March 6, 2016

Hello again!

Mom: My companion says he hasn't been invited over to dinner by a member since getting to this area  since he got here. Including Christmas and Chinese new year. So I don't think it will be a very common occurrence over these next few weeks either.

Most Mondays as soon as I am done writing my emails I remember a few things I wanted to say. So I'm going to try and format this one a little differently and see if it helps me remember more of what happened this week.

Monday:The other elders in our district and a bunch of members all decided to go to the zoo together. Taiwanese zoos are nothing like american zoos. They mostly have a bunch of snakes and alligators.

Tuesday: We had DTM and we met with one of our investigators, Shao. He is supper cool but he cant ever come to the church for anything. He is 18 and his parents wont ever let him leave the house for more than 30 minuets. We think he probably is failing school so his parents want I'm to stay inside and study all the time. Hopefully he passes his tests soon so he can come to church.

Wednesday: English class! just like every other Wednesday. Right now we are focusing on getting more members to English class and introduce our students to members in a non threatening environment. This week we were playing 20 questions in my class when we got a supersize visit from assistants who came to evaluate the English program.

Thursday: Thursdays usually feel pretty long because we have a hard time setting up any lessons on Thursday and we don't really have anything else planned. We met with Shao again but the rest of the time we were just looking for new people to teach.

Friday: We had weekly planning and visited a less active family at their home. We also got the news that we would be moving to a new apartment next Wednesday. Our apartment is really small and sketchy, even by Taiwanese standards. Elder Erwin and I are a little excited about that.

Saturday: We traveled over to another area and met up with a few other missionaries to practice a musical piece we will be preforming at the Zone conference this week. Elder Erwin is amazing at the violin so somehow I got dragged into singing at it too. Its going to be a relay cool arrangement of a child's prayer, oh my father and come thou fount that another elder wrote earlier in the week. There are some very musically talented missionaries in this area so I think it should be pretty good.

Sunday: Started out with church, a lot of people showed up this week, it was pretty cool. Then we went to an FHE activity with a few other investigators and we got to meet a lot of new people. It was a lot of fun.

Today we are planning on going to a beach as soon as we are done with emailing, hopefully I'll have a few more good pictures and stories for next week. Thank you bothfor being such great parents and I hope you both have a great week!

February 28, 2016

Hello again,

This was an alright week. Missionary work has been going pretty slow here lately so the last week or so Elder Erwin and I have kinda fallen into a rut but we talked a lot about it last night after planning and we have lots of great plans and goals of what we need to improve so hopefully this next week will be a lot better.

This last Sunday we had 72 people show up to sacrament meeting. Excluding steak conference this was the largest turn out for any church meeting/activity I have seen since getting to Taiwan. So I guess our ward is a little larger than the average Taiwan ward but I'm kinda getting the impression that the ward members don't really like or care about the missionaries. I'm wondering if this ward has a history of lots of problematic missionaries. So a few of the goals we set and plans we came up with yesterday will hopefully help us serve the ward better and gain the trust of the members.

A few weeks ago I emailed about the crazy cold weather in Taiwan, Since then it has never really warmed back up to normal but based off of the weather the last few days I don't think it will be much longer before the weather is back to supper humid and hot.

There are a lot of people in Taiwan that assume because we are Americans we must personally associate with Obama and there have been a few times they would ask me something like "Next time you see Obama tell him this for me" or "you need to tell Obama this, it will fix his problems" or sometimes they claim to have a secret we need to tell him to save the entire world. This week our district was all going to an area to give  out a lot of English tracts when two of the other elders in our district were pulled over by a man on a scooter. He looked a little frantic and as soon as they got to the side of the road he started digging through his bag until he found a note. He gave the note to them and told them it was a huge secret that would change the world. Because we are Americans we are the only ones that can help. But we cant let anyone else know this secret. He then took off on his scooter and we read the note he gave us. I took a picture of it so you could also enjoy it. 

And here is a picture of the church building we meet in. There are redoing some of the outside rock stuff, hopefully it will be done soon because all of the scaffolding isn't supper inviting for people coming to the church for the first time. There are 4 wards that meet in this building and I think there are 3 or 4 more of ​these buildings in Taiwan.

Thank you for both being such awesome parents, I love you!

Elder Wills

Febrary 21, 2016

Hello :)

Mom-- I feel like by the time I get back all of my younger brothers are going to be taller that me. Its going to feel really strange.

I haven seen any of the big buildings that came down from the earthquake yet but they are only about a ten minuet bike ride away from our apartment and church building. There really isn't much for us to do to help out with those buildings, we would probably just get in the way more than we could help, but there have been a few times we have stopped by some members to help them clean up a little. There have actually been a few smaller earthquakes scene then, thankfully nothing as bad as the big one a few weeks ago.

So far I like my new ward. Unfortunately it was just split a few weeks ago so there are only about 50 active members in our ward and our ward boundaries are really small. It would be nice if they just stopped splitting the wards, its really hard to get things done when it is this small. But most of the members I have met have been really cool and it should be fun to work with them. When I got here We had one pretty sold investigator. Because our area is so small it is really hard to find people that live in our area last week we met with someone new on tuesday and he has already read about half of the book of Mormon. He is supper cool but his parents are a little over protective so it is a little hard to meet with him sometimes.

I've been really bad at sending pictures lately so here are a few, I'll try to get better at sending them more often.

 The first two were a few members from my last area. The next one is my new companion.

