Elder Holland Visit

PICTURES!!!

2/23/2014 Maioli is the place to be!

Hey everyone! :) 

It was a pretty good week! We decided this week that we would really focus on the two investigators who are closest to baptism. We thought long and hard about the things we would teach them and also carefully considered the members that we would want to help us with the lessons we had a wonderful lesson with D--- j-----. We decided to teach her the law of tithing. It was such a spiritual lesson. We along with the bishop and a member friend of hers had dinner. Us missionaries really didn't say anything much and just let the members get to know her more while providing a great environment for the lesson. She began (during dinner) to share with us some financial troubles she had been having lately which provided the perfect opportunity to teach her the law of tithing. We shared with her (basically the members shared with her) about the blessings of tithing and before we even asked her if she was willing to follow it she said she was! She is set for baptismal interview this week. 

Our baptismal candidate is doing so well! He is a trash collector and lives a extremely humble lifestyle. He does not relate as well with the members and we have been thinking hard about who would have the ability to see through his outer appearance. There is a man in our ward who is severely handicapped. He is not able to walk and it is hard to understand him when he speaks. But we prayed about it and felt he would be the right one. Our lesson was held at his home and it was just incredible to see him care for this investigator we had. Pure love. Charity! It is what this stuff is all about! The investigator felt it as well. He recognizes he really needs to change his life and give up smoking. We are excited to see the progress he will make! 

As I have been studying the Old Testament I have come to know my Savior in a different way. I have also come to understand the blessings we are able to receive through obeying His commandments. If we ever want to know how to improve our prayers or the ways we can repent just read the Book of Psalms! I have come to realize the Savior has a tremendous desire to forgive and bless us. How man times did the children of Israel turn to idolatry. How many times did they break the Lord's commandments? countless! But whenever they changed they were forgiven and blessed. Amazing! Psalms 78:38

Our week didn't look amazing on paper but we feel we are being led by the Lord and accomplishing His work. We found an amazing 18 year old kid last night. Huge miracle because one of his friends is our member and has been planning on coming to church in two weeks from now. We prayed with him and he really felt the Spirit. We are excited to continue to meet with him. 

Elder Holland is just an incredible man. It was such an honor to be taught in such a small intimate setting by him. Every person attending must have felt the power of his message! He spoke for over an hour with no notes! I truly know that he is called of God. I hope that I will be able to make the changes he has invited me to make. 

My companion and I are doing well. We really enjoy doing the work together. We understand each other. We both just want to help people around us and work as hard as we can to do so. And we have an incredible amount of fun while doing it. I haven't been this happy since being with my trainer. The Lord has definitely blessed me with the opportunity to be with Elder Weng his last transfer. 

Git er done ya'll! 

Love

Elder Meeks

2/16/2014 - Moved to Miaoli

大家好! Hello everyone! 

I am super excited to be serving here in Miaoli. I know there is a reason that I was sent here and one of those reasons was for my companion. He is seriously a great guy and I have so much to learn from him. His Chinese is absolutely fantastic and he has an insanely large desire to share the gospel with all the people that we week. Considering the fact that he is a convert of four years makes me respect him way more. We really click and have a lot of similar traits and perspectives on things.  I'm really excited to see the miracles that we are going to see here in the next six weeks. 

I am super sad to leave some of the investigators that we had in xinban. There are at least 2 that I helped prepare for baptism that will be baptized next month. I feel like I really accomplished my purpose while I was there. I am so happy that our eternal investigator has decided to be baptized and I felt like my personality and the things I shared helped to contribute to that decision. I so excited for him. 

We had a huge miracle 2 days ago. Elder Mattson found a L-- D--while he was on exchanges and he happened to live in our area. We had our first meet with him and had a returned missionary help us Peike. It went so incredibly well. It was cool because at the end of the lesson L--- D-- said, "I don't understand the things that you just taught me but because I can tell you all are so happy I really want to." He set up a return appointment and a baptismal date. He has time to meet and come to church on Sundays so we are incredibly excited to keep meeting with him. He does not know where he comes from and why he is here on earth and we told him that we had the answers to those questions and gave him a book of Mormon. He was so excited and grateful that this source could help him find the answers to these questions. 

