week #64 Monday, May 26, 2014

Hey everyone,

Yet another move call has flown by. This week was awesome. Let's try and go through. Monday, we went and visited a part member family. We were able to help the kids be a little bit more excited to come to church. We have to try and get the dad to be willing to do stuff.

Tuesday we went on exchanges with the first ward elders. Elder Faddis lead the area with Elder Cao (a Taiwanese missionary)!!!! I was super worried, Elder Cao our district leader suggested the idea, he did awesome though. They didn't get lost, they had lot's of great lessons, they seemed to have fun. Elder Faddis is doing great. While he was there Elder Peterson and I went to Dongqu, and we contacted a ton, tracted, found a lot of willing people. It was fun to chuanjiao over there in the city. Sometimes I forget what it's like in a city. 

 

Wednesday: We had a huge monsoon hit us, it rained hard core all day. And the fun part was I didn't wear my raingear, Taiwanese all thought I was crazy, they were staring at me, soaked riding in the rain, showing up to lessons dripping head to toe. But it was way fun. Somehow, I've convinced Elder Faddis to emulate my poor rain preparedness example. So lately we've been going with no rain gear. Then we had our English party, we taught them ballroom, played an English game. Ya had a fun time.

 

Thursday....Sorry I can't remember and I don't have my planner with me. We had a ton of lessons that day I remember, but other than that........

 

Friday: We did weekly planning, went and visited some investigators and families. An investigator texted us because of the rain and said he didn't want to meet. (a lot of Taiwanese do that because they think it's courteous of them to not make us go to them in the rain, they don't understand we still have to be outside anyways) We explained it to him and he's like, oh, ok we can meet. Then he saw us soaked and he kept telling us we were crazy, we should have stayed inside. Oh the joys of monsoon season :). 

Saturday: sorry once again forget...........awkward...

 

Sunday, day of miracles: So we were at church and about 5 of the less active's we've been working with came to church yesterday. I was super excited, also our new investigator with a baptismal date also came. We were fed an amazing lunch (curry rice) then we studied, went and prepared for a fireside lead by us missionaries. We tried to help the ward know what they can do to overcome their fears of sharing the gospel. It was a great fireside. We had most of the active families there. Great show. 

 

Well this was the week, we're finding, teaching, preparing people to be baptized. It's all looking good. I'm loving the work, I know Jesus Christ is our Savior. I'm honored to be his Representative in this part of his vineyard. I love the work.

 

Love,

Elder Brandon Bean 

week #63 Monday, May 18, 2014

Dear Family,

Yet another week has raced by. We've been busy trying to help the area in a multitude of different ways. We've spent a lot of the week finding. We've seen a lot of success. I'm excited for the upcoming week. 

This week we went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders.  I felt like it helped me a ton. I was with Elder Sumsion.  He's so much fun to serve with. It was a blast, we went and taught, found, and talked a ton about what we can do to be better missionaries. There was a member in the ward that just invited her friend to hear more about the gospel. She was so excited it was a great. Showed how much it'll help members when they start sharing the gospel. They will feel a fire for the work.

This week is definitely one of those trial weeks. They come and they go. They make us work harder, look for alternates, but they test us. There is still lot's to learn, and the only way to learn some of these things is by failing. Sometimes we don't even know what kind of missionary we are until we are coming back home every night, exhausted, we talked to everyone we could about the gospel, and we are willing to get up and work again. God has had several of his prophets tested, hardened israelites, prideful kings, wicked judges. They were chased out, spit upon, even killed. But that didn't stop them, it didn't mean they were bad teachers, but it was God's test for them. I haven't been kicked out of Guiren, I haven't been spit upon, or tortured to death. Until that day I have no reason to back down. I know this church is true. I know Jesus Christ is everyone's redeemer, both westener and eastener's. I know God loves everyone on the earth and I am so blessed to be able to go find his children here in Guiren.

Love you all,

Elder Bean

week # 61 Monday, May 4, 2014

Hey Everyone,

So this week has flown by. We went on Assistant exchanges on  Tuesday. Elder Vandiford came with us. I think it was great for Elder Faddis. I feel like he's changed the way he does missionary work all because of that exchange. We saw a lot of miracles, a ton of people really willing to meet and talk with us. We also had a crazy experience. So we had a member who asked us if we could try meeting with her daughters friend, who was getting into some bad stuff. She said her parents don't really teach her a lot of good morals, so we agreed and the day before she set up, we got a call from the mom, apparently this girl had tried to commit suicide. She had gotten in a fight with her mom and had decided no one cared about her, in the end she didn't finish, a teacher found her, and the member who knew her, has been taking care of her, helping her more, and told us to prepare a lesson completely on how she's a daughter of God. We did just that, I was a little worried because it seemed she wasn't really listening to us. But there were a few moments in that lesson that I realized this was having an effect on her. One was the scripture we shared Alma 7:11-13, she actually payed very close attention to those words, then we gave her, her own Book of Mormon, she seemed to treasure it as we told her she could put her name in it. Then at the very end of the lessons we ended her and her friend (the members daughter went to the elevator and almost everyone was cleaning up and I stopped them and told her "Hey C, it was great to meet you, until next time" And I felt like the spirit helped her know that we weren't just here for that hour, but would be praying and wanting to help her even when she wasn't around. It was a really interesting experience.

Let's see saturday we baptized V, she did great. Her mom came, seemed to enjoy the baptismal service. After she was baptized V said to me "That was so much fun!" She said she felt clean, and is just so happy from it. She's loving life and seems like the ward is doing well about caring for her. 

We also had a great miracle last night This week we went to go find a potential investigators at their house, I thought we pulled up to it. We went to the door, knocked and a lady I didn't recognize came to the door. After talking to her, we discovered she was not the person we came to visit, but she was a former investigator from 2 years ago, and has interest in our church. It was an amazing miracle. 

Well I think that's all for this week love ya all wish you well.  - Elder Brandon Bean 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

week #60 Monday, April 28, 2014

Dear Friends and Family,

     Well it's been another week yet again. So we've had a pretty crazy week, busy filled with ups and downs. Let's try and talk about what happened. 

     So Elder Faddis and I have been really working on our language study plans this week. He's making plans to pass off the lesson's in Chinese, while he was making his plan, I made a plan for myself, I'm gonna try improving my ability to translate in meetings, videos, etc. It came up because I've realized I've had to translate a lot more recently and I'm not as talented at it. So I have some plans for the upcoming weeks.

     Wednesday came around and we were trying to help one of our investigator's get her interview so Elder Gassman came to our english class while Elder Faddis went up there. But our investigator didn't show up. So we called her up, she said she couldn't come...we tried explaining the zone leader was there, she talks to her parents and she says still can't come, but then she talks to parents more and says she could come after 8:30, she shows up finally at 9 o clock, but her dad came with her. At first we were really worried he would say he doesn't want her to be baptized but....he just had questions about her going to college outside of Taiwan.....so he was fine with her getting baptized and she passed her interview! So She'll be baptized this Saturday. 

     We rescued a Phillapeno member yesterday. He got a calling and everything, so we were pretty excited. All the members have been great at showing they care about him. They invited him to lunch and dinner yesterday. 

We had interviews this week, mine seemed to go fine. I've decided to switch over to the Chinese book of mormon, no more English. It's been going okay for the past week. 

     Cool! Well this week we had a really great expereince helping a family do FHE. At the end of it, it seemed that it wasn't that effective