm sorry, we didn't do a ton this week so I don't have a lot to report on right now... But I hope you both have a great week and I hope you both know that I love you!

Elder Wills

December 11, 2016

Hello!

This week has been pretty good. It was the last week of the transfer and my companion and I will both be staying here for the next one. We are both really excited about it.

Last Monday was the first time I have set a baptismal goal with an entire family. That was supper exciting and we are really excited for them.

A little latter in the week we were knocking on doors and we had one lady that come to the door with her eyes closed and looking like she was about to pass out. After opening the door she fell to he knees and started bowing down to us and worshiping us. It was a very interesting experience.

On Friday we went on exchanges. I was with Elder Parker from Australia and the most exciting part of the exchange was probably when he crashed his bike. Thankfully he is alright, he crashed pretty hard. 

On Sunday we had the primary program. It was a lot of fun to watch.

Thank you for all that you have done for me and I hope that you have a great week!

Elder Wills

December 4, 2016

Hello!

Mom, the list of characters you sent is exactly what I wanted, thank you so much!

We got the package this morning just before leaving the door. We have a little Christmas tree that we set up all of the presents under, My companion is getting excited for it too.

This week was pretty good. Lately we have been working a lot with the branch to make sacrament meeting a spiritually uplifting meeting and this week we saw some huge improvements. We are both pretty excited about that.

One day this week we were out at a little fishing town during dinner. We got some fried rice and then went out on the rocky beach to eat it while watching the sunset. It was absolutely amazing. I got a few pictures but the computer I'm using won't register my camera, I'll have to try to send them again next week.

While tracting this week we had a man reject us with the excuses of "I'm a vegetarian."  I had to try very hard to not laugh.

Last Monday My companion convinced me to do a crazy workout with him called Murph. To start off you run a mile, do 100 pull ups, 200 push ups, 300 squats and then run another mile. After the workout I was feeling pretty good but later that night when I was sleeping my muscles all cramped up. I have never been so sore form a workout before. Thankfully I have mostly recovered by now ;)

Dad, I remember when I was at BYU you sent me a document of your Dads story for a project I was doing. Is there any way you could email that to me? Or any other cool family history stories. I think it would be fun for language study to translate a few stories into Chinese and then I could learn  little family history too.

Thank you both for all of your support and all that you do for me. I love you both!

Elder Wills

November 27, 2016

It looks like Utah was a lot of fun. Over her for thanksgiving we had some pizza for dinner and then lots of missionary work after that. It was pretty fun.

we have a stray dog that lives in front of our apartment that missionaries have named Chester. Sometimes we will run into him while we are in the city, this Monday he found us and then followed us around for the rest of the night. 

Lately there have been a lot of bikers riding through the town.

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We found a little town on the top of the mountains where only native Taiwanese people lived.  When we got there there was a wedding going on. I have noticed a few times that some Taiwanese culture is very similar to southern america. When we got to the town I felt liked I had just stepped into south america. The cloths, music, dancing,decorations, food and even the native people all look like they are from south america. I think there is a good chance that the Taiwanese are descendants of Hagoth from the book of Mormon. It really is supper interesting.

That's about all I have for the week but thank you for the pictures and the email. I love you!

Elder Wills

November 21, 2016

Hello again!

How have you all been this last week? Do you have any fun plans for thanksgiving?

To be completely honest not much special happened here this week... Actually, We have a member that owns a lot of chickens and he has a lot of problems with wild dogs eating them. So he asked us to help him design and then build a chicken coop to help protest them. All we had to work with were zip ties, bamboo and a few sheets of metal. Not the most beautiful thing I have ever built but it should get the job done.

One other thing that I was wondering if you could possibly help with. Is there any way you could find some kind of document online that has the 3,000 most common traditional Chinese characters listed in order of how commonly they are used and also includes a simple definition and pronunciation of the character? I know, its pretty specific but I think it would help a lot with my language study if I could get a hold of something like that. But if you can't find anything like it I'll still be fine, so don't worry about it to much if you can't.

I'm sorry I don't really have anything else to say this week, hopefully next week will be a little more exciting. I hope you have a great week and a great Thanksgiving!

November 13, 2016

Hello!

So the new area I am in is 恆春 (hengchun) It is the southernmost part of Taiwan so we are surrounded by the ocean on the east, south and west. It is a supper beautiful place. Last p-day we went to a beach with a few friends and there were a bunch of people surfing. My companion is from southern California and loves surfing. He got me really excited about it and now I have decided I need to try it out some day.

The last area I was in had about 80 people coming to church when I left, one of the biggest wards in our mission. The branch I am in now had about 15 active members, the smallest in all of the country. Because there aren't very many I've already been able to meet most of them. There are  a few pretty cool members but overall the Branch is a little lacking in Faith, we are really going to be working hard on helping the members get excited about missionary work this transfer. Last week we had two baptisms so that should be a good start and hopefully got a few of the members excited. One of the men that got baptized is 93 years old and always has one of the biggest smiles ever. He is great.

On Wednesday we were on our way to lunch when a man pulled us over and started talking to us. He said he knew the missionaries a while ago and that he really needs help later in the night. So we set up to go visit him as soon as we were done with our dinner. He is living in a hotel owned by his brother so we talked to him for a few minuets in the lobby and then he asked if we could go out back to the parking lot so he could show us something. He told us that he made a promise a few years ago that he would help God build a church and now he finally has all of the resources to do it. In the back parking lot he had a huge pile of toys, remote control cars and boats mostly. He asked if he could store the stuff in our church and he said that by selling these he would be able to save up enough money to build the church. Before we could respond he told us to follow him across the road to the land he bought to build our new church. The land he "bought" was a public park in between a bathroom and a Taoist temple. Next to the bathroom he had chained up a stray dog to protect the area from tourists. He also said he needs our help because he is spending all of his time maintaining and cleaning the bathroom so he doesn't have any time to build our church. At this point we had to leave because our English class was about to start and we told him we would talk to him later. Then half way through English class he walked into the church with his 200 pound dog because his dog really wants to learn English. I asked him if the dog could wait outside which he wasn't to happy with but in the end did agree. He came back in to class to learn and spent the entire time correcting all of the other students, he said he has graduated from Harvard, Yale and Stanford... At the end of class we asked if there were any volunteers to say the closing prayer and he jumped up right away and said that he could do it. Right before starting he told us that he is Taoist so he prays a little differently. His "prayer" the consisted of him standing at the front of the class yelling at everyone because our society has become a slave to technology. He had to stop this rant twice to check his phone. Finally I was able to calm him down and everyone else in the class basically ran to the door as soon as class was over. We thought that would be the last time we would see this man but just an hour or two ago he called me because these bad people have locked him up in a mental hospital and he needs us to get him a bible.... I might have more to report on this story by next week....

anyway, thank you for both taking the time to email me again this week. i love you both and I hope you have a great week!

Elder Wills