Finished the BofM in Chinese!

Hello Everyone!

This past week here in Taidong was great! 

On the weekend we had the opportunity to watch the re-broadcast of General Conference at our chapel. It was so great, but a bitter sweet moment as I realized that that was the last conference I would watch here in Taiwan. Nevertheless, it was very inspiring, my favorite talks were given by Elder Holland and Elder Uchtdorf's on Gratitude. I have already begun applying some of the principles that they shared with us and have seen a difference! I know that as we seek the USE the counsel given to us by these prophets of God, we will draw closer to our Heavenly Father, be able to more fully feel his influence in our lives, and be able to more swiftly navigate the challenges of life. Im grateful God has restored the gospel in our day!

Some other highlights of the week:

-Last monday I finished reading the Book of Mormon all the way through in Chinese! It feels very satisfying to have accomplished that... but now Im on to D&C!

-On Thursday or so, we were out on our bikes, contacting people on the streets when I stopped and said "Hi" to a man. Well he slowly turned his head toward me and then reach out for my arms without saying anything. I started to back away quickly and without thinking the words, "Oh man, TIME TO GO!" came out of my mouth! As I started to bike away he literaly ran after me for a several meters before stopping!!! I was out of there like lightning... If only I had heeded my companion's warning that he was crazy right before I said hi... What he said didn't really sink in, but now I know what he means! I hope the experience gives you guys a good laugh! Im sure I will remember this one for a while.

-We met with Brother Wang this past week and were able to read the Book of Mormon with him. It was a spiritual lesson as he seemed to really receive some inspiration from God and develop his testimony of the Book of Mormon. He's doing great.

-I also had the opportunity to go on exchanges with the zone leader on friday. His area is pretty far out of the city near the mountain. It was very rural and life out there is a lot slower! We met a lot of Taiwanese Aborigonees. It was pretty great. We had a cool experience teaching the restoration to a Catholic man, he accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon and promised to read it.

These are some of the experience of the week. I wish I had more time to write but that's about it!

Hope everyone had a great week at home!

Love,

Elder Bastian

Miracle Lane

Hello Everyone!

This past week has been pretty good here in Taidong. Elder Niedfeldt and I were able to see some great success. 

Recently, we started to meet with a recent convert's wife and kids to teach them the gospel. It's been great as they have been pretty receptive to the message. The husband (Brother Zhuang) was baptized about a month ago and is a super humble and nice man. The best part is, on Sunday, for the first time, he and his whole family came to church together!! They also had the opportunity to watch him get sustained to be able to receive the priesthood! It was pretty cool to see them all together smiling. I can just tell that this family will receive the gospel. The father is setting such a great example for them and im sure they will follow. I'm so grateful that my companion and I have the opportunity to help them in this conversion process.

I also had the opportunity to ask Zhuang DX at church on Sunday what he thought the most profound part of the gospel is to him so far and he told me....."Eternal Families".....SWEEEEEEETTTTT!!!!

Some other successes of the past week were meeting with Samuel, the kid we tracted into last week whose grandma first ignored us. We sat down with him and then his little brother who is 12 sat down too and read with as we went through 1 Ne 1. Now he is investigating too! We really hope that in the end we can start meeting with the whole family!

Last miracle that I want to write about happened last night. Elder Niedfeldt and I rode out to a fairly far away part of town to go meet with a potential we had. After we talked with her we continued to tract in her neighborhood for the rest of the evening and in a matter of 40 minutes we found 3 new investigators! One was a 52 year old man, and another was a mom and her 24 year old son! They all lived within 8 houses of each other.... I think we need to rename this place "miracle lane"!

We are also continuing to meet with Brother Wang and he is great. He wasn't able to meet this past week but is set up for Tuesday and really excited to meet! We are excited too!

The work is going well here in this part of the vineyard and I just hope that I can continue to do my best each day to serve the Lord and serve these people here in Taiwan.

I hope that everyone is doing well at home and has a great week.

Love you all,

Elder Bastian

Tracting Miracles

Hello Everyone!

This past week was kinda hectic, but we saw some great success! Transfer rolled around and Elder Nelson ended up moving. He is now in the zone that I was just in before I came here to Taidong.  I am grateful for his humility and example and the time I had to serve with him. I am also really excited to be with Elder Niedfelt! He was actually already here in Taidong and even lived in the same apartment as us. What happened is they closed down one set of Elders in our ward and we became companions. He is an awesome missionary. He is super hard working, bold, and really funny. I am also the district leader here now, so it will be fun to work with the other missionaries, especially Elder Forbes, my former companion, who is in the district. I think we will have an awesome transfer together and hope to see great success!

Some of the highlights/miracles of last week:
We were able to meet with our awesome investigator Brother Wang. We taught him the first half of the plan of salvation and he loved it. He really feels that his purpose in life is to follow the gospel and fulfill is responsibilities to God. He really just loves everything that we teach him. I called him on Friday to see how he has been doing and he told me that he is loving to pray and really feels that he is receiving inspiration from God when he does. He even asked me to pray over the phone with him right there! It was pretty awesome!

