Emails 4/25/16

I'm glad Aunt Amy is doing well. I was worried and praying for her a lot this week. 

Ok, this week was pretty good. :) Here's my letter to President this week. :) 

This last week was pretty great! I feel like the work has been getting better and better every week. Elder Grisenti and I on the first week made it one of our goals to hit mission standards each week. While that hasn't happened yet, we have seen miracles from striving to hit mission standards. We have found a lot of people to teach last week and our amount of lessons are increasing. I am happy with what we've been doing here, but I wish we had more time. I would love to stay here longer and I hope that I get to stay here longer, because I am loving the people in the area as well as the area. 

Last week I read in Mosiah 29 and found some really cool stuff in there. I was thinking about the Plan of Salvation as I read it, and realized that the Grand Council in Heaven might have been a lot like what things were like when Mosiah was presenting his plan to the people, addressing choice and freedom in this life, and that we rejoiced at the Plan. I especially liked Mosiah 29:40. I think that is how we felt about Jesus when the Plan of Salvation was presented to us. If we change Mosiah's name to Jesus' name, I think it fits in well. 
I am loving Heng Chun and Elder Grisenti so much! I'm glad I can be here and learn and serve others here!

Also, I told President about getting filmed last week and he said: 

You are TV stars. Wow! Love you!

Haha :) 

So, it was pretty cool, we have been trying to hit mission standards, but we haven't hit all of them at once yet, but we have seen miracles from trying! It's been super cool! 

Well, Monday we went and played with investigator friends. :) They're technically former investigators, but they love missionaries and take us out to do fun things a lot. :) Monday we went to see some Buddhist temples, saw the beach where Life of Pi was filmed, and then went to a chi dao bao (buffet) :D Woohoo! It was a pretty fun Pday. :) 

That night we met with Bob, our investigator. He's good, and needs to get baptized because he's super solid, he just doesn't know it! :) 

Tuesday was good. Normal Tuesday it felt like, until night time. We had set up to meet with a potential investigator, who gave us a referral (her husband), and took us out to eat dinner (we had already eaten dinner, but I didn't mind second dinner!) :D It was super good, too! :D She seemed a little eccentric and it was apparent by her house that she had lots of money. :o Like, LOTS of money. Cool. :) 

Wednesday was good. We had English class, met with a new investigator named Harrison. We found him through English class, which was pretty cool. We talked about baptism with him and he might have potential to get baptized! Woohoo! :D The only bummer is we'd have to refer him up to Ping Dong, because he usually isn't here on the weekend. Oh well, team Jesus. :) 

Thursday was super intense! We went to a secondary over the mountains in the heat of the day (it was the only time we were able to go) to visit a couple LA's and a former investigator. In the end, they all weren't home, except for one LA. :/ It was nice to meet with him though, and he came to church yesterday, so that was good! Then that night we had to go to another secondary area about as far away, but the other direction and also up some considerable hills. Thankfully when we visited them, it was night time and a little cooler, though. :) They were pretty cool and we set up with them again to meet! So we were able to get 4 new investigators this week! :D 

Friday was about standard. Weekly planning, singing to ama's, and lessons falling through. :) It's ok about the lessons falling through though, it happens. :) 

Saturday was good. We met with our investigator, Brother Wu. He's a good guy, and we were able to make some progress with him this week! I think it was the most progress we were able to make with him! We talked about not procrastinating repentance. At first he said he wasn't but then he admitted he was. :) It was actually a pretty spiritual lesson, and at the end, we gave him a Priesthood blessing to quit smoking and to have the strength to do so. It was pretty cool. :) 

Then on Sunday, I gave a talk. :) We didn't have the investigators there I wanted to be there becasue I wanted them to hear it, but we did have a couple LA members show up to church, so that was really cool! I talked about righteous living and the commandments and how sometimes commandments aren't convenient to obey, but that they protect us. I also read through most of the questions Alma asks in Alma 5, because those are good at calling people to repentance. :) 

Anyway, it went well, and I think that's about all that happened this week. :) We are thinking of going to the aquarium today. That should be pretty fun. :) I'll send pictures from last week in a few minutes. :) I love you guys so much and I hope you all had a great week!! I pray for you all through out the day!   I love and miss you and I'm excited to Skype soon! :D Woohoo! :)

-- 

Elder Fleming

Emails 4/18/16

RSL hasn't lost yet?? :o That's awesome!! :D 

Ok, first, I'm going to send my email of what happened this week again. :)

I think I'm just going to write out of my journal. No super crazy stories like last week, but it was still a pretty good week. :) 

The time's been going by fast here lately, which is good I guess. I'm also  bummed, because my time left is getting less and less. I have been enjoying my mission SO much, especially lately. I have been enjoying my mission the entire time, but I've been enjoying it even more, which is awesome! I used to keep track of how much time I had been out on the mission and how much time I had left when I first got out, but I don't even like to think about that anymore. The thought of ending my mission one day makes me really sad. I just want to be out here forever! 