I always have doubts about my effectiveness as a missionary and if I am fulfilling the true purpose God wants me to. I hope that these feelings are natural. When I feel like this I always just try to put in a little more effort and the feelings go away for a while. It's pretty cool. When you are lost in the work you really see the blessings of being able to focus your energy on the work and you don't feel as tired either. 

The people here in Miaoli are more willing to talk than in Taibei. It is really cool. A lot of the time they are not really interested but at least you have a chance to talk to them before they reject you. There are so many interesting people that you have the opportunity to meet on the mission. I am excited to keep meeting them and teaching them and hopefully providing them with an opportunity to accept the gospel. 

Crazy story! So last week we were at English class. We do an English class every week. Pretty fun stuff. But anyway there was a crazy lady (lots of crazies in Taiwan) that came. At the end of the class she starts asking for a certain Elder who had already moved and was freaking out because he wasn't there. Anyway one of the other elders that I was with went and started talking to her. She then told him that she wanted to sing a song for him. She started singing this super sexual song and started like shaking her stuff around like nobodies business. My comp and I did not know what to do so we just left the poor guy by himself and were watching them from the hall. We were busting up laughing. It was seriously so funny. You would've had to been there to really appreciate it but ya. Good stuff. 

My first night I was here they had a Hakka festival. Hakka are a different kind of people that live in Taiwan. They are also from China but they speak a different language. The holiday is all about the dragon and it's crazy! They do tons of fireworks. And when I say tons I mean that I have heard fireworks going off constantly for three days! It was so cool this week during church I look out the window (9:00 in the morning) and got to watch a firework show during sacrament meeting. Only in Taiwan. But a part of the tradition is that a guy wears a dragon head and is carried around on this chair that is held in the air and everyone grabs tons of firecrackers lights them and throws them at him. CRAZINESS! He was bleeding like crazy. Only in Taiwan! \

Anyway I am a lot happier now that I have moved! :) 

Love ya'll

Elder Meeks

2/9/2014 - Two Brothers in Asia - Craziness

Family, friends and whoever else is reading!

The greatest thing we saw this week was members starting to get on board for missionary work., As we went to all of our Qingke throughout the week we focused on sharing with them the ways in which they can personally do missionary work. We also received 4 member referrals all of which have great potential. We are particularly excited for a Chen jiating. They are the parents of a member.

We have two investigators who have solid baptismal dates for Mar. 1st. L-- D-- and G--- J<. We met with both of them twice last week and they are still keeping the invites and such. We taught all of the commandments to guo JM and at the end she said, "That's it?" She was expecting there to be this huge change from her current life style which is already in line with all of the standards of the church excluding tithing. We might ever be able to push her date up a little bit. 

L-- D--- is still having a few faith problems. We did a lesson with him about changing his current perspective on life to an eternal perspective. We had a great review of the plan of salvation and he really saw the connection between how our actions on earth determine the next life. He is doing well and we will continue to pray for him. 

We had a lot of finding time this week and found some potential investigators. We also had a lot of call time this week because I was really sick for a couple of days throwing up. I believe I got food poisoning and it knocked me out pretty good. We do have some great set ups that came from our call time and are scheduled to meet with quite a few formers in the next week. 

I don't know if it was because I was sick or something else but it was a hard week in terms of companionship unity. For some reason my companion just doesn't particularly like me or my methods. I'm not quite sure which one it is. But it has been a very humbling experience as I have learned to think before I speak and be patient when others criticize me. I have really tried to change in order to have him not be so unsatisfied with the work we are doing. The problem is whenever I have a suggestion of something we should do he does this sigh, gets a sad look on his face and says, "oh okay we can do that." I've resorted to just letting him decide what we should do each day because for some reason whatever I decide is not the right choice. BUT I have most definitely learned some great things from him. He has a huge desire to help others and is incredibly obedient. Follows every invite to the T and we are seeing success from it. We aren't having contention though because I'm not arguing anymore which is good. It just has been hard to be positive the past couple of weeks. 

I had the opportunity to perform in front of over 300 people last night at a fireside which was super nerve racking. It was really cool though because even though I haven't played the song I played in over 10 months I performed it without any mistakes. The Lord was definitely on my side for that one. The fireside was great and had two recent converts who shared their testimonies. Super powerful! OOne received his doctorate from boston college in economics and the sounded incredibly intelligent. The other was a 21 year old girl who read the entire book of mormon and found the missionaries and asked them if she could be baptized. So cool! Miracles! 