Another miracle of the week happened Saturday night. One of Elder Niedfelt and my set-up had fallen through so we went to go visit a potential investigator. We knocked on his door but no one answered so we decided to go and tract the next house. There was a older lady outside who was hang up some close to dry out and we tried talking to her but she wasn't really saying much back. Then she started to call her grandson outside and told him to talk to us. He came out and we sat down with him and started to teach him about Heavenly Father and prayer which he seemed to really like, while we were doing so the older lady came back outside and sat down too! Then she told us how they are Christian but just moved to this new area. She told us she wants her grandson to go to church! So that night we got a member set up to pick him up in the morning. He came and he brought a friend too! We are excited to keep meeting with them and really hope we can get his parents and grandma to meet too!

Hope you enjoy the pictures I sent. This about wraps it up for the week!

Love you all!

Elder Bastian

I'm Willing! I MUST!

Hello Everyone!

This past week here in Taidong was pretty great. The weather is starting to warm us here on the beach city and lots more people are outside soakin up the rays!

Elder Nelson and I saw some great success here this past week, it feels very satisfying to see the work pick up as we continue to do our best. I'll first talk about a few of the highlights:
On Tuesday, we were able to meet with our investigator Brother Wang. He is just absolutely great! We had the District President's daughter who just got back from her mission come to our lesson and it went great. We shared the Restoration with him and he just ate it up. His eyes widened as he heard the experience of Jospeh Smith. I asked him later if he felt similar to Joseph and he said "YES!" and told us how he has been searching for the truth. As we invited him to do Moroni's challenge to study the Book of Mormon, ponder and pray, he answer with a resounding, "Yes I'm willing! I must!" He is so prepared.... IT'S AWESOME! Even as I was leaving I told him to "Jia You" in Chinese which means "keep it up!" and he said back, "I'll defiantly Jia you, I already am!" I know that God really is preparing his children to receive this restored gospel!

Another highlight of the week was being able to invite many new people to baptism this past week. We met with 3 new investigators this last week and the all accepted the invitation! Elder Nelson and I have been bold in inviting others to come unto Christ through baptism. I think 9 out of the 10 we have invited here all said yes. Its pretty crazy, I haven't seen this many in any of my other areas. Several of these new investigators seems solid so were excited to continue following up with them and meeting more and more. I hope all of them will come through! It great to see them change as the feel the blessing that come from following the gospel.

We also met with Brother Zeng this past week and he is doing ok. He is running into a few struggles lately so it seems that his baptism will need to be postponed, but we still have great hope for him! He is such a humble man.

This are going well here is Taidong. Its been a great transfer here with Elder Nelson and I feel that we have both helped each other a lot in improving and overcoming some of our weaknesses. He is a great and humble missionary! This is the last week of the transfer so he might move, we will see what happens!

Thats about it for the week. Hope everyone is doing well at home!

Love you all!

Elder Bastian

Our Miracle Contact

Hello Everyone!

This past week was pretty good. Despite having spent 2 days in Hua Lian for a District Conference, Elder Nelson and I saw some good solid success.

Saturday and Sunday we were in a city about a 3 hour train ride up from our place, attending some district conferences. It was pretty exciting since the Asia Area seventy was able to attend and also our mission president. They announced the splitting of our two branches down here in Taidong to 3 branches. It will be interesting to see how it changes the dynamics here!

As far as our investigators go, we are continuing to work with Brother Zeng and he is coming along well in his conversion. Sometimes he feels limited by his circumstances and feels he won't be able to prepare for baptism, but I can see past these things and know that God will prepare the way for him. We are excited to see him be baptized soon!!! He has accepted everything we have taught him so far and we are meeting with him frequently to help him build habits to read the Book of Mormon and seek for God's confirmation of this wonderful book. He is great.

Some other cool things that happened last week:
We met with our "miracle contact" for the first time this past week. It was the one who lived in Argentina for a few years and met the church there but wasn't baptized. He is pretty golden! He has a few concerns and maybe a few problems to overcome, but still has a great desire to be baptized. I know that through the atonement he will be able to make these changes. I am excited to meet with him again, (or for the first time, since he met with Elder Nelson and Anderson, when on exchanges).

We also started meeting with an awesome father this past week, named Brother Wang. I had contacted him my first week here. When we met with him, I asked him why he was willing to let us come over. At first I was kind of expecting the answer many people give, that he wanted to see what our what our church was like because he is curious, but after I asked the question the words that came out of his mouth were like music to my ears! He said that lately he has really been seeking for direction in his life and now that he is a father of two kids he also wants to be able to help them have a solid foundation in life and wants to know how to best raise them. He said he feels that God will be able to help him and has know that Christ was real all along, but had just been putting off "finding a belief" till now. But he said now he is ready to set aside the time! So cool! He also said that his wife wants to come to our church. So cool x 2! I am very excited to see him build his faith in Christ. To me he seems like the man that could be a future Stake President!

