It's a Wonderful Life

What a week of experiences! On Tuesday last week I had the opportunity to sing in the MTC choir at the devotional. Guess who showed up! it was Elder Anderson from the quorum of the Twelve Apostles; he is truly a man of God. It was sooo awesome to be able to sing for him the day. I loved his talk, it was simple yet profound. He talked about 9 quotes that today's Prophet President Monson often says. I love how each one was something that everyone could do that would bless their lives. You could feel the spirit that he had and feel the power of his testimony of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. He is our Savior, He loves us and whats us to return to Him. I know that through repentance and turning unto Christ we will all be able to live with Him and God the Eternal Father again some day.

We also had the opportunity to teach our investigator again today. Our investigators are a mix of language teachers here at the mtc, byu students, and return missionaries. They will take the role of an investigator and we will teach to that person. It is a great experience to teach this way. It helps us so much. You learn to love the investigator and really search for what his needs are and what we can share with him that will be able to help him, even if the investigator is just role playing. You really do learn to love them. We started teaching a new investigator this week who ended up being our language teacher! We were very suprised. She played the role of a college student who was searching to find out more about Jesus Christ. She is from Taiwan and is going to college and taking and English class. During the lesson she told us that her English name was "apple"! It made me smile, helped me to really become more personal with how i teach. It's hard to teach because of our broken Chinese, but I love it! you always walk out of the lesson feeling the Holy Ghost and just being happy. I know that the gospel of Jesus Chirst is true and that through it we will be able to return to our Heavenly Father with our families.

Sooo, big surprise of the week, on Saturday we found out that a General Authority would be coming on Tuesday to speak at the devotional and that he wanted to meet with all of the Chinese speaking missionaries before the devotional at 4:45. Speculation started to spread that we might be opening China for missionary work, but I kept quiet for the most part. Today we went to the meeting and as we waited for each person to enter the room my heart would start racing. Who is it going to be I thought? My guess was the it would be Elder Perkins, the Asia Area North President. Guess what... I was right! To most people's suprise, not really mine, he talked about how we can best teach the Chinese people. So no, China is not open for missionaries yet. But he said that the Gospel is spreading there.

China allows families to each other about the church and that most of the member go out of the country for school and things and while they are gone the hear about the gospel and are able to bring the news back to their families and help them. His message to us was the we need to best help the Chinese people learn and connect with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He said that for the Chinese people, the principle they connect most with is families. He said that as we teach about the importance of families and how the gospel can bless their lives and help them to recieve happiness in this life and the ability to live with their families after this life with Heavenly Father is power to them. Families are so important to the Chinese people and I think that is awesome. He focused his message later in the devotional for all the missionaries about how we can help investigators build faith in all the principles of the gospel. I loved his message!

Anyways, life is wonderful here! I am really loving it! My roommates are awesome. We get along very well. I actually had preparation day today and I played my roommate in chess. I had him going for a bit then I made a dumb mistake and he whooped me for it! Ha! It so great to be here and to be able to learn how we can best help the all the children of our Heavenly Father.

Until next week!
Love,

Elder Bastian

Rollercoaster

Ni hao!
Wow! What an experience these first few days have been! The first day I entered the MTC and entered the classroom my teacher only spoke chinese. And when I say immersion, I meand IMMERSION! To be honest I was so suprised and just overwhelmed that I started laughing out loud. I thought "what in the world is this lady saying?!" I found out a little later that her name is Xiao laoshi. She has turned out to be an amazing teacher. The first day I was able to recall a lot of the chinese that I had learned in High School. I am so thankful that Yang Laoshi was able to teach me chinese during those 3 years. It has proved to be extremely helpful as we have been learning and teaching.

My companion is Elder Lackey from Pocatello, Idaho. He is awesome! We work great together. It turns out that most everyone in my district (8 out of the 11 people) have had previous experience with learning chinese, and same with most everyone in the zone (around 80 people). It has been such a great experience to be here and be able to have and feel the spirit with me during the day. I can truely feel the Lord's hand in the learning process. There is no way that we would be able to learn chinese at the rate that we have been without him. There is an Elder in my district who had absolutely no background with chinese and he is already able to pray in chinese and have basic communication with us. It's truely amazing to see how the Lord blesses his servants. Another example of his help that I have greatly noticed that I am rarely ever tired during the day even though we wake up at 6:30 and are working and studying and learning all day long!

I titled this email the Rollercoaster because life here has been pretty crazy over the first few days. On top of the first day immersion, where i was just swimming in chinese, we later got settled into our rooms around 9:00. I thought that after working so hard the first day that I would be able to fall asleep quickly, but no... I just didn't feel tired at all. I was awake for hours and didnt fall asleep until around 4:30 in the morning, so I only got about 2 hours of sleep. I thought I was going to die the next day as the hours started clicking away that night. But to my amazement I was full of energy the next day. He truely does bless us and help us in his work. Sleep has been much better since then.

Another shock to the system came when we found out the second day that we would be teaching an investigator in chinese the following day. My companion and I were stunned...but we prepared ourselves with the language that we know so we would be able to teach him. Our investigator's name is Zhou Wen. When the opportuninty to teach finally came, I was pretty nervous. I asked my companion if we could say a quick prayer before we started. As we knocked on the classroom door where zhou wen was and sat down to start teaching, the moment I began to speak, i felt a feeling of peace come over me and my nerves went away. i was suprised at how well my companion and I were able to communicate with him. I'm sure that much of what we said was with the wrong grammar be zhou wen understood us and we were able to understand him for the most part. We taught him a God and how he is our loving Heavenly Father. As we continued to teach him we came to learn that him and his parent's do not have a good relationship. As we invited him to pray at the end he prayed that the message we would bring to him would help his family and that he might be able to come to know the truth of it. We had another opportunity to teach him yesterday and we taught him a little more about God and our role in this life, but again as we were talking things started to just naturally drift back to his family. My companion and I noticed that this is what Zhou Wen needs to know. The gospel can help bring his family closer together and bring blessings into there lives. We didnt know in chinsese how to teach much about the role of families in the Father's plan for us so and we finished up our lesson with him we committed him to pray and know if our Heavenly Father is real and to read the Book of Mormon and look for the ways it can help his family. My companion and I have committed ourselves to learn the chinese that will help him learn more about his this gospel and how it can help his family.

I love it here! Anyways, time is about up. 

Elder Bastian

See Ya In Two!

Hey everyone! The journey is about to begin! On Wednesday I will embark as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, serving the Taiwanese people for the next two years. Each week, I will be able to email home and share about my experience as a missionary and give an update on how things are going. My sister-in-law has created this blog and will post my emails for everyone to read and stay in the loop with how my mission is going. I'm able to keep in touch individually through writing letters, so send me one when you get the chance, I would love to hear from you! See ya in two years! Zai Jian!

Elder Bastian
(mailing addresses are posted to the right)