Dear family and friends,
Nothing like another great week! It all started out with a trip to a Xie dixiongs house. I don't know if I've ever talked about him, but him and his cousin own a bear store. It's just a ton of stuffed animal bears, bear posters, bear wedding planners, etc. It's nuts. And they're very devout Buddhist. They're both slowly investigating the church. When we got there, Xu dixiong, the cousin, was there. He was doing paintbrush calligraphy. He's really good at it. After showing us some Buddhist prayers, Elder Teerlink had a brilliant idea to have him write down Joseph Smith's 1st vision in calligraphy for us. So he DID! It was so cool. He also sang it out loud like a Buddhist prayer while writing it, which was also cool, but also creepy.
Tuesday we had an epic adventure taking out bikes on a train to Gaoxiong for ZTM. None of us had ever been there before. Oh yeah! I totally forgot to mention last week. The zones for the entire mission have been changed to whatever our stake is. So now we're no longer the Pingdong zone. We're the Gaoxiong east zone. So we have to travel to Gaoxiong to ZTM. It's different than the normal place we meet for like zone conferences and stuff. So none of us knew how to get there except Sister Liu since she served there last. It was a really good conference talking about all the changes. How we count numbers is completely different now. And we also had a member of the Stake High Council come to talk about working with RCLA's. It was really good. That night we got to meet with Pan dixiong. We haven't met with him in a few weeks since he's been in Taibei. We finished Word of Wisdom and taught Tithing. His desire has grown so much! We used a baptismal planner to set a for sure date with him. He's super willing to work towards it. It was an amazing lesson!
Wednesday morning we went to pull weeds in a member's garden. It was just tons of tall weeds. So I pulled a "dad" and released all my energy and kicked out a ton. Then rested. Then blew up again and kicked out another bunch. Then rested. Then used all the rest of my empty tank and destroyed the rest, and then fell over and nearly passed out from lightheadedness. Everyone was in shock at my blasts of energy. It's just how I was raised. For lunch we were taken to a really nice steak restaurant by a couple in our ward. All of us missionaries were taken. Way expensive. They're preparing to serve a mission and needed our help translating all their info for their papers. That night at English class, my class was a little dull. I tried some games to get them talking, but they didn't want to. So it was awkward. But they still all had fun.Thursday had a lot of rain, kind of like the beginning of the week. We got to meet with an LA that cuts hair. He was really cool and opened up to us a lot. We got him the new translation of the Book of Mormon since he only had the old one and lost it too. He's a pretty sweet guy.
Friday was so stressful but then became fun. We had to meet with Lin dixiong to go over the baptismal interview questions with him before his interview on Saturday. We also had zone leader exchanges an hour later. So it was way rushed. But it all worked out. Elder McKenzie came here with me. He's one transfer below me and we knew each other in the MTC. He's super cool. As we finished dinner and were about to bike 45 minutes to our RC's house, it starts POURING! Super massive downpour that I haven't seen in almost a year. Good ol' typhoon season. The roads started flooding and we didn't wear any rain gear. We were soaked from head to toe. We started biking through over 6 inch deep water covering the road. Once we got there, our RC wasn't there. But his parents were. They're a cute old couple. Our RC is 45. They were really friendly and talked to us about the church. As we were heading back home, we were self contacted by an LA who is in the military and hasn't been to church pretty much since he was baptized 5 years ago. But he saw us and wanted to talk to us. It was really cool.
Saturday we found out that Rocky moved back to Miami... I was depressed. He was only here for the summer though. We talked to his uncle and he's going to get Rocky's info for us to keep in contact. Then we ate at Cafe Grazie. Super good Italian restaurant that every missionary wants to go to when they come here. And we got a free pizza! Lin dixiong's baptism interview was supposed to be after lunch, but he called and canceled at the last minute! He has this training thing in Gaoxiong. So we were broken up. But it got rescheduled for Sundaymorning before church. That night we met with the Pan Pan Guo trio of friends and had our ward mission leader peike. Him and his wife did a really good job explaining the need to be baptized by the proper authority.
Sunday morning before church Lin dixiong was interviewed! He's set for this Saturday! So excited. He had to leave early after Sacrament meeting because of family things though. The Ke family came again and brought their friends that live in Pingdong. It was a pretty good day at church. We were going through a ton of records for the rest of the day. We noticed that there isn't as many former investigator records that there should be in our apartment. Then we realized that our coffee table in our living room had some doors on it. The handles were gone, so we never saw it. When we opened it up, there was 11 binders FULL of records. So we had a lot of work to do.
And that was my week! Our 4 man is having a ton of fun. There's just little things that we all just die laughing over. I'm way excited for this week! I'll keep you in my prayers! Don't forget to write! Remember S.H.O.P. (sweet hour of prayer) don't forget to pray. I love you all!
Love, Elder Anthony Kai Buckwalter
Awesome!!! Love the rain!
ReplyDelete