Another good week

Well we had another pretty good week here in the Promised Land! On Tuesday we were able to go on exchanges with our district leader! I was lucky enough to go to 員林 to be with Elder Lee while our district leader came to our area. Exchanges are just the best. There are always so many miracles and it's awesome! While in our area, Elder Osborne and Elder Ulrich were able to give one of our investigators a baptismal goal! So it looks like that once I am out of the picture, people start to progress haha. but I am so glad he accepted! He didn't come to church this week and his goal is the 25th of June so that means he has to come to church the next three weeks in a row to be baptized on that date. So please pray that he will do so! While in 員林 we saw a cool miracle too! We stopped at a little store to do some calls and buy some ice cream and once we finished and started walking out, the lady working there came up to us and asked where our church was. We talked to her for a bit and she was interested! We got her number and then her friend came over and talked to us and we got her number too! Hopefully they can all get baptized. That would be sweet.

Other than that, no other exciting things really happened. Well I guess we met with the 洪 family on Saturday. Well this time it was only the dad, but as we were talking to him, the member that came with us asked him what he thinks about us. He said he believes that everything that we say is true and that he knows that it was God's will for us to tract into their house that day. The member almost fell off the couch because he was so excited haha. It was super cool to hear that though. We are planning on meeting with them tonight so hopefully this time he will accept a baptismal goal!! Pray for them to accept this message!

I really don't have much else to say. We just did a lot of contacting and a lot of tracting and a lot of calls this week but not much got set up. It was really weird. but we are continuing to work our hardest and are using our faith.

I love you all so much! 

Love

Elder Anderson

No Temple but we worked hard!

Well, like I said we got kicked out of the temple trip. But no matter, me and Elder Osborne had a really fun preparation day instead! We went to Zhanghua city and went up to this place called 八卦山. It was super fun and cool! We just walked around, looked at Buddhist stuff, and took pictures.

But other than that, this week we were able to find and teach some really cool people! We found another family! A few weeks ago Elder Osborne contacted this guy and this guy decided to give us his wife's number and we were ok with that. We met with her and her two sons and it went really well. She really has desire to learn about how to help her family and her youngest son (11 years old) seemed very interested and was just soaking it all up. So hopefully we can teach a good Restoration lesson with them this week! 

We also met with one of the other families too. They are the 洪家庭. Basically, the Red family. They are super cool! We have been teaching them for a few weeks but with little success because they have a really hard time focusing on the lesson. They LOVE us and just want to talk so much. It's super hard to keep them focused. But this week we were determined to keep them focused. It was a struggle but we did it! Sadly we were only able to meet with the dad, but it still went really well. We taught a really good Restoration lesson and the member we brought with us shared some very good experiences. At the end, we read the introduction to the Book of Mormon, we bore our testimonies and invited him to be baptized. He reread the intro like 5 times and thought about it for a long time. He said he would. But he wouldn't set a date. He said once he gets and answer, he will get baptized because he knows that this church can really help his family. Even though he didn't accept a goal, it was really awesome to see that he has a real, true desire to know if this is all true. I know that if he keeps this desire, he will find his answer. I also know we all can do the same. Like it says, if we study, ponder and pray about the Book of Mormon, the Holy Ghost will testify to us of its truthfulness. I would invite you all to do that every day. I know if you do, that you will find your answer and your testimony with be strengthened every day.

Recently, things have been pretty frustrating because lots, in fact, all of our investigators have not been coming to church and keeping some commitments. This has really made me question why and made me a little upset. But as I have pondered and prayed and studied about this, I found the answer that it is all in God's hands. I have talked about that a lot before. But it is really true. No matter what is going on in our life, it is part of God's plan. Sometimes we don't like it. Sometimes we love it. Sometimes it just brings us down to our knees to beg for help. Whatever it may be, God knows what He is doing. Just keep the commandments, love everyone, and strengthen your testimony and everything will be alright. 

I hope you all know that I really love being a missionary. it's so hard but it's the best ever. I love you all so much

Love

Elder Anderson

Budda

A lizard we caught in our apartment

Good luck!

Selfie fun

Selfie Stick

Zhangua

Zhangua Temple

Temple Week - Not much time

Hello everyone! I don't have much time to email today because we are going to the temple on Wednesday so I will email then! But in the mean time, enjoy these pictures of a huge spider we saw :)

​DEMON

Mother's Day

This week was quite the week for us here in Xihu. Let me start off with a big ol' IT'S SO DANG HOT HERE. Literally, it's so hot. All you do is sweat all day and it never stops. We ride our bikes all day and are out in the sun and it's just so hot. But it's so great haha I love it!

Anyways, this week was really special. On Monday, we got to out to eat with some returned missionaries from this mission. It was really nice to talk to them because we talked about the status of our mission and of the work. One thing we also talked about was setting goals. Me and Elder Osborne talked about that a lot and we set some pretty high goals for this past week and this upcoming week. Let me tell you, goals push you super hard and I don't think we have ever worked as hard as we did this last week. Elder Osborne is towards the end of his mission and he even told me that he has never worked that hard before. We literally talked with everyone we could and we saw so many miracles. I have never seen so much success from finding before. So many miracles. It was just awesome

But, this week was also very frustrating. In chinese there is a phrase that says 放我們的鴿子. In english it literally means 'placed our pigeons'. Basically it means you got stood up. This week we had so many lessons set up. We still taught a lot of people, BUT we had 11 people place our pigeons. Oh. my. heck. I have never been so frustrated in my life. 11! That was super annoying but hopefully these people will meet with us and not stand us up. That would be awesome. 