This week was pretty alright. Monday was Pday, where we pretty much just rested, ate lunch and emailed (not in that order) :) We met with our investigator, Bob, which went alright. Also, this week, we've been trying to take 1.5 of our 3 hours we have at night and dedicate them just to finding and contacting people on the street, which means less lessons, but it's been working out really well! We also have been setting a lot of contacting goals to try to get a certain amount of people's phone numbers each 30 minutes or a certain number of people to set up to meet with us. It's helped out a lot, and we were able to meet some pretty cool people. 

Tuesday was alright. We only had one lesson set up at night, so we did a lot of contacting. It was kind of rough, but we survived the heat in the afternoon. :) At night, we visited an investigator, Sister Lin, who has been acting not so interested in the Gospel lately, because she keeps saying how busy she is, so we hadn't visited her in a while. She seemed happy to see us, but still busy. ...or "busy" we aren't sure yet. We will drop her and stop meeting with her if she keeps saying she's busy next week. As we were leaving, one of the members that had gone with us was driving away and said "Elder, you don't have a headlight!" Elder Grisenti didn't have a headlight. We laughed and kept riding our bikes, and just down the road, we saw her coming out of a store with a couple lights for his bike! :) She then installed them to his bike, while he stood there and watched, feeling awkward. :) Haha! :) Also, she got back from her mission just a little bit ago from Taibei, so she's super awesome about that stuff. :) 

Wednesday went ok. We found out that one of the missionaries in the mission had passed away while riding his bike. I guess he got hit by a car. It was an accident, and he died soon after. He was in training and had been on island for only 2 months. I didn't know him, but it hit close to home. I feel so bad for him, for his trainer and for his family. I have been trying to be extra mindful of him in my prayers. I'm super sad he died and the fact that he was in our mission makes it much more shocking and even a little scary. I think that dying on a mission might be one of the best times to go however, because we are so close to our Heavenly Father and are trying so hard to serve our brethren. At the same time I think it's also one of the hardest and one of the most unfair deaths to deal with and be involved in. 

On Wednesday we were also able to meet with one of our investigators again, named Dean. He's a bro! He cooks these octopus balls and is learning Kendo. He's super cool! We taught him the 2nd lesson (plan of salvation) and he really liked it! He said it seemed really fair and that it made a lot of sense. We invited him to get baptized and accidentally set it a week earlier; only 3 weeks, but he still accepted! Woohoo! Unfortunately, he goes to Ping Dong on the weekands, out of our area, so he will probably have to be baptized there. :/ Oh well, team Jesus. :) We will still be able to teach him and meet with him and stuff though, since most of his time is spent here. :) 

Thursday was good. Nothing really special to say about it other than it was super humid and hot!! :o Summer's beginning here. 

Friday was good. Weekly planning and then we sang to the ama's, only they were busy, so we sang to the agong's (grandpa's) and they were ok. Not as fun, though, they didn't clap along, but it was still pretty fun. :) We ate dinner at the Huang family's (a member family in the branch) restaraunt. It's really famous and SUPER good! :D It's a seafood place, too! :) Who knew I would like a seafood place?? ;) Then later that night, we saw a random other member who bought us drinks and chatted with us for a while. That was fun, but at the same time, I was struggling, because I wanted to be on the road talking to other people to get some more people to teach and bring to Christ. It was good, though. :) 

Saturday, we met with another investigator, Brother Wu. He's alright. He loves going to church and goes every week! We need to give him (and he needs to accept) a baptismal goal! :) 

Sunday was good. we went to church, then in the 2nd hour they didn't have a teacher and everyone was just kind of sitting there, so I decided to teach the 2nd hour of church with them. Hopefully they were ok with that. :) I wanted to have church and remember the Savior, so I taught the lesson. :) I didn't prepare anything for it, which was interesting... but it ended up going pretty well I think. :) 

Also, Sunday night was pretty nuts. I guess there were people filming a tv show from mainland china, and my companion and I were riding our bikes to do English proselyting when we turned down a street and a bunch of people were there. Two people came out in front of us, one holding a camera and one holding a big light to film us. As we drove by, we heard them say "It wasn't [the actors], it was missionaries!" My companion and I got a good laugh that they thought we were actors riding around on bikes.

