Christmas Carols

Hello!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and will have a happy new year too! 

This past week went well here in Tucheng.

On Christmas Day, I had the opportunity to conduct a mission wide conference that President Day put on. It was a great conference, with trainings from the assistants and other zone leaders. I have to say though that probably the best part was...the Lunch! The president's wife and all of the other senior couple missionaries cooked for hours and prepared a wonderful christmas lunch that included turkey, mashed potatoes, costco rolls, and cookies! I have to say, I do miss american food a little bit. Its just so good!

After the conference our district leader wanted the district to do something special since it was chirstmas, so afterwards we all went to the city Ban Qiao which is a very high-end populated city that had a lot of Christmas displays/ activities going on. We went to this big courtyard that was there all lit up and we sang Christmas carols as a district while we took turns having one of us pass our flyers and inviting others to come to a different christmas activity that our ward was holding that friday. It was a lot of fun, many people were taking pictures of us Americans. The best part too was that on Friday, 2 people actually came to the church activity as a result of our efforts!

The miracle of the week was that our investigators that we recently set a baptismal date with was able to come to church for the first time on sunday. We also had a great lesson with him before on the plan of salvation. He has felt recently that his life has been extremely boring and did not have much direction lately, just work, go to school, eat and sleep. He says he cant really even remember one very "happy" memory in his life. It was sad to here him tell us his feelings. But as we taught him about the purpose of life and being able to return to Heavenly Fathers presence I really felt the spirit testify to the truthfulness of this message. I am so thankful for the knowledge that we have about God's plan for us. I feel that he know has a good desire to receive an answer to his prayers and feel of the happiness that we have felt from this gospel. We are excited for him.

We have a few other good investigators that we are excited to meet with this week too.

Well that about wraps it up for the main events of the week!

I hope everyone has a happy new year! 

Love you all!

Elder Bastian

Christmas Eve!

Hello and Merry Chirstmas!

(It's Christmas Eve here right now...)

First, just want to say that I am grateful for the Christmas Season and for the help it has given me in reflecting and thinking more deeply and frequently about the Savior.

This past week Elder Chatman and I worked very hard to achieve each of our goals. We were able to do well in helping the ward be involved in helping us teach our investigators.  We hope to continue to keep it up! This Sunday, we were also able to set a baptismal date with one of our investigators that come to the Christmas pageant with us. It was a great lesson and he really seems to have a desire to feel God's influence in his life.

This past week we were able to meet with the assistants to the president of our mission for a bit and be able to discuss some principles of leadership and also plans that we have made for the zone and our companionship. It was a spirit filled meeting.

 I also had the opportunity to go on exchanges with an Elder Anderson in our zone this past weekend and it went great. He is a great missionary. I was really impressed with his ability to preach the gospel. He has many great skills as far as relating to people and teaching gospel messages, then applying them to people. I learned a lot from him and his example. 

Yesterday, as we were out side talking to people about the gospel, we met a man who set up to meet with us this Saturday to learn more, so we are very excited! Some other miracles that happened this past week were at church. We had an entire family of 4 show for the 2nd half of church all by themselves. One of the daughters used to attend English, and recently their father has been expreincing a lot of health problems and struggles so the daughter took the whole family to church! Some brothers in the ward were able to give the man a blessing and we were able to meet them and get their contact information. They said we could meet with the whole family in 2 weeks! We are SUPER PUMPED! We also have another family of 4 that will becoming back to church on the 12th for their second time! They came the week before and are a member referral from a xindian member. We are also trying to schedule a time to meet with them. We have many great potentials here in Tucheng, and are working really hard to get them all set up and begin feeling the peace that can come into there lives through coming to know their Savior, Jesus Christ.

Sorry this weeks email is a little jumbled. My time is a little rushed today.

I hope that everyone has a very Merry Christmas and that Christ and our Families will be the center of our lives this wonderful season, and throughout the new year.

Love you all!

Elder Bastian

Miracle on the MRT

Hello Everyone!

This past week has gone well here in Tucheng. It didn't go the way we had hoped or planned to as a lot of our investigators weren't able to meet this week because of various reasons, but we still did see some miracles! 

One of which was a man that I had contacted about a month ago on the MRT (underground subway) on a P-Day. We had given him an English tract after talking for a while (his English is super good) and then he hopped of the MRT and we thought we would never see him again.... we were WRONG!  He showed up to English Class this past week and ended up meeting with us afterwards. He said how after he met us a series of events happened and he wants to learn more about Christianity now! He seems to have a huge desire to get an answer from God. We invited him to baptism but he said that he wants to wait a bit before he answers us. We are really excited for him though. God has once again blessed us with a miracle!

