September 23, 2016

Hello!

This week was pretty fun and I'm doing pretty good! I'm sorry I didn't really email last week but lately I have decided I am going to write better emails (I know this is probably the third or fourth time I have said that in the last year or so, but this time I'm serious) so I have lots to say today! I'll start with last week.

Last week was this mid autumn festival, one of the bigger holidays celebrated in Taiwan. All week people were out on the streets BBQing. On Friday we had a group of recent converts invite us over to one of their BBQs. We have a group of about 12 recent converts that have made really good friend with each other and they are always doing things together, it is great. Before we left they all decided we were going to play a game. Someone would pick a word and everyone gets to know what it is, other than the two missionaries. Then all of the Taiwanese will do there best to use English to describe the word and the two Americans needed to use Chinese to guess what it was. None of them had great English so it was  a pretty fun game. The only downside was that the looser of every round, either my companion or I, had to drink a cup of bitter tea. There are no tea leaves in it so it is ok to drink, it is actually pretty healthy, but it is tastes absolutely awful. It really lives up to his name. I won the first round and my companion almost threw up drinking it. Everyone else insisted that we still had to play five or six more rounds before we switched people. I could tell that there was no way my companion would be able to drink and more so I purposely lost every round after that, most of the rounds I ended up whispering the answer to my companion so he could get it right, and I had to drink quite a bit of it. It was a fun experience but I don't ever want to do that again.

We just had another round of transfers and another set of missionaries was taken out of our district, so we only have two companionship now. Our mission is also experiencing a shortage of missionaries so one of the other two elders in our district is just a member serving as a short time missionary for a transfer. English class is going to be a lot of fun now that we only have two american missionaries.

Our phone has a Chinese-English dictionary but ours uses simplified characters. Taiwan uses traditional characters so most of the time it doesn't do us any good. Last week we went to go see if we could get it fixed. The first phone store we went to didn't even look at the phone and told us there was no way to do it. The second place said there is a way to do it but they don't know how. The third place also said there was no way. The fourth place said the only way to get a traditional character dictionary on out phone was to upgrade to a smart phone and then she tried to sell us the new iphone 7. So we will just have to continue with a phone that doesn't have a good dictionary.

I have set a goal to finish reading the book of Mormon in Chinese by the end of the transfer.

This week at FHE we had a new RC in  charge of the spiritual share. They were planning on watching a short video but forgot to bring it with them. So he decided to pick a random DVD from the church library and put see what it has. He found a 10 min video labeled "commandments" and decided to use it. It ended up being a video of David interpreting Nebuchadnezzars dream. None of the people at FHE have been members for more than a few months and I know none of them have ever read the bible before so they were all very confused. It was pretty funny.

A few days ago we came across a crazy man on the streets. When he saw us he started stumbling toward us yelling "Please pray for me!". He was twitching and tripping over himself and could barely even stand. I pulled a tract out of my pocket and gave it to him. As soon as he touched it he stood up straight, polity said "thank you" and calmly walked away.

I have a few other good stories but I am almost out of time so I will have to wait until next week. For my birthday the only thing I can think of that I could use on my mission would be a new journal.

I love you all and I hope you have a great week!

Elder Wills

September 19, 2016

Thank you for telling me about all of that. And thank you for all of the effort that you have been putting in to send me positive, uplifting emails. I really do appreciate it. I know there really isn't much I can do from the other side of the world but I wouldn't mind staying as updated as  possible on anything that is going on at home. And if there ever is anything I can do, please don't hesitate to ask :)

I'm sorry I don't have much to report on the super Typhoon, Taizhong is  mostly surrounded by mountains so we don't really experience many big typhoons. I love you and I hope you have a great week!

September 11, 2016

Hello!

Is there any way I could apply to be an EFY counselor while I'm still on my mission? I don't know for sure if that's what I want to do yet but I have been thinking about it a lot lately, so if it is possible I would like to look into that more. And what exactly does it take to re-apply to BYU?  If I decide against the EFY counselor I'll probably just go back to school as soon as I can. Right now I'm still leaning toward some kind of international business. Because of a lack of information on a mission I don't know exactly what BYU has to offer, I've forgotten a lot of what options they have. Since being on my mission I have also talked to a few people that might be able to hook me up with some kind of internship in Taiwan on China. So right now I've got a lot of options and a lot of ideas and I don't really have a way to look at all of the details of these options in depth right now so I'm still not certain on what I want to do. Thankfully I still have a little time to decide for sure. Do either of you have any strong opinions or new ideas?

