Siiiick!

Yes, this week I got sick :( Just two weeks ago I was telling Elder Nelson that I had never been sick on my mission and I have never had a companion get sick. I was very proud of myself. But I guess I never knocked on wood (being the superstitious baseball player that I am) because I got sick. It was miserable. The mission nurse told us to stay inside for a few days and so honestly, not much really got done this week....

So sad... Even when we went outside it was really rough because I was resisting the urge to throw up. Also, it was really cold this week! It got down to the 60s! So everyone here is busting out the old winter coat and they think we are super 厲害 because we aren't wearing a jacket.

However, we did try our best and we did meet with Sister Xia this week. She is a very golden investigator that really loves learning about the gospel. She is the one that can't come to church because of work. We talked with her a lot about that and the member helping us talked to her too and it was just so sad that she did not have any faith in the Lord. All she kept saying was 『沒有辦法』 Which I detest hearing. She did not think there is anyway that things could change to allow her to come to church. Really sad. Pray for her!

We are very optimistic about this week because, well, it can only go up from here! 何弟兄 didn't answer his phone this week so that is a little nerve racking but he will answer this week.

Lastly, I have recently decided to find a few minutes each day to read some of the Old Testament because I have never actually read it (how many of you actually have?). But I did find a very cool scripture in Genesis 18:14. This is the Lord telling Abraham and Sarah that they will have a kid and they were very doubtful. Then the Lord said, "Is there anything too hard for the Lord?"

So true. Remember that. No matter what is happening in life, remember that Christ knows what you are going through. You may think that things will never change or that something you want to do in life is too hard, but remember, there is nothing too hard for the Lord. He is always there to help us and guide us. 

Be ambitious for Christ and have faith that He will work miracles!!

Love

Elder Anderson

Another week has come and gone

Another week has come and gone. Where does the time go? This week went pretty well for Elder Nelson and I. We started the week off by playing some tennis and that was super fun! I'm not good at tennis but it is still a blast to play! We had a great time with that. This week we did a lot of finding though. Eh it was actually half and half with finding and lessons. It went pretty well. We are still working with 何弟兄。 He is doing pretty good. We switched his goal to the 10th of December just to give him a little bit more time. We started teaching him the commandments and we taught the Word of Wisdom this week. It went well. He hardly ever drinks tea and he was super ok with keeping this commandment. It's been really surprising that throughout my whole mission, I have never really had any investigator that has had a problem with keeping the word of wisdom. Even though everyone here drinks tea every day, they are totally ok with giving it up. Really cool. But yeah, 何弟兄 is looking pretty good. 

We have another investigator with a baptismal date for the 17th. He is pretty cool. He is 15 years old and super funny! We have taught the first and second lessons with him and he really has a desire to get baptized. He came to church yesterday and thought it was pretty cool! 

So I don't know if any of you remember me talking about an investigator named Victor, but for the past month he has been super busy and could never meet. He has such a strong desire to get baptized and follow Jesus Christ but he has been too busy. We have tried so hard to get in touch with him but to little avail. Finally we realized that he wrote his address on the English class record so we decided to go visit him!! We visited him and he is just so sad. He said he has been going through some hard times and he doesn't even know what to do. We asked if he had been reading and praying and he said no. So sad! We just bore testimony that God gives us trials to help us grow. But we can only grow if we turn to him during times of trial. We talked a bit about the people of Alma and how they had their trials but the Lord 'lightened their burdens' and gave them strength to endure. It's SOO true. I just love it how the Lord doesn't take away our trials (well... I don't LOVE it but....) instead he gives us strength to endure them and to learn from them. He said he can meet with us this Sunday so pray that all will be well with Victor!!

A few funny stories from this week: We were contacting the other day and I pull up to a man with his head down and said "Hey! 晚安！" He looks up. He's white. Shocker! We started talking to him. Turns out he's from Bath, England (if I remember right, isn't that where some of the worst books every written take place??). I start to contact him and I can only say about two sentences before my English just gave up on me. I literally could not muster a word of English! I tried so hard but the only words that came out were in Chinese. Super rough. He was really nice though. Told us he was Buddhist (that was weird) and we chatted about religion for a second and then we left. Nice man. Poor English...

