Chinese New Year

Hello Everyone!

 

Well, another week has gone by here in Long Tan! It is the beginning of Chinese New Year. The New Year's Celebration here in Taiwan is much different than in America. In fact, New Year's here lasts about a week and a half long! Crazy huh? During this time all of the family will return back to their parent's home and visit and eat a TON of food! The streets have been empty these past few days, but late at night the fireworks start blasting from the roads. It is pretty exciting to see them from our apartment window.

This past week has been pretty exciting here in Long Tan. We were able to have a lot of success. On Monday, we were able to visit a family that is investigating the church. It's a mother, father, and their son. When we stopped by, only the son and his aunt were home so we decided to meet with the son for a little bit and share a message with him. As we were doing so his aunt started to sit down and listen too. I thought, wow, that's pretty cool! Then a little bit later the son's mom arrived home from work with her other daughter and they both sat down and joined in on the lesson...AND then about 5 minutes later, the aunt's daughter came home and joined in too! We had 5 people listening to the message and the 2 mothers were pretty excited to have their kids listen and participate. They kept trying to get their kids to say a prayer and one of the daughters did! It was a great lesson and a huge blessing from the Lord. We hope to be able to meet with them again soon after the new year!

We were also able to have a lesson with a high school kid that I had contacted on the street about a week ago. When we first started to meet with him, I wasn't sure what his perspective was going to be, but we soon found out that he has actually attended 17 different churches and is really interested in religion. His parents are Taoist, but he seems to often ponder some of life's deepest questions, and he is only 16, the same age as my brother Daniel! We were able to talk about the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with him and really help him understand God, prophets and the gospel. He had a lot of questions but was really interested in the lesson and said that he was going to start reading the book of Mormon and start praying. We are actually meeting with him again tonight so we will see how it goes!

On Friday, I had the opportunity to exchange companions for a day. I went to the area called Bada, with an Elder Mattson. He is from California and is a pretty funny kid. We had a lot of fun contacting people at stop lights on our way to visit some members. He was able to bring a great spirit to the work and really made it fun! Saturday was the start of the New Year here so lately we have had a lot of members inviting us over for lunch or dinner. Their New Year's meals are huge and they just keep telling us, "eat more, eat more". It's really funny. I will have to take some pictures.

It's been a very busy week here and I am still getting use to the area and a new companion, but things have been going well. I have really been able to learn a lot about missionary work recently. It's cool to see the different people that the Lord is preparing all around us. We had a really cool experience Saturday night. After we finished dinner at a member's home we decided to go out and contact some people on the streets. The streets were all super empty so there wasn't really anyone to talk to. Then my companion decided to knock on a few doors for the last little bit of the night. At first we had no success, but we decided to knock on one more door and a lady opened. She didn't seem interested at first but then started to open up and say "Well, why don't you guys come in and sit down for a bit.  It's New Year's and you guys are still outside working!" We were able to visit with her and her family and share a short message with her, her husband and their 1 year old. The wife had a lot of questions about our church. In the end the family said they might be willing to meet again in the future and chat. They were super nice and it really was a miracle for them to let us in like that. How cool!

Well, I really hope that everything is going well for everyone back at home or school. You are all so great! Keep it up!

Love,

Elder Bastian