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.