Another was last night we were going to a member's house for dinner and another member that was coming brought her friend who belongs to some other Christian church. Naturally religion was brought up and she asked lots of questions. We got to the Godhead and she was telling us about the trinity and how they are all one. The member said, "Well they are all different beings." The lady said, "No Jesus and God are the same." Another member said, "They have the same purpose and will but Christ is the son of God. He is God's Son." Then the lady was like "Yeah! Exactly!" and she ended it at that. So apparently, since I am the son of Greg Anderson, I am Greg Anderson. Not too sure how I feel about that..... hahaha.

Well, last thing. I have mentioned before that President Teh has really been getting us to use the Book of Mormon in every single contact and just all that we do. I have noticed that as we do it, results have been very different in a good and bad way. Before we would just talk about Jesus Christ and stuff and as I thought about it I realized that to the Taiwanese people, we are just another Christian church. Even the other Christians think we are the same as them. But as soon as we bring out the Book of Mormon, it makes us different. They don't like that. It has sparked lots of interest in some people and others are very mean about it. For the first time on my mission, people are actually becoming very rude to us. Normally the worst rejection was they said they are busy, they don't respond to you, they pull their scooter up a little farther, or they just say no thank you. Now we get people telling us not to preach this, ask how many wives we have, call us a cult and what not. Normally that would make me very angry.  But it just makes me soooo grateful that I have a knowledge and testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. There are so many lost people. So many conflicted views. It makes me proud to stand up for what I believe and know that the Savior is right there next to me.

So my words of advice: Be ambitious for Christ by always always always standing up for what you believe. Never ever falter. I know it will bring you happiness and joy.

I love you all!

Be grateful for everything this week! And especially be grateful for Jesus Christ and His atonement! 

感恩節快樂！！

Love

Elder Anderson

Some classic 冰 from this week. Elder Nelson got a very chocolately one and I decided to take the healthier route and go with kiwi. Very delicious. Very not healthy. Very worth it

This week was also super super super polluted!!! The pollution scale said it was a 10 out of 10. Yikes. You could literally feel the dirty air entering your lungs. Not too fun.

Living the Life

Well this was another good week for us in the land on Nanzi! Gryphon was able to get baptized and that was super awesome! He has a real strong testimony on repentance. He loves the idea of a new start. As he shared his testimony at the baptism he talked about how he hopes that he gets chances to share the gospel with people around him. He is a tutor and he hopes he can teach his students about Jesus Christ and His restored gospel. Our ward mission leader was just giving us the thumbs up the whole time haha! Gryphon is awesome!!

Other than that, we did a lot of finding and had a lot of meetings. We had to leave the door early just about every single day this week for various reasons. The rule is when you leave the door early, you have to make up the studies that we missed. So there were many days that we had to spend the afternoon doing studies leaving us only the night to go out and proselyte. Really rough but we gotta get those study times in!

We went to a meeting this week at the 市中 chapel and that was awesome! I was able to see Elder Fleming (my trainer) for the last time. Crazy to think that he is going home at the end of this transfer. Time goes by wayyyyy to fast!! But President Teh had us go around and talk about ways that our companions serve them. For me, the best way that Elder Nelson serves me is just being my friend. It's so key that a companionship is also a friendship, not just business partners. Elder Nelson is one of my best friends and I'm so glad that he is my companion!! 

We also had interviews with President Teh this week! As we were waiting, Sister Teh was talking to us and asked us what we had for breakfast. I don't know why but she always asks us. Our answer: toast.... response "anything else?" nope just toast. "Any spread?" uhhhhh nutella. Nice. Nailed it. simple and delicious. Sister Teh got a good laugh out of that. Interviews were great. It's not every day that you get one on one time with a general authority. President Teh is the best!

We met with Brother He this week and it went pretty well. We just gotta help him continue to see how the gospel can help him and help him know that God exists. But he came to church again and he is looking pretty good!

