transfer week

Sup my peeps,




This week was okay. It was another week of a lot of contacting and finding without very much success. But it's all good. Hopefully we will start to see some results. Lately we have been meeting with a lot of LA's and having some success in that area. An old bei bei in our ward has totally started coming back to church. He is such an amazing man and loves us to come and visit him. He also loves teaching us random games and puzzles and stuff. I have seen his countenance totally change and this has been the cause for a lot of happiness. I think that that might have been the reason I was sent here to Ankang. I truly love him. 

Our MM leader has been working a lot harder with us recently and I believe it will start to hasten the work here in Ankang. Until this last month I had only met with him 2 times. But now I can already see how the ward and the bishopric are starting to back us missionaries up. 

We had a pretty great experience with our eternal investigator L--- d-------. He is doing great as always. My companion started sharing with him some great steps to overcoming addiction and I felt like I saw the light bulb flash. He said that he really liked what my companion told him and that he would definitely start to try it this week. I'm excited to see what the outcome of his efforts are. Basically whatever he puts his mind to he will do. He is such an incredible guy. 

We gave out 4 Book of Mormons this week and all of the people we gave them to were super cool! I've found that I really am starting to like just contacting and chatting with people. Every week it gets easier and there are so many cool people in the world. Most people that we gave them to ended up not being interesting in meeting again with us but they definitely made my week brighter. One of the guys we contacted said when we brought up giving him a book, "As long as it is not the Bible" and so we gave him a Book of Mormon and he got a huge kick out of it. He took it graciously. 

One of our investigators has promised to attend general conference with us and I am very excited to see how he will react. He is so well versed in the Bible and the Book of Mormon and has recently taken a strong interest in the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. He just doesn't believe Joseph Smith can tell him what to eat and drink because he wasn't a doctor. Funny perspective. But I am really excited to have him come to conference with us and see the prophets speak. 

We have one other investigator who is very close to baptism but does not believe in modern day prophets. His wife is a member and he loves the churches teachings. He already believes the majority of the things we have taught him but has yet to develop his faith in modern day prophets. He also believes the Book of Mormon is true. The problem is he's left for Africa for a while so we are not able to meet with him right now but in the future the plan is to help him see develop his testimony in Joseph Smith, who translated the Book of Mormon, and then explain that the purpose of modern day prophets. It will be exciting to see how he responds. I know it will be good. 





It's been a little harder lately but the mission pres told us when we got on island that at about 4 months you'd start feelin the mission get hard. I guess they call it the mission wall or something like that. It should change soon. The thing that I love is that my language is always improving. I really do feel like I am so blessed. There are missionaries out here who have been here for over a year that have not so good Chinese and it shocks me. I'm so glad I can communicate and understand nearly everything that is going on around me. Even if I don't understand words I typically understand context. So nice. 




The rich, intelligent, and crazies are the people who talk to us here in Taiwan. It's so interesting. The average person really doesn't want anything to do with us. The people who invite us to come over or continue to hear the gospel are the ones who understand that you can learn something from everyone. We seriously meet with 4 geniuses every week. I have learned so much about life from them. 




Well once again I have overstayed my welcome but yea it's been a good week. I find out Wednesday if I transfer or not. I'd personally like a new experience. We'll see what happens. :) 




Love ya'll,




Elder Meeks

A time for finding...

This week was a week of finding. For some reason we were not able to get very many set-ups this week and so we had the great opportunity of contacting and tracting a bunch. A lot of the time it felt kind of ineffective but we had a few cool successes. I've discovered that I am really starting to like to just talk to people about their lives. My Chinese is getting to the point where I can basically understand everything people say. Phase 2 is the bomb! Everyday I hear words that I had learned just that morning. It's really cool. 

We visited an awesome LA family this week. They are they S--- J-----. I love visiting them. There situation is pretty sad but the gist of it is is that they are embarrassed to come back to church. They haven't been for over 5 years. They are totally okay with us missionaries visiting them and they express gratitude every time we come. I'm not quite sure how to help them. We will just continue meeting with them and loving them. We are also going to try and get a couple of members involved. They are a great family. 

