Sun Bursting Through

Hello from Taiwan!

 

Well it's Monday afternoon here in Taiwan, the rain has seemed to stop and the sun is bursting through! How great. I was really starting to miss the warmer weather. 

This past week has been full of meetings and conferences, the most important being General Conference for us members here in Taiwan. I was excited to see so much emphasis on missionary work! There are currently 65,000 missionaries, around 7,000 more than 6 months ago, another 20,000 who have already received their calls, and 6,000 in the application process. The Lord is truly hastening his work and I'm glad to be apart of it. What were your favorite parts? I know that there is always something for everyone when we sit down to watch conference. These talks are truly from God, given to us through his authorized servants here on earth.

Yesterday, Sunday, two new investigators came to attend the conference sessions with us. They seemed to have a wonderful time. One of them even came up to my companion and me afterward and asked if he could have another appointment with us.  He said that a member had mentioned something about this to him. We are so excited to be able to meet with him this coming  Wednesday!  I know that he could really feel the spirit as he heard and saw the prophet, apostles, and other church leaders speak to him.

Another cool thing that happened during the week was at one of our meetings with the local missionary zones and our mission president. They announced that in June we will be starting a new English Class program. Every Wednesday evening we have the opportunity to teach English to the people here for free. It is pretty fun and you can really see that the people enjoy it. A lot of their English is actually pretty good, they just never get opportunities to use it!  Sounds like this new program will really be vamped up and pretty professional. I'm excited to see how it turns out.

One of the special experiences I had this week was on Saturday evening after conference. We had gone out to the main road in Longtan to find people to talk to and share the gospel with. As I was riding my bike, I saw a guy sitting on his motor scooter so I decided to go up and talk to him. He turned out to be pretty good and interested. I was a little surprised by his interest, but when I asked if we would be willing to meet with us to learn more, he started giving us the common response that a lot of people here give, "Oh I'm busy, sorry, I can't." I felt impressed as he was saying this to bear humble testimony to him of the truthfulness and blessings of this gospel message we were sharing. His expression quickly changed and he said that yeah he could meet next weekend! I know if I hadn't followed the spirit, this man would not have had the opportunity to learn more about the gospel at this time in his life. It's always so cool to feel the promptings that Heavenly Father gives to us, and to follow those promptings, and then to see the blessings that come from it.

Well my time is about up for now. I hope that you all have a wonderful week!

I love you all!

Elder Bastian