Dear family and friends,
Well to start off, I have a cockroach crawling on my leg right now.
I think he likes me. This past week has been pretty interesting. They
announced to missions all around the world that every month we are now
going to have combined zone training meetings. So last week was our
first one. It was really cool. We talked about contacting and
appropriate ways to go about doing it. If you're really stiff or fake,
it's not going to be that great. Just like in real life, we gotta be
friends with everyone we talk to.
After the training meeting, we did a district leader exchange.
District leader Elder Croft came up here to Nantou with Elder Allen, and
I went down to Mingjian with Elder Bee. It's so beautiful down there.
As far as I know, it's the biggest area in the mission, and it's a lot
of mountainside and countryside. We took a train to Shuili to find a
lady and her family. They were so close to being baptized a while back,
but the dad didn't want any of them to. We were going to go visit them
and talk with him a bit more. But when we got there, they had moved. No
luck. But wait! The neighbor came out and handed us some of the lady's
mail that was sent there by mistake. It had the address where they moved
to. So we go on the epic chase around the town and up the mountain;
random extremely nice families helping us find the street as we go
along. But no luck. They had moved again. I guess they move a lot. One
of the people helping us noticed a smaller written address that looked
investigatable. So we go searching for that one. But no one knew where
the street was. We asked this family and they were all for helping us.
They even called up the city mayor and he came over. He didn't know, so
he called up the next guy in line and he said he'd help us. But we had
to head back, so they gave us their numbers for another day. Talk about
diligence and amazing people!
This past week we were very unlucky with set up first appointments.
We'd get there and most of the time the people weren't there. It
happened quite a lot. And President Bishop's weekly invite was to have a
member at as many lessons a possible. We had set up most of our lessons
with our progressing investigators with a member, and most of our
investigators had to cancel at the last minute. So we had to call our
peike's up and tell them never mind. It was rough. But one thing I
really liked that came from a cancelled lesson was the fact that a less
active set up at the last minute. He's been through so much. And even
just in the time I've been here, he's struggling a lot. But he's made so
many improvements. It was a really good meeting with him. He was
excited to come to church and everything! He had to cancel on Saturday
because of family matters, but he still really wanted to.
One thing I realized is how useful it is to get a peike who's age
matches the age of the investigator. They get along really well. We have
an older investigator and we were able to get a high priest leader to
come, and he was able to relate to our investigator so much. I was so
glad! I really love the help of the members.
So now for some pretty big news. The Taizhong stake is doing an
activity in which the youth has a chance to be missionaries. A member
missionary is called a duanchuan (short term missionary). Our
companionship was chosen to have one! So on Saturday we picked up a 15
year old and he'll be staying with us for 2 weeks! It's pretty
interesting. I'm still being trained and we're also now training him.
It's a little hard since he only speaks a little English. But it can get
pretty fun. Our apartment is way packed though. It was crammed with 4
people. Now we have 5. It's crazy. BUT, we let the mission office know
about our little sleeping space dilemma and they sent over a ton of
pieces of metal and screws and said build a bunk bed. You have no idea
how hard it was to do it from scratch. But we did it! It's pretty
intense, and probably against safety standards. But it saves a ton of
room and we can fit another mattress on the floor for our duanchuan.
He's Elder Yang. It'll be a fun few weeks!
We were surprised at church yesterday to see President Bishop
sitting on the stand with our Area 70. None of us knew either of them
were coming. But it was very cool. They were able to meet one of our
investigators and his son, who came for the first time yesterday. And
they liked it!
Well that's pretty much all the news for now. We have Zone
Conference tomorrow. So much to report on that next time. I love you
all! I miss you all. Please continue to write. I love letters! Well, I'm
off to an all you can eat hot pot. Until next week!
Love, Elder Anthony Buckwalter
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