There is a recent convert in our ward named W---- J-----. She recently has been called to be a ward missionary so we have been trying to give her some opportunities to Peike. She is still really young in the gospel so we have been using one of our eternal investigators when we ask her to Peike. The investigator is definitely the one teaching her about the gospel and it is so cool. I wish we could use this investigator as a Peike all the time. He has such a strong testimony but has some pretty big Word of Wisdom problems and he is also the oldest son of a very Buddhist family. Therefore his family really oppose. 

We also had a great opportunity to have correlation this week. Our MM leader is really busy and usually has not been to interested in having correlation meeting. This week we really pushed for it and it went really well. He told us that he really wants to start getting more involved. He also believes the members are ready to get more involved in the missionary work. There are many members who are so busy and have really rough lives therefore it is a little difficult for me to ask them to help out in the work. But when they do help us it always goes better. It is a great testimony to me how members make lessons much better. 

There is an older man in our ward who has been less active for a while. But the last two weeks he has come to church. We had the opportunity to help do some service for him last week and he took us to tepanyaki. It was such a great time. I really have grown to love this man. He said he has a new fire in him about coming to church and that meeting with us is his favorite time of the week. He has taught us how to do the Rubik's cube, Chinese Chess, and a bunch of random little puzzles and stuff. Such a great guy. His situation is very difficult as well. He has a daughter who is blind and deaf and doesn't really talk that much. She is 57 years old. He has taken care of her his entire life. Yesterday he was talking about how he used to be so angry at her but after he met the missionaries and understood what true repentance was he had a change in his outlook. He really believes God gave him this challenge to be a better person and he thanks him for it. I really admire him. 

We found a kid through some potential investigators that we have started to meet with. He is doing really well. We are excited to keep sharing the gospel with him. 

We are continuing to meet with W---- D------ who is doing really well. I really enjoy meeting with this man. Lately our visits with him have been a little short because of time constraints but every time we meet with him he teaches me something about how I can be a better missionary. This week his lesson was how we can get Taiwanese people to listen to us. He said here in Taiwan time is everything. Everyone's time is super important. So our goal is to somehow get people to realize the value of our message in a short contact. He told us that we need to start believing that the wisdom and knowledge we have to share is more important then the thing that person has to do in that moment. I thought that was really good advice.

Okay so funny story that I heard this week. I seriously laughed for about 10 minutes straight. There are two sisters in my zone that I'm super tight with. Sister J---- and Sister P-----. We always do P-Day stuff with them. But anyway, last Friday we all went and played frisbee together. Our tradition is to go to breakfast together after. At breakfast they were telling me that the night before the Sister training leader was on exchanges with the other missionary in their apartment. It was about 10:25 and they were gettin in their beds. They were kinda just laughing and joking around... having fun. (It's allowed on the mission). Sister O------, the Sister training leader, asks them if every night is just like a big sleep over and having fun. They are like, "Yea we all have a good time together." Sister J------ then asks, "So sister O------ what is your story? Where are you from?" Just trying to be nice of course. SHE THEN REPLIES, "Well I am planet earth where people go to bed on time and tell them their life stories next week when they are on exchanges." Turns over and doesn't talk anymore. SO RUDE!!! AND HILARIOUS! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sister J------ and Sister P------ did all they could do from bursting out in laughter. Oh these silly missionaries that become robots on the mission. Super sad... But they definitely provide some entertainment for us other missionaries. 

We are headed to the zoo today. It should be a good time. A few of my MTC peeps are gonna be kickin it with us so I am super stoked. 

I am enjoying my mission. My language ability is getting to the point where I can understand probably about 80 to 90% of what is being said. I'm still improving everyday in speaking skills and I know that God is definitely on my side. I don't know how I remember all the vocab I study everyday but it happens and it is such a huge blessing. My comp and I are doing fine, the work here in ankang is going well, and I'm happy for the most part. My goal is to become content. :)

Love ya'll sorry this is so long!

Elder Meeks

P.S. You know you are in Taiwan if people comment about how fat you are all the time. ;)