Taiwan Week 40: Power Week

Dear friends and family,

I have never been so happy for preparation day. It has been such a crazy week. We had what we call POWER WEEK! There is a certain mission everyday and we have to do all we can to accomplish the mission. I touched on it a little bit last week.

Wednesday was a really amazing relaxing day because I got to go to the temple! It was a great 3 hour ride to Taibei. Our zone and the Zhanghua zone. One Elder that is about to go home is really good at doing voice impressions and we had fun listening to that for a while. The temple was absolutely amazing, as usual! I love just being able to learn and feel the Spirit that's inside the temple. I got to do a few things in Chinese. That was pretty sweet. I think next time I'm going full Chinese. While we were taking pictures around the temple grounds, I got to see an Elder that I was with in the MTC. He's serving in that area. It was really sweet. And then the ride home was pretty exhausting. We had already been awake for 12 hours and still had 7 more to go.

We had English class right after that preparation day ended. For some reason, it was pretty crazy. I'm the doorman, so I'm out in the hall calling old English students and welcoming new students with my recent convert, Zhu Zhang Qi. Then an awesome guy in our ward said he needed help giving a lady a blessing, so I ran and did that. Then once I came back, a ton of new people showed up and I had to get them all registered. Then as it was coming to a close, I was taking inventory and we turned out to be 2 books short. So that became a problem. It was just a little more hectic than I thought.

Thursday was to get 4 new investigators with goals. So we were running around and had a hard time finding people, but we were able to find a really sweet family at a 7 that was really nice. Then we got extremely lost as we had to go into one of the other Elders' secondary areas to meet with our new ward mission leader at his family's shop. We got so turned around and ended up getting lost in the middle of some rice fields. So I saw this really thin stretch of dirt that goes between the fields. So I turned to Elder Lathen and said "don't fall in!" It was an epic off roading experience. Our new mission leader is really sweet. He was an assistant in the Taibei mission. His English name is Angus. So Chinese speakers call him Niurou. Which is Chinese for beef/steak. So Elder Bardsley translated it back into english that way and now we all call him Angus beef. He's really good and getting involved in missionary work.

Friday was getting 20 people confirmed for church. That was a toughy. But we had a hard day of adding new people and calling as many people as possible. We hit it right as we were heading back to the apartment that night.

Saturday was an annoying but amazing day in the end! We set up with a less active that morning that took a long time to get to the church. In the end, we never met with him, but the other Elders met with him at the train station. We had to prepare the water for the Sisters' baptism that night and I broke the master key to the church! None of the other companionships have a key that can do what my key can do, and I snapped it in the door to the baptismal font. It was so sad. But then we met with a really amazing investigator that is so golden! He's already read the entire Book of Mormon and was really close to getting baptized long ago. It was just a Word of Wisdom problem that stopped him. We met him on the street and he was beyond willing to meet. He now has a goal for March 16th.   We then had a double baptism. One of our Recent Converts that dropped off last month baptized his wife, and a 25 year old girl. They both have really strong testimonies.

Sunday at church was really amazing. A contacted referral came to church and absolutely loved it. He said when the Elders contacted him on the street, he felt so amazing. And it was then backed up at church during Sacrament meeting. I'm so glad we got to contact him. He's golden!

Well that was my week. It was a really intense week. We're all so exhausted. I had so much fun! I love you all! I hope you have a great week! Keep up the smiling faces! I know that the Lord loves each and every one of us.

 

Love, Elder Anthony Buckwalter