What do I wan't for my birthday.... A road bike, some nice hiking shoes, a go pro, the iphone 7,$1,000,000...... Nothing that would really be useful as a missionary. So this year you can just write me a card and call it good :)

A few of the highlights from my week are.....

1) We went knocking on doors to find new investigators and this is the conversation I had with someone (this conversation was in Chines)

me-"hello.."

Them-"sorry, I'm busy" (they were watching tv)

me-"we just...."

Them-"I'm sorry, I don't speak Chines"

me-"......you don't speak Chinese?....."

them-"nope, not at all. I don't understand anything you are saying."

Then they shut the door on us. Some people aren't very creative when it comes to excuses.

2)We taught the Plan of salvation to an investigator this week and his biggest concern was the spirit world.  He said there is no way that many spirits could fit in one place,  it goes against all of the laws of physics and geometry...He wasn't really willing to listen to what we had to say after that and he couldn't stop thinking about how overpopulated the spirit world must be. It was one of the more special concerns I have heard of.

3)We have an investigator that has been meeting with missionaries for a while now. A  few months ago we got her to church for the first time. It was fast Sunday and someone got up and told everyone that she came to the church earlier this week and a member locked her in a class room and took advantage of her, Which was not true. But after that our investigator  wasn't supper willing to come back to church. We finally got her to come back to church yesterday and what was the topic the bishopric had asked everyone to speak on? Dating. So all of the young single adult members in the ward talked for a few minuets and gave us all lots of dating advice. Hopefully we can get this investigator to a normal church meeting at least once.

That's about all I have for the week. I love you both and I hope you have a good week!

Elder Wills

September 4, 2016

Hello again!

Thank you for all of the advice you had for me this week, it should be a lot of help. Thank you!

Since I don't have access to the internet there are a few questions that I'm hoping you might be able to help me with.

1) when does the winter and the spring semester of BYU start?

2) what does it take to apply to be an EFY counselor?

3) what is going on with the presidential election? you don't need to give me to many details on this one, I don't want it to distract me from my mission but I would like to be a somewhat informed voter for the upcoming election.

I'm sorry I don't have any good pictures for this week. I don't actually think I remembered to take any at all....

This was a pretty typical week of missionary work and I am having a hard time remembering much of what happened... We have a few supper awesome investigators that are working hard toward their baptismal goals. On Friday I went on exchanges with Elder Johnson. Somehow I managed to break the rear axle of my bike. I don't know how it happened but I just took the back wheel off of an old bike that was left at our apartment when a missionary went home. 

I'm sorry, that's about all I have for the week. But it looks like you all had fun this last week and I hope you have another great one! I love you both!

Elder Wills

August 28, 2016

Hello!

Mom, it looks like you had a lot of fun this last week. The monkey you got a picture with look s just like all of the monkeys I have seen here in Taiwan. And the new temple looks awesome.

A few of my highlights of the week were...

1: when I was making night I was making a snack before bed and this guy crawled out of the wall right next to me. I had a hard time sleeping that night...

2: we were in a new part of town during dinner time so we asked a random man what there was to eat around there. He pointed us down a little road that ended in this dead end.... I don't know if there was actually a place to eat in there but we decided to turn around and find a new place.

3: Earlier this week 1 cat got in a fight with 7 dogs and the cat won. It was all over the national news.

4: We were talking to people in front of a mall when a man wearing short shorts and a bra started talking to us and then followed us around for the next ten minuets. Sorry I didn't get a picture of that 

one.

And here i​s another random picture of my companion and I making calls at a park last night.

Overall this week was pretty great but I could use a little advice on a few more things. Second, we have another investigator who is supper prepared and supper awesome. Last night she called me crying and told me that she suffers from depression and she doesn't want to live anymore. As a missionary I don't know what I can to to be there for her and help her. Do you have any ideas?

Thank you for the emails again this week. I love you both and I hope you have a great week!

Elder Wills

August 21, 2016

This is our "Investigator that we teach every morning

A little lizard I found in the church.

Another random temple in the woods.

The words on this statue translate to "Holy Heavenly Mother". I thought it was a little interesting.

Last one...

Sorry I had to send so many different emails, I can only get one or two pictures in per email.

I'm sorry I don't have a ton of time to write much, but at least I was able to send a few pictures. I love you both and I hope you  both have a great week!

Elder Wills

August 15, 2016

my camera still isn't working but my companion was able to email me a few of his pictures from the week. Sorry I don't have time to explain them.