This past week Elder Chatman and I also held our monthy Zone Meeting and ended up having a suprise visit from President Day which was good. We talked a lot about focusing on baptism as that is the gateway for each of us and all of the children of God to be able to come closer to Him. President Day also talked to us about some of the other things we can focus on the help us Hasten the Work. It was an inspiring meeting!

This weekend we also had the opportunity to go to Tapei and watch the Christmas nativity pageant they put on every year. We brought an investigator and a new member. It was a lot of fun and we were all able to feel the Christmas spirit. 

I love this time of year and am so great for for our Savior Jesus Christ and all that he has done to enable us to change our lives through following His example. He has blessed my life and my family tremendously!

I hope that all will be able to feel of the love and happiness He can bring to our lives.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas Season.

Love,

Elder Bastian

Christmas Spirit

Hello Everyone!

Well, Elder Chatman and I are starting to feel the Chirstmas spirit more fully here in Tucheng, and we are really pushing, hoping, and praying to be able to give Christ a great gift this month.

This week was a little bit tougher on the finding side. We spent upwards of 20 hours finding, including all day Friday and Saturday. We split the finding between street contacting and tracting. We were able to find a few good potentials, have lessons, and place some Book of Mormons to them on the street.  We just need to schedule an open time with them to meet again before they can continue to learn more.  Right now we have several good investigators and are excited to see them discover more and more about how this restored gospel can bless their lives! 

One miracle this past week has been our investigator Brother Cai. He is about 50, short, and over 300 pounds. He is a teddy bear though! He has grown up buddhist so prayer has been hard for him to adjust to and to develop into a personal habit, but he has committed to come to church each week and came for the second time yesterday! He also set a baptismal date with us for January. I really feel like he will get baptized in time as he comes to understand the doctrine, because he is so willing to come to church!

My time is about up for this week. Sorry I wasn't able to get much in, but I hope that you all have a wonderful week as you continue to prepare for the Christmas season. May Christ and his message of hope permeate from our spirits this month as we seek to remember all that he has done for us.

Love you all!

Elder Bastian

After the Trial of Your Faith

Hello Everyone!

Another week has flown by here in Tucheng. Elder Chatman and I are always surprised that it is PDay as we felt the the last PDay was only a few days ago. This past week we were able to have some great lessons with our progressing investigators. Right now, we are most excited for our investigating couple. We have been really striving to help them start reading the Book of Mormon and our homework for them before our last appointment was to read to chapter 3 of first Nephi. When we met the husband said that he had only read the first chapter and didn't understand too much, while the wife was sitting there pretty quiet when all of sudden she said "I read to chapter 8!" We all looked at her wide eyed and excited! She really understood it too and talked about Nephi's example and how she couldn't believe how stubborn Laman and Lemuel are. We then had a good lesson on faith and reading from the Book of Mormon. We also had a Thanksgiving activity Saturday and Elder Chatman was able to take them while I was on exchanges in SanXia and it sounds like they loved it and were able to meet a lot of members! Our next goal is to set baptismal dates with them and get them to church!

We have a few other investigators that are progressing and just waiting on some answers, I hope they come soon.

This past week for the zone overall seemed to go pretty well. There seems to be a bit more fire now after the transfers and new missionaries that have arrived in the zone.

I was able to go on exchanges with Elder Illu in his area. He is from the Salt Lake area. He is doing just great. He is not afraid to talk to anyone and has a huge desire to share the gospel and find those who the Lord wants him to. I was very impressed with his super positive attitude and his ability to set goals and really strive to do all that he can to achieve them. Although he is not the senior companion in his area, he is pretty much leading it. 
This past week in Tucheng we have been getting out and trying to do a bit more tracting in the evening, striving to find families. Last week we didn't see much success in finding but this past week were were able to to see several miracles out of tracting. We found a new investigator and 2 other great potentials that we had lessons with and are now just trying to find another time to set up. I was a little hesitant about how tracting in the Taipei area would influence our results, but we are learning and experiencing that miracles really can come from it! An interesting pattern that I noticed was that much of the success we have seen lately has always happened as we tracted the last few houses, right before we are about to leave the area and head back. The miracles really do not come 'til after the trial of our faith.

Recently Elder Chatman and I have been fasting more for spiritual strength and the blessing of our investigators and I have really felt the influence of the Lord lifting us and helping our investigators.

We hope to be able to see much success in the future, seeing other partake of the blessing that come from this restored gospel.

Well, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and has another great week!

Love you all,

Elder Bastian