Sorry for the weird font, I didn't want to type it again. :) I had sent this in my email to President. :)

Anyway, that was my week. :) Love you guys. :) 

-- 

Elder Fleming

An LA (less active member) outside who works at 7-11 who was wearing a goofy hat  and stuff for an activity. Haha :) also my companion during English meeting and with his sleeve cut off. :) Haha he was cutting it because it would be cooler that way and it's rain gear, that's what I did last year because you get wet anyway, from the sweat or rain. :) 

I don't really know how well you'll be able to see it, but this is a picture of the people filming that tv show yesterday. :) Haha it was pretty cool! 

Emails 4/11/16

Ok, this week I'm going to try to do things a little different. I wanted to start with my weekly email, because a ton of super crazy things happened this week! :o It was super fun but super crazy! :) 

On Monday I got my new companion, Elder Grisenti. He's super great, and I've been loving serving with him this week! He's from Saint George, Utah and it's been really fun! Monday and Tuesday were pretty normal, we went out to Manzhou, had an investigator that ditched out on his lesson and met with one of the families in the branch. 

Wednesday is when it started getting pretty intense (but in a good way) :) We went to ztm, which is about 2.5 hours away by bus. It is always fun going to ztm here, even though it's such a long bus ride. It was a good meeting, but since it was on Wednesday, we had to go back as soon as possible. We were on the bus and barely got back in time! We got back at 6:55! (class starts at 7). We were super stressed! We also had to get off at the church to get to English class on time, so our bikes were still a 10 minute walk away to get them before going home for the night. English went ok. Then afterwards, we put stuff away, while one of the members (he's a little slow, but very nice and also kind of deaf), came up to us and talked to us about a girl he liked who was married and he was wondering about whether or not he could pray for her to get divorced. He kept talking about it as we were trying to leave. :) It was funny, but we had to get our bikes. We finally got out of there, and we saw one of my English students, he is about 12 I think and his mom forgot to pick him up after English class. It reminded me of when dad forgot to pick me up after soccer practice that one time. :) I felt super bad for him, so I said we could walk him home, but then he said he lived way far away, too far for us to walk, so I had him use my phone to call his mom to get him instead. :) As we waited with him, our member came up to us again asking about divorce, as this random lady self-contacted us and talked with us. We were trying to handle these three things at once, which was super crazy and a weird situation! :) Then, the kid's mom got there, the active member went home and we got the random lady's phone number. We didn't get home until 9:40 or so. Oops. :) 

Then on Thursday, we had a member ask us if we could help them do service around their house. I gratefully accepted. I love doing service! :D We got there and the husband was giving this tour or something of their property. It almost seemed like they were doing some sort of news article on him, or at least that's what it seemed like. :) So his wife told us what to do. First, she said that the chicken feed went bad (oh yeah, they have chickens) :) so we took the chicken feed and mixed it in with the dirt in their garden (thanks Mom and Dad for teaching me how to garden, do yard work and stuff!! :D), so we did that, then we cleaned the chicken coup. After that, she told us to rest while she finished making lunch for us. Then, her husband finished with his interview/tour thingy and we asked him if we could do anything else. He went back to look at the chickens, came back and said to us "Did you guys realize that the chickens don't have any food?" I don't think he realized that his wife had told us to bury the food before we took care of the chickens. We told him this, and he went inside and talked to his wife, leaving us outside. He said something along the lines of "the chickens are going to die because they don't have any food!" :o 