Things are going pretty well over here. Im am greatful for all the learning that I am continuing to have here on the mission. Even though its been almost two years here, you never stop learning! I am grateful that the Lord is able to teach us through the spirit. It often comes from the words of those around us, as the spirit guides them and they don't even know it. Even a smile can sometimes change a persons life!

I hope everyone has a great week back at home!

Love you all,

Elder Bastian

New Plan for Finding

Hello Everyone!

Here are some recaps for the week!

Great news!: Elder Nelson and I have started meeting with an investigator named Brother Zeng. He was found about 2 months ago, before I got here, but was only met once and it didn't seem like things panned out, but he showed up to church 2 weeks ago by himself and I was able to set up an appointment with him. He has been meeting frequently since then. He also attended Elder Anderson's and Elder Neidfelt's (two other elders in our district) baptism on Saturday. He loves it all! He has set a Baptismal Date for the 22nd of this month and has already been to church 3 times. He is so great, a little goofy and life is hard as he doesn't have a job or a stable home, but he is sooo prepared! He really loves the Savior. It was a big miracle to be able to start meeting with him. And we are excited to continue to see him embrace the gospel.
With some of our other miracle investigators, we are still striving to get them set back up. Hopefully they will meet with us this week!

The bad news!: We have been striving to coordinate finding in district meetings as we have 3 companionship's that share one area here, but this last week as Elder Nelson and I were tracting, and I think 4 consecutive nights in a row, all the places we went to had been tracted by the Sisters or the other Elders that same week. We kept running into people who said, "Yeah those foreigner friends of yours came by 2 days ago!" The places that we chose were ones we had never been to and thought the other missionaries hadn't either. It was pretty frustrating finding, as we had to keep finding different places than we had planned, but its still worked out in the end. This week Elder Anderson (the district leader) and I are coming up with a way to coordinate finding better. We want to divide the area up into 3 different areas and have each companionship work in one are for a week or so and then we will switch, and just continue to rotate frequently. I have also made a sheet that will allow us to record which areas we have recently tracted and who answered the door that night so we can go back through an area a second time to try and get all the doors where no one was home before. We hope this will help us to be more effective in finding the people that the Lord is preparing!

We went to the beach last P-Day so I will send pictures next week. I forgot my camera today. Sorry I am so bad at sending pictures!!!

That's about it though! Elder Nelson and I will continue to do our best here in Taidong!

Love you all and hope you have a great week.

Elder Bastian

Goal-Setting

Hello Everyone!

Here is an update on some of the cool events this past week:

We had a pretty cool experience on Tuesday. We went to go visit an investigator that was set up for 8 in the evening but when we got there he was still eating dinner so he told us to come back at 8:30. Our original back up plan was to continue tracting in a neighboring area, so we did that for 30 mins. While we were tracting, a man pulled up next to us on his scooter and asked if we were Mormon missionaries. I told him yes! He then told me how he was a Mormon too, but has been living in Argentina for the past few year where he met the church there. Then he told me," well actually, I am half-Mormon. I haven't been baptized yet because in Argentina the Bishop said I had to go to church 4 weeks consecutively before I could get baptized but since I work one or sometimes 2 Sundays of each month I couldn't get baptized. But I continue to got to church there and I even pay tithing!" My jaw dropped... I said well you probably still want to get baptized right? And he said yes, I will be here in Taidong for 6 months! I told him that he could here! So we got his number and he said he would come to church on Sunday. I confirmed Saturday night, sadly he didn't show up yesterday. BUT we really hope he will set up this week and we can help him prepare quickly for baptism. I hope this is a huge miracle! We shall see! 

We have one other investigator that is a 9 year old and he is getting really close to baptism it has just been pretty hard to schedule times with him to meet because often times his parents arent home or he is not there. He's a "punk" little kid, but he is really fun, and I love him!

Recently in studies and through out the day I have pondering how I can best serve my last 5 months here on the mission and one of the things I feel the Lord has been teaching me is the importance of setting appropriate goals the will help me to improve step by step until the end, as that is one of the purposes of life "progress" and become more like God. I have also been striving to set goals that will help me to stretch, push myself, and continue to work hard. I want to leave everything out here on the mission field. It's been pretty interesting to strive to find a balance to this goal setting. I guess its something I will continue to refine throughout my life though! I thought I would let you know. 

I am grateful for a knowledge of the Plan of Salvation that allows us to know that our purpose here in life is to find happiness and prepare to return to live with our Father in Heaven where we can eternally progress. It brings much hope and peace to my life!

Hope everyone has a great week at home!

Love you all!

Elder Bastian