Last thing, yesterday we met with an investigator from English class. Normally she brings her son, but he had cram school so he couldn't come. We taught Sister Xia the Plan of Salvation. She is just so prepared!! It was awesome to teach with so much unity with Elder Nelson and the member that came with us. Super powerful. Every question she asked, we used the Book of Mormon to answer. We talked about how Christ was baptized on earth and she asked who baptized him. We said John the Baptist and then she said "Oh yeah he needs someone with the Priesthood to baptize him!!" YES. 沒有錯. So great! She really has a strong desire. We shared 2 Nephi 31:5 about how since Christ was baptized, we all need to be baptized. She totally agreed. Yes, she accepted a goal for December 17th. We just gotta help her get to church on Sunday's because she works from 9am to noon. 有信心有辦法

Life is great here in Nanzi. We wake up everyday and just are ambitious for Christ all day every day. Never stops. We have been practicing some Christmas songs with the Elder's quorum and it has just made me more grateful that Christ was born. We would all be done for if he was never born. The hope that He gives me keeps me going.

I love you all!

Love

Elder Anderson

ps the second coming is near because the prophets always teach that there will be all these crazy things that will happen... thus, the Cubs winning the world series = the second coming is almost here!

Elder Fleming (Miles Trainer) and Miles before Elder Fleming goes home

Gryphon's baptism

A Bible, a bible ...

Well what a week for the good old Nanzi elders. Elder Nelson and I are having a blast and are constantly seeing miracles.

Recently President Teh has really been focusing on using the Book of Mormon all the time. Especially in finding. And teaching. And just all the time. So we have been doing just that. The difference it has made in our work is huge!!!! We have found some really cool people! But we also run into some people that really don't like it (I'll talk about that in a sec)

So this week we met with 何弟兄 who is the man we talked to last Sunday. He is super great! We shared the first lesson with him and he accepted a date for 12月3日。 He also came to church for all three hours!! He participated in the Sunday School lesson and even stayed after to practice singing some Christmas songs! He seems to really have a strong desire to come unto Christ.

This weekend we went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders because they needed to do Gryphon's baptismal interview! Gryphon passed and is getting baptized this Saturday! We are super super excited! His whole conversion process has been a long one. Elder Williams and I found him in my first few weeks of being in Nanzi. But we have seen tons of miracles to help him down this road. So good!!!

While on exchanges, Elder Nelson and Elder Musgrave met with a family that we added from English and they have lots of interest and are willing to learn, but we are going to have to work to get them to church. 

Speaking of English class, this week's class was awesome!! Elder Nelson and I taught the advanced class and for our spiritual share we decided to do what Elder Funk taught us in mission tour, and that is to teach with using just the first 12 verses of 1 Nephi. Super effective in teaching the first lesson because you start off talking about families, switch to prophets, use a little bit of 聖靈 and at the end Nephi says he knows the record he is writing is true. So awesome. We added this family and another investigator that we are meeting with tonight. Very good.

So we were at the park and we were sharing about the Book of Mormon and we came across this lady. She said she was already Christian. So we talked about restored truths and talked about the Book of Mormon. She literally said, "A bible a bible, we already have a bible. We don't need another bible!!" She LITERALLY quoted 2 Nephi. As she said this I almost busted up laughing. Just proves the Book of Mormon is true because it prophesied of this! We wanted to share that scripture with her soooo bad! Especially when it says, O thou fools who shall say a bible a bible..... classic. Then she told me "If you really want to be saved, I exhort you to never teach of this again!" I was really surprised because I have never had anyone get so up in my face like that here in Taiwan. It was hilarious. Needless to say, she did not set up. She wouldn't even let me show her the introduction...

Well I am kinda low on time. But we received a cool referral this week from 壞北 I mean, Taibei. It is a family of four that is moving to our area and they want to meet with us! We are going to meet with them this week and we are pumped! 

The church is true! 

I love you all!

Be ambitious for Christ!

love

Elder Anderson