so this week as usual has been an amazing one! i swear i get more and more tired as the mission goes on but its a good kind of tired, the kind of tired where you know you have done a lot haha 🙂 the biggest things this week:

first we are going to be having a baptism this saturday!! its jiang meng zhen!! she is legit and im excited to see her make this step! i have loved working with her! she the most shy investigator that i have ever had to work with! she is legit i love her! 🙂

then we had hong yu ting decide that she can face that member she was kind of scared of and came to church!! super sweet! then that night i called her to see how she liked it and all that and then she started asking about her baptismal interview and stuff so she is back on track for baptism!! im so excited for her!!! 🙂 Elder Welch and i have been able to see some great success and progress with our investigators here in gui shan. we have been blessed with a great area!

funny story! so while we were on exchanges (so i wasn’t here for this) Elder Welch went with Elder Bell and while they were biking to an appointment elder Welch decided to yell out to a guy walking on the side of the street "Shuai Ge!!" which just means Handsome Man. and after that the guy yelled something back but they didn’t hear what he said. but anyway they came up to a red light and stopped. while they were talking to eachother elder Welch said "i was talking to Elder Bell and then i felt a hand come on my back so i turned to see who it was and when i looked over there was a big ugly russian looking at me with his face very close to mine!! and he said *Russian Accent* ‘you have got to be careful in this country’ it was so scary!" him telling this story was seriously soo funny!! that isn’t something that happens everyday in Taiwan haha 🙂 maybe it does for Greg Dorius he’s in russia right now 🙂 but anyway thats my story for this week!

so my dad sent me something that i think has a lot of truth in it that i would like to share. just about love and the effect it has on those we work with and associate with, i have seen this in my missionary work.

"The lesson is that when we show love to another, that love softens them and has the power to change them if they will let it. When someone feels loved, they are drawn to the one who loves them. This applies to all of us. It applies to our relationship with Christ. It applies to missionaries. As we show sincere, heart-felt love to those we teach, in fact everyone we meet, they feel that love, and it helps them choose happiness and good things, and they are drawn to us and what makes us good, just as we are drawn to the Savior."

go be awesome everybody, sharing the gospel is simply and act of love. as we live the gospel and help those around us live the gospel we are showing our love for them and our loving heavenly father. and look up the scripture in my heading its great, given me a lot of strength recently! love you all!

孟天鴻長老

Elder Miner

so this week as usual has been an amazing one! i swear i get more and more tired as the mission goes on but its a good kind of tired, the kind of tired where you know you have done a lot haha 🙂 the biggest things this week:

first we are going to be having a baptism this saturday!! its jiang meng zhen!! she is legit and im excited to see her make this step! i have loved working with her! she the most shy investigator that i have ever had to work with! she is legit i love her! 🙂

then we had hong yu ting decide that she can face that member she was kind of scared of and came to church!! super sweet! then that night i called her to see how she liked it and all that and then she started asking about her baptismal interview and stuff so she is back on track for baptism!! im so excited for her!!! 🙂 Elder Welch and i have been able to see some great success and progress with our investigators here in gui shan. we have been blessed with a great area!

funny story! so while we were on exchanges (so i wasn’t here for this) Elder Welch went with Elder Bell and while they were biking to an appointment elder Welch decided to yell out to a guy walking on the side of the street "Shuai Ge!!" which just means Handsome Man. and after that the guy yelled something back but they didn’t hear what he said. but anyway they came up to a red light and stopped. while they were talking to eachother elder Welch said "i was talking to Elder Bell and then i felt a hand come on my back so i turned to see who it was and when i looked over there was a big ugly russian looking at me with his face very close to mine!! and he said *Russian Accent* ‘you have got to be careful in this country’ it was so scary!" him telling this story was seriously soo funny!! that isn’t something that happens everyday in Taiwan haha 🙂 maybe it does for Greg Dorius he’s in russia right now 🙂 but anyway thats my story for this week!

so my dad sent me something that i think has a lot of truth in it that i would like to share. just about love and the effect it has on those we work with and associate with, i have seen this in my missionary work.

"The lesson is that when we show love to another, that love softens them and has the power to change them if they will let it. When someone feels loved, they are drawn to the one who loves them. This applies to all of us. It applies to our relationship with Christ. It applies to missionaries. As we show sincere, heart-felt love to those we teach, in fact everyone we meet, they feel that love, and it helps them choose happiness and good things, and they are drawn to us and what makes us good, just as we are drawn to the Savior."

go be awesome everybody, sharing the gospel is simply and act of love. as we live the gospel and help those around us live the gospel we are showing our love for them and our loving heavenly father. and look up the scripture in my heading its great, given me a lot of strength recently! love you all!