Other than that, Happy Mother's Day to all of you Moms out there! Mother's Day is a great day and no one deserves a holiday more than our mothers. So I hope you all got tons of chocolate and flowers and more chocolate. And I'm sure that the primary sang some super cute songs in Sacrament meeting. Our primary did, but it consists of like 5 kids and 3 of the kids are from the same family. It was still super cute though.

Well, I am kind of low on time again but I hope that you all had a great week! Here is a good scripture that I came across this week in my personal study. It comes from Mark 4:14 "The sower soweth the word." This scripture is so simple but it had a really good impact on me because I am sowing the word. I hope you all can find time this week to sow the word in some way. I know as you do this, you will find happiness!

I love you all!

Love

Elder Anderson

It's so hot. This was from one week in the sun.

Ice cream sandwiches in Taiwan consist of crackers and raisins in your ice cream....

Good week

Well this was a week that was full of a lot of great things and some interesting things. All of our lessons this week were either super good, or super bad haha. They were bad because the members that we invited with us went a little renegade... or they didn't know anything at all...

We met with our RC Hubert this week and the ward wants his home teacher to reteach him all of the lessons. So we met with him a little early to help him get ready to teach. Wow. During the lesson we talked about how we can get to live with God again. Keep the commandments. Great. what commandments? the 10 commandments. I said, 'ok cool. what else? What about the Word of Wisdom?' haha then the member said, "That's not a commandment is it?" Me and Elder Osborne just looked at each other and even our RC was kind of chuckling... late we asked them which of the three kingdoms that they want to go to. The member said, "I don't know, they all seem pretty good.." *face palm* Yikes. We might have to reteach the member the lessons haha. But he was trying his best and he is a great guy. It was pretty funny though.

The other incident was we met with these 3 girls that are all really good friends and we invited two other members to teach with us. We hardly got to say anything because the members just talked the whole time. They literally taught a point from every single lesson. The Restoration, the war in heaven, repentance, fasting and fast offerings, and temple work. It was every where. Super funny though.

But we had some other lessons that were really powerful. We met with a new investigator named Simon and we taught him the first lesson and watched the 20 minute Restoration movie. The Spirit was super strong and we just bore testimonies about the Restoration. We invited him to be baptized but he didn't accept. He said that if he gets and answer from reading and praying then he will definitely get baptized. It was super cool though because he said he feels like Joseph Smith because he just wants to know what church is true. Soooo awesome!!!!

There was some sweet miracle contacts too. We just got out of lunch and were pulling up to a light that only had like 5 seconds left until it turned green. Lately I have had a goal to talk with everyone, all the time because I want to show the Lord that I need His help. I pull up to the car and just said hello, the light turned green, and the guy just pulled over without me even asking! I talked to him for a second and he willingly gave me his number and as I was about to leave he yelled after me asking how he can call us! I wrote down our number and gave it to him. He doesn't live in our area but that's ok! just as long as he gets baptized!

Speaking of baptisms, I saw Elder Kujianpaa the other day (I went on exchanges with him when he was an assistant) and I was asking about all the people that we contacted on that exchange and if he knows how they are doing. Turns out that one of the guys we talked to just got baptized not too long ago! Super cool! When we met him we didn't even contact him originally. We talked to this guy who was working and he had no interest so we asked if anyone he knew would be interested. He said, "This guy is a Christian, talk to him!" So we did and he got baptized! Just goes to show that miracles happen when you talk with everyone.

Also last night we met with a family that we tracted into a few weeks ago and they are so cool. They love us missionaries and I really think they can get baptized. They had lots of questions about why we are different than the others churches. So cool!!!

Lastly, on Saturday we had a memorial service in Zhanghua for Elder Hampton. If you haven't heard anything about Elder Hampton, he was a missionary in our mission that got into a bike accident and didn't make it. It was such a hard blow for our mission. And I have really had a hard time dealing with it. I never knew him but it was hard to accept the fact that God would let this happen to one of His servants. Especially one who had only been on island for 6 weeks. This service was exactly what I needed. All of the speakers were amazing. I know that Elder Hampton is in the Spirit World preaching to the Taiwanese people. He is doing the work on the other side for us. A fourth of the missionaries in our mission were there and they asked us to sing our mission song during the service. Our mission song is the Armies of Helaman song with a few word adjustments and part of it in chinese. It was amazing. The spirit was so strong. We sing the first verse and chorus in english and then the second verse in Chinese. Every time we switch to chinese, there is always a slight pause, and everyone just sings a little louder. I don't know why but it always happens and I always feel the spirit very strong. I know that Elder Hampton was right there next to us singing too. Families are forever. Never forget that. 

Love

Elder Anderson

This guy is one of my dad's students at BYU. He brought me a great package and fed us lunch! Super cooooool

Gandalf in Taiwan!

They love their tanks in Taiwan

Tanks are in all the parks

So are missiles!

You know you are in Asia when ...

Other types of rockets in the park :)

Selfie when you are the only one looking at the camera

Temple in Taiwan (but not ours ;)

In honor of Todd Helton