Taiwan Week 2

Dear family and friends,

Another week of my mission is gone! Where does the time go?... I don't really have a grasp of time right now. It's fast and slow. Looking back, it feels like stuff from last week was just yesterday. It's so weird.

So there's a learning program we have here with 3 phases. It's very detailed and so helpful in learning the language and how to teach in the language. I'm in phase 1 (obviously), and I'm passing off the first section to my district leader tomorrow. I'm so nervous but excited! I had a flashback to the movie "The Best Two Years" when Kirby Heyborn says he's in trouble because this isn't the language he learned in the MTC. I'm kind of having that experience right now. When people talk, it's just this slur of who knows what. It's like... real chinese. And Elder Allen understands it and keeps going! That will take some time to get used to. We're working on an language goal for me right now to help me progress faster. He's really good at helping me learn.

My district is so solid! We had a training meeting last Tuesday and it's so much fun meeting with all of them. They're all so focused on improving to help their investigators come unto Christ. My district leader is Elder Crofts. He's so nice and welcoming. I love all the missionaries here!

Elder Allen and I have some really promising investigators. We have a family that is so solid with every commitment. They've just had some scheduling conflicts with coming to church. But they said they can this week. And they love studying the scriptures as a family. We even gave them a childrens Book of Mormon to help keep the kids interested. They're pretty young. They attended another baptism we had in our ward this last Saturday and they said they absolutely love the atmosphere of the Church and they're excited to come this Sunday. 

We also have a few pretty new investigators who are pretty shy and don't have much to say. But they keep calling US back to schedule another meeting and they said they'll be able to come to church this Sunday as well. I love when people are so curious about the church that they're just dying to learn more. These few were just people we ran into on the street and they really love learning more about the gospel. We've been really lucky to run into so many people that are that willing to learn and come to church as well. I'm not entirely sure if I said this in the last email, but we call church "game day" because it's so crazy getting everyone there and getting them situated and comfortable. But most of the time, if they have a good first experience at church, they're hooked on wanting to be baptized. Church is so essential in conversion. I love it.

As far as I've heard, President Bishop has made a lot of changes to the mission to help all members have enduring conversion. A lot of converts have stopped coming and it's one of our focuses to help them stay active. As well as look for less actives and help them want to come back. I absolutely love doing it. I love working with the recent converts and helping them want to learn more. 

We had a pretty awesome experience yesterday at church. One of the original missionaries of Taiwan, Elder Kitchen, came with his wife to speak to us. Him and 3 others got here in 1956 (I think) and had pretty much no knowledge of the language or any gospel material in mandarin. I can't imagine how hard that would be. That helped me so much to realize what hard work and trust in the Lord can do. They're back here in Taiwan on a temple mission. It was so cool. They also taught the sunday school lesson and showed us pictures of his mission. So much has changed.

I love you all! I miss you dearly. But there's work to be done. And I'm loving the blessings of doing it! I love the people of Taiwan. I can't wait to give you some more updates on what will happen in this coming week. Please continue to write! I love hearing back from everyone. The Lord loves all of us. And he wants to help us, as long as we have the desire to learn from Him. Pretty much the scripture that kept coming up in a lot of our lessons was Ether 12:27. My invitation this week is to read that and wonder how the Lord could help you this week. He'll help you as much as you have faith in Him.

Love, Elder Anthony Buckwalter