孟天鴻長老

Elder Miner

This week was another great one! full of ups and downs with our investigators! we had one investigator come out and was just all the sudden all for baptism!! she passed her interview yesterday!!! she will be baptized on the 28th! she is jiang meng zhen 🙂 she is such a cool girl! she’s 13. then there is hong yu ting who has the same baptismal date as jiang meng zhen but she called yesterday and actually said that she doesn’t know if she wants to get baptized because of one member in the ward… like… come on… she loves every little bit of the things we share with her and im so stoked for her we are going to kind of have a make it or break it lesson with her tomorrow and see if we can get her to focus on those things that the gospel is ment to do, not just the members of the church. she’s so cool though1 im excited for her 🙂

other than that this week has been good, training is a blast and my companion is legit! he is such a hard worker and im proud of the missionary he has become in these two transfers! i love the gospel, its seriously so amazing! being out here and helping all these people who face challanges every day see that the best way to overcome these is to rely on the savior of the world. it can’t get much better than that!! stick to the basics of CPR Church Prayer and Reading and you can overcome the challanges of mortal life. thats a promise from our Heavenly Father and Me haha love you all! until next week!

elder Miner

after a hard day of work… ahah

and my goob of a companion 🙂

this week was an amazing week. we had the chance to see you zhen jia baptized!!!!! he is doing so good, and it made me so happy to see the changes and the experiences he has had. he has had a lot of support from the ward and friends in this process as well which is super awesome to see 🙂 i am glad that we have been able to work with him and also that my companion was able to help him be baptized and we have been able to see two others that are looking like they are going to be baptized in this month as well but we will keep working with them 🙂 the mission is so awesome!!

i had an amazing time skyping my family today and kind of flips me out that i will be seeing them in person next time i see them… weird… but thats forever away… 🙂 i seriously love my famliy to death! the support they have given me and just them being them is super a strength for me. im so glad i have the famliy that i have. so here is a picture of me and them and also with you zhen jia and his baptism! super sick!!! 🙂

love you all! keep working no matter how tired you get, its called endure to the end for a reason!! 🙂

so this week was a sick one! we have a baptism this week on friday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i invite you all to come if you have time 😉 haha just kidding don’t fly out here haha! anyway he is super sick he is 游振嘉 you zhen jia and i love working with him and all of our investigators! super stoked for them all! we also have another investigator that is working for baptism on the 21st of this month and she is sooo on course right now! she is 洪鈺婷hong yu ting i love them both so much! super stoked for the progress they are making and just life as a missionary! 🙂 super excited for them! just keep praying for them that’d be great 🙂 also we get to skype this next week!!! super excited for that!! can’t wait to see the famliy all again!! 🙂

thats about it honestly just working hard and seeing miracles is about all 🙂 love you all! till next week! 🙂

Elder Miner

so this week has probably been one of the most tireing of my entire mission. we had so much work to do and we worked with so many investigators and are having a baptism next week!! no matter how tiring the week was i am so greatful for the blessing that the lord has allowed us to see from the work we put into all of our investigators! we have 3 right now that are looking super solid for baptism!! their names are you zhen jia 5/6, jiang meng zhen5/15, and hong yu ting5/21. if everything goes well that will be one per week pretty much… yay!! finally!! 🙂 so stoked!!

just a little something that i learned this week hard work pays off, god is a god of miracles, and lastly love makes the world go round. Heavenly Father loves us thats a fact no matter who we are, what we decide to do, and what our situation is. i love you all! scripture for the day Matthew 22: 36-40 good stuff! invite you to read it and live it! 🙂 now we are off to go play some board games 🙂 love you all!!

Elder Miner

hey everyone!

this week was such a legit week!!!! we have been working with a new famliy the huang family they came to church and they set a baptismal date too! its for the 30th of this month 😆 they are so legit!! we have seen some really great miracles this week and i have never been more excited for so many people before! we literally have just been blessed! we have also found a new investigator that is 18 years old and looking for his purpose in life! he has definitely been prepared by the lord and has also set a date for the 30th of this month! super stoked!!

funny story really quick! so we had a lesson with this 13 year old investigator, who also has a date for the 15th of next month. We were reading lehi’s dream with her and just talking about the translation of it and the representation of the iron rod, tree of life, etc. then when we were talking about the rod she asked "well can you just hold onto it for a while then let go and just grab onto it again and still make it to the tree" i told her "no we must continually hold onto the rod in order to get to the tree and stay by the tree and receive all those blessings" super simple right? but then (something you need to understand about her really quick is that for all the lessons up until now she hasn’t said much of anything to anything we say haha! she’s a pretty quiet girl until you get to know her and she only started to open up now 🙂 ) but then after my response she said "but there is no way! if you do that for your whole life your hand will get tired!!" hahahaha now when she said that we all just started busting up laughing! i guess it just sounds funnier in chinese… 🙂 but it was super funny!