He came back out a minute later, went into a shed, came back out and walked past us, holding a bottle. He said one word to us: "jiu" which means "alcohol." and walked past us. I was super confused as he went out around back and gave it to the chickens. :o I thought he was going to give them alcohol and then kill them or something! Then, he came back out and asked if we had buried the feed well. This is where I'm grateful for your teaching me how to garden and stuff. He mixed up the dirt to make sure we had done it right, and then his countanence softened. He said "where did you learn how to do this?" I told him you had taught me. Then he said "wow, none of the other missionaries have known how to do this. Good job." Woohoo! :) From there, things went better, and we continued to help them around the house. Then we ate lunch with them. That was pretty funny. :)  The guy is a more reserved person, but he apparently LOVES his chickens. He talked about how if they gave them alcohol it would help the chickens not get sick and die. Then he said that they get drunk and proceeded to imitate a drunk chicken while we ate lunch, while he had this big grin on his face. :) Then he turned to us and asked, "so, did you talk to them?" then said "I do" :) It was super funny. He said that he talks to them and they will sneeze sometimes. :) It was super funny because when he was talking about his chickens, the whole time he just had this big grin on his face! :) 

Then when we were leaving there was this dog that barks at us when we go there that snapped its chain! :o Elder Grisenti was riding behind me and freaked out! :o That was our Thursday. :) 

Then on Friday, we had to download General conference so we could watch it and when we called our branch president for the times of it, he didn't know and said to ask the 1st counselor, then added, "oh, can you also download conference for us, too?" it was super weird, but I thought it was super funny! :) So we downloaded general conference for the branch and for us as well, then on Sunday had to set it up for them, too. :) They spent about 20 minutes trying to make it work on a projector before they gave up and resorted to our plan: the tv. That took about 10 seconds to set up. :) So church got started almost 30 minutes late yesterday. :) 

Anyway, I think this last general conference was the most powerful and my favorite one ever! I was feeling the Spirit the entire time! I loved the talks and the feeling of love and the Spirit. I had a lot of personal revelations, as well as questions answered. It was amazing! There was just a bunch of stuff that blew my mind! :D

That's about it, I think. :) I'll be praying for you. Love you guys. :) 

--

Elder Fleming

Emails 4/4/16

Hello everyone! :) Love you guys and I'm super glad to hear that you're all doing well! :D 

First of all, happy birthday Nicole!!!! You're super old now. ;) 

Let's see, this week seemed more of the same. 

Monday we cleaned, then we got burgers at a good burger place around here. On Tuesday... I can't really remember what happened on Tuesday and I don't have last transfer's planner on me, so I can't look it up. :/ It was probably pretty good. :) Lately, there have been a ton of people here for spring break. It's pretty nuts. :o It's as busy as it was during the second half of Chinese New Year. :o 

Wednesday, we had English and four times a year we have an "English party" where we play a game or something at the end of English. We got $2,000NT ($60US) to spend on it. So we bought a ton of candy and played Uno. :) the students ended up not eating a whole lot of candy, so we just got to hold on to it. :) Woohoo! :D 

Thursday was good. We met with Bob. He seems to be doing better and hopefully he will be able to get baptized soon. He seems to be pretty solid. 

Friday we went to Manzhou to visit our LA, Zhang Jie Mei. She's pretty awesome. :) 

Saturday was pretty good, too. 

Then Sunday came and it went well. We had a member who really likes farming talk for about an hour about it, and about how tomatoes are really good to grow here in Taiwan. :) "I was bored" (That's my Nicole quote) ;) It was really funny, and I was amazed that he could talk for so long about growing things! :o 

Elder Hanna moved. He's in TaiNan in a place called Yong Kang. It's a good place; right next to where I was before I came here. :) My new companion is Elder Grisenti. I am pretty sure that's how it's spelled. He seems pretty cool and excited to be here! :) He's from Saint George. If you have other questions about him let me know, because I'll know him better then. :) Also, the week was pretty good. :) I'll miss Elder Hanna; it was fun, but it's going to be pretty fun with Elder Grisenti. :) 

Anyway, that was my week. :) We woke up at 4:30am to get to the bus to get to the train station that is about 2 hours away on time. I'll probably get tired tomorrow. :o Also, interviews and ztm are coming up! :D ztm is on Wednesday, so that will be pretty awesome. :) 

I hope Saint George is fun! :D You can say hi to Elder Grisenti's family for me! ;) 

That's awesome that Grandpa is coming out for Nicole's graduation! That will be really fun! 

Also that's super awesome that RSL won!! I'm really "Glad" that Justin was there. ;) (haha, get it?) ;) 

I'm also super excited to see general conference this week!!! :D 

Well, I love you all so much! I miss you and you're always in my prayers. :) Love you! 

--

Elder Fleming