A Beautiful Baptism

Dear family and friends,

What an interesting week. Monday night we were called by Elder Christensen in our district saying he's going to Taibei the next day. The office called him and said all the people that are extending and going home on a mini transfer will be going to Taibei with their original group to experience the temple and shop at the visitors center. So we had to get ourselves to the mission office early in the morning to pick up Elder Brown and be in a tripanionship for the day. We got back and had to rearrange our schedules to fit all our investigators. In the end we biked to Fengjia and back 4 times. That is quite a trek up and down that mountainside. Then we went back to the mission office and ended up having to wait and hour and a half for them to get back. They had to make a last minute trip down south. What a weird day.

Wednesday was a long day of lessons dropping because everyone is leaving town for the Chinese New Year. Everyone goes back to their parents' houses. So a lot of our investigators have left for two weeks. It will be a little rough. But that night me and Elder Buhler started teaching the advanced class at English. They're really cool. And two of them are our investigators. We also got to sit with Zhuang Yu Lun after class and work out what songs he wanted to sing at his baptism!

Thursday after weekly planning, we went to Li mama's house to fix a hole above her stove that's letting smoke fly around the house whenever she turns the fan on. So we had to fix that up a bit. And then we got two large pizzas from this little shop. It was pretty good pizza. While we were eating at a family mart, a guy came up to us and said some Sisters went to find him last year. He wouldn't tell us how he met the missionaries and why they were trying to find him. But he said if we ask around, people will know who he is. Then he left. I didn't know what to think. But he was really cool.

Friday we had a great ward correlation meeting. The bishop is really trying to make plans for the ward. The rest of the day was pretty intense finding. A lot of our investigators are gone for the holidays!

Saturday we had a good lesson with Wang dixiong, an LA we're working with. He's doing pretty great. And he likes Elder Buhler. Then we biked like crazy up to Longjing. We looked for some less actives up there and found one that was too busy to meet, but we can go back later. Elder Buhler had an investigator family last time he served here, so we went to their house. They still weren't too willing to meet again. I was a little sad about that. But he knows a lot about the area, so we'll be able to do some great finding now. We made a lot of phone calls at the end of the night and prepared for the baptism the following day.

Sunday Alex Cai came to church! And then Zhuang came all prepared to get baptized! It was a great block of meetings and we had the baptism pretty much right after church. We got pictures taken and then pretty much just started. Elder Yang was also able to come! He was the missionary that first started to meet with Zhuang and I replaced him. Also Elder Vandiford came since they're both serving in the office right now. And Elder Vandiford also served here. So it was a like a great reunion for everyone! Zhuang dixiong was so happy to get baptized! He'll get confirmed next week at church.    We then went and found a guy named Steven. He's actually American and moved here for an adventure. He married here and settled down. He's also less active, but really nice and is fine with missionaries coming over and talking with him. He's probably the most chill less active person I've ever met. He's willing to talk about the church and everything. It was a really amazing lesson.

And that was my week. I'm so happy to see Zhuang dixiong get baptized! I can see how much he loves the church. He kept leaning over to me during Sacrament meeting and saying how much he likes it at church. Such a great miracle. 

I love and miss you all! I hope your week is full of adventure. It's the start of the Chinese New Year this week. So I'll be eating a lot! Until next week!

 

Love, Elder Anthony Kai Buckwalter