I do want to say one thing, she is right it is tiring and we will get extremely tired at times. If you have read that story before it talks about those that held tight all the way there then when they finally made it to the tree they collapsed and were obviously exhausted from the effort and the long walk they had to make. They were tired, but just as everyone can when they made that journey they were able to partake of the fruit and recieve the blessings from it. i just want to bear testimony that these blessing are real! we are able to see and be part of these amazing blessings! but something that is also very important to remember is that we must hold strong to that rod in order to recieve these and then when we make it to that tree we must stay by the tree!!! there is no reason to leave the tree for the fake pleasures of the world, its just not the same and cannot be replaced.

Love you all! have an amazing week!

Elder Miner

PS. im super jealous that you all get to listen to General Conference a week early… but i still love you 🙂

so, life is good and life is great! 🙂 we have had a great week of work and the sun finally came out! we have seen so many great miracles while working this week! we have seen a new investigator you zhen jia that has set a baptismal date! he had some concerns but we were able to talk with him about them and really just work with him he is so legit 🙂

so this week nothing super crazy happened aside from that so… ill just share a little something about the savior 好不好? 🙂 so this week i was reading through preach my gospel this week. They have a list of scriptures that just straight testify of christ and its so legit! one that i really loved was 2 nephi 31-33 its just straight testimony of christ and the necessity of him and his atonement. I just want to bear my simple testimony of the reality of our Loving and Living savior. I have come to realize through my personal experience and the miracles i have seen that he truly has a hand in every aspect of our lives! the fact that he has suffered and was ressurected for every one of us makes it possible for us to overcome death and overall progress! I love this gospel and i can personally promise that if we want to know of these basic truths you simply have to seek and pray for it! Our Heavenly Father is just waiting for us to ask, so Just do it! I love you all and i love this gospel!

So this week has been such a crazy one! to start off we knew transfers were coming but something i didn’t know was that i was training!!! so i got the call on Tuesday night while contacting, then we had Wednesday and then i picked up my baby on Thursday! super excited for this transfer and all that we are going to accomplish!! he is from Highland Utah and a solid guy! he went to American Heritage by Timpanogos soo… im not sure if my mom knows him or not! haha but anyway he is legit! sense he has gotten here we have been non-stop working which is the way it should be but i don’t know how to raise a kid! haha im kidding he’s not a kid but i im really going to be relying on the lord a lot for this one 🙂

This week has been a really good one, our investigators are progressing and im expecting to see a baptism this month! also two for next month! i know that its totally possible becuase we are working with Brother Ding and he is loving the gospel and all that he is learning! pray for him! then we have Lillian, and Amie they are both amazing! Lillian is 24 and everytime we meet she says that she just feels something thats different! (i love the spirit don’t you??) then Amie is a mom that just loves her famliy! we have such great investigators!

The church is true everybody! as we go about following the example that christ has set for us we will see blessings and as a result blessings. so everybody, go and follow the example of the savior! experiment on this teachings and you will see that each and every one of them will bring happiness and blessings!!

Love you all!

Elder Miner

so… Transfers have come again! we were lucky enough to stay together for these two transfers and this week that is likely going to change! Transfers are great and the worst thing ever at the same time. you spend long enough with one guy and you get to know him really well! you make some lifelong friends while out on the mission! we will see what happens next week with it all!

but anyway, this week we had the chance to go to the Lantern Festival here in Tao Yuan which was soooo legit! there was so much good food and just went with some fun members 🙂 then we had some good and some very stressful meetings with some RC’s haha it was interesting for sure! will have to ask me about that when i get home if you remember! haha then there was a super great exchange this week and i learned a lot! Elder Boyce if you know him… i don’t have a picture but… yeah! he’s from provo!

good news! ive mentioned brother 丁ding before, and he came to church again and he loves it! his exact words to me were. (well obviously not the exact words he speaks chinese…) "you know, when i come to church i learn how to apply the things that you teach me!" He’s such a humble guy and i love him and his family soo much!! also we had Leo! his chinese name is 李劍鋒 li jian feng, and in case you don’t know… that name is sick!! his name translated (or at least pretty close) is just sharp sword li! he’s a stud! he’s 17 and wants to join the military! he cam to church as well and is starting to open up with us more and more, i love getting to know him and just everyone we meet. they are awesome!

other than that… this week was great! Humility can either be forced upon us by a circumstance or it can be chosen. Choosing is always the better choice 🙂 i love you all and i love this gospel. Family is so much more important than we even know. The fact that we come to this crazy world with some of the best people is not a coincidence. we are all here for a reason and the only way we can truely understand that reason is through our communication with our father in heaven.

Love you all! until next week!

平安!

Elder Miner

this is our last zone picture this transfer!

and this guy may or may not be famous….