This last one. Elder Frye and I were just having a little fun with our cameras and some crayons my last day in ShiZhong.

I love you!

Elder Wills

February 14, 2016

Hello again!

This was a pretty exciting week. I got lots of pictures but with the way things turned out today I don't actually have any of the pictures with me right now so I will just have lots to send next week.

For basically the entire week we were eating tons of food and there were constantly fireworks and parades out in the streets. Sometimes it was hard to concentrate on our morning studies with all of the fireworks and drums outside but we ate lots of food and we were able to meet with a lot more of the members because they were all inviting us over to their homes to feed us. This week were were able to get the work with the members moving a little faster. The last few weeks it felt like we weren't having any success but this week was a lot better. A lot of the members were really willing to help us out and introduce us to their friends and then at the end of the week were had our first FHE for the YSA and 14 people show up. It was pretty great. 

And now that we were able to get the ward up and going I got transferred. I am now in yongkang, about an hour drive north of where I was just at. Yongkang is where the Earthquake was the worst and there is still a lot of cleanup going on. Its going to be interesting just to see how that effects missionary work. Now I am actually really close to my first area again. The first ward I served in had to move buildings because the first one wasn't safe so now they actually meet in the same building I am in right now. So I will probably get to see a lot of the members from my first area again, It should be a lot of fun. 

Moving was a little sad because Elder Frye and I were doing really well together but my new companion is also pretty cool and I've only heard good things about his so I think Its going to be a fun transfer. I'm sorry I didn't have the pictures this week, I'll do my best to get them to you next week.

I love you!

Elder Wills

February 7, 2016

Hello:)

So the earthquake was pretty crazy this week. I was actually on exchanges when it happened, at first I thought my companion had come over to my side of the room and was trying to rip my mattress out from under me. I haven't seen any buildings down in my area from it but I've heard there were quite a few that fell over in my first area. I haven't heard from any of the members over their yet, I hope they are all ok.

Dad- When I said "My companion is still supper awesome" last week I guess it was just a poor choice of wording. I guess what I meant to say is that we are still getting along really well and we have a supper awesome companionship. unfortunately I think there is a pretty good chance i will be transferred next week...

I'm sorry i forgot to take pictures again this week, I'm sure I will have lots of them for you next week though.

Thank you for everything that you do for me and thank you for being such great parents!

I love you!

Elder wills

(MARK HAS STARTED TO SEND PICTURES OF LETTERS HE WROTE DURING THE WEEK SO HE CAN WRITE US A LITTLE MORE.  HERE IS AN EXCERPT FROM ONE)

Hello,

Happy New Year!  According to the Chinese Calendar today is the first day of the new year.  I think this next week will pretty much just be a huge party that lasts a whole week.  It might be a little harder to teach lessons but we are hoping to get some solid references that we will be working with these next few weeks.  Hopefully it all goes well!

                I don’t know if you have seen it on the news at at all, our mission president might have actually emailed you already, but we had a pretty big earthquake Friday night/Saturday morning.  Everything is fine where I am but in my first area (less than 5 miles north) there were a few pretty big building that fell over.  It hit at about 4:00 AM and immediately woke me up because it almost threw me out of bed.  We are on the 6^th floor of our apartment so it was even worse because of how high up we are.  I’ve been in a few smaller earthquakes that rocked us back and forth a little but this was completely different.  It felt like I was in a really old roller coaster and it lasted long enough I felt motion sick by the time it was done.  I haven’t actually been able to look at the news but I have heard it was rated as a 6.6 earthquake.

February 1, 2016

Hello :)

Thankfully this week has been a little warmer. I was able to find a blanket so I haven't frozen in the middle of the night yet. I haven't found a jacket but it usually isn't to cold in the day and these last few days it has started to warm up a little more.

Not a ton happened this week. Right now we don't real progressing investigators so most days we spend a few hours talking to people on the streets trying to find new people to talk to but we haven't seen to much success.

Thank you for everything that the two of you do for me. I always love hearing from you and seeing all of the funpictures of things you are all doing :)

I love you!

Elder Wills

P.S. Sometimes the shirts here are kinda funny. most of the time the English on them makes  absolutely no scene. But right now I don't know if my English is any better

January 24, 2016

Jan 24

Hi Mom!

The weather has been crazy these last few days. It hasn't snowed here but it got below freezing these last few days. If we counted wind chill i don't even know how cold it actually is, well below zero. And none of us were really prepared for it, my short sleeved shirts and thin rain jacket weren't really enough to fight it all off. We tried to go buy a coat but I couldn't find any that fit me. Thankfully I was at least able to find a pair of gloves and a scarf. None of the buildings have heaters either so it is just as cold inside as it is outside, at least there isn't any wind. I don't really have a blanket so last night I had to put on almost all of the cloths I have so I didn't freeze to death. Its still supper cold and i think it will be for the next few days But I think the worst is over.

I know I have sent a lot of monkey pictures but this week we were biking through the mountains and we came around the corner to a small parking lot and IO think there were at least 40 of the running around jumping on peoples cars and stuff. so I'm sending another monkey picture

anyway, not a lot happened this week. the weather was freezing and raining so nobody wanted to talk to us and most people we had lessons set up just never showed up. That happened a lot but this week it happened more that usual. Hopefully this week goes a little better and I don't freeze to death. Thank you for taking the time to email me again this week. I love you!

Love,

Elder Wills