Elder Holland is coming to do a fireside for just us missionaries on the 22nd. I can't tell you how excited I am to personally meet Elder Holland. He is truly the apostle I feel like I learn the most from and I know that he genuinely loves every person that he meets. 

The work her in Xinban is progressing really fast. The ward members are wonderful people. I've learned a lot from serving here especially about finding. More importantly I am learned how to become humble and love people for who they are. I truly do love the investigators I have worked with here. There are many who are so close to being baptized. The Lord is blessing all of his children. I know if the missionaries are in it together we will continue to see amazing miracles. 

Elder Meeks

2/2/2014 - Miracles

Happy New Year,

This week was amazing. We have seen as we are striving to follow the mission invites (especially regarding the baptism and forgiveness), becoming more unified as a companionship and increasing obedience we have seen miracles occur. At the beginning of the week we started out with one person having a baptismal date. We are super happy because this week we were able to invite and set baptismal dates for 4 more people. 

The first miracle we saw was on Tuesday night. It was about 8:40 and I figured we could head home and do some calls. As we were riding back Elder Chalmers had a feeling to stop and go down a road. We started talking to this guy that we saw and he wasn't interested so he suggested we say a prayer. During the prayer I had a feeling to knock on the door right to my left. We did and a woman opened the door. Elder Chalmers introduced ourselves as representatives of Jesus Christ and that our purpose here is to help people receive forgiveness through baptism. We explained a little further and we invited her to continue to meet with us and be baptized on Mar. 1st. She accepted our invitation and we are set up to meet with her again this week! The Spirit does it all we just have to listen.

We also set a baptismal date with an eternal investigator. He has been ready for a long time and we showed him the faith that he already had. We are helping him develop a habit of reading the scriptures and praying. Texting is definitely a blessing. He will be baptized Mar. 1st.

We met a W--- D-- about 2 weeks ago and had a lesson with him on the street. We set up with him again and shared the Restoration with him. He has been attending another church and really likes learning about Christ. He is definitely prepared. We invited him to baptized and he set a date for Mar. 1st. Can't wait to bring him to church next week. 

We met a kid named B----on the street yesterday and had a lesson with him. Taught him to pray and explained how baptism is able to take our bad feelings of regret and guilt away and asked him if he wanted to have this happen in his life. He said yes and we set a baptismal date with him for the 1st of Mar. The former 3 baptismal dates were all set on a Saturday. Needless to say that was the best Saturday of my mission so far. 

The Lord is really preparing people and by doing the invites of sharing of baptism and forgiveness in every contact with people we are starting to distinguish who the prepared people really are. God loves everybody and is preparing many people to hear the gospel. We will be blessed in the next coming month with tons of success if we keep doing what we're doing and always striving to become better. 

Our companionship is becoming better. We have really tried hard to just do the work this week and do it with the help of the Spirit. We have found as we have relied more heavily on the Spirit, prayer, member help, etc. we have seen many more miracles. We are going to work just as hard this week to see the same amount of success we saw last week. It is definitely possible. 

I personally am working on developing my testimony of Jesus Christ. I am starting to study more about testimony and how we develop it. I read a great talk by Elder Oaks entitled testimony from the May 2008 general conference. It described how we first must have a desire to receive a testimony, ask in humble prayer, fast, partake of the sacrament and most importantly we have to share with others. The only time a testimony is made stronger is in the bearing of it. When we bear our testimonies we have the opportunity to realize what we actually believe. It's pretty cool. 

We also saw one more miracle. We have a brother in our ward who has been a member for 10 years or more. Is also a returned missionary. His parents are very traditional Buddhists and he feels like now is the time to start helping them make contact with the church. We went and ate at their house for Guo Nian and then we set up a plan with this member. We are going to bring cookies over to their house in a few days and then ask if we can come over again and have the dad teach us how to play Majiang. His dad is very social and we are going to start holding a "family home evening" without them really knowing it. It is going to be a great thing and this member really feels like this is what the Lord wants us to do to help his parents start to get to know the church. I'm honored and blessed that this member trusts us this much to start helping his parents make contact with the church. 

We have eaten so much food this week it's been crazy. All of the members are feeding us every lunch and every dinner. It's been really amazing to meet so many of them and share spiritual messages with them. I love it. They all have huge testimonies. 

The work is moving because we're doing what we're supposed to be doing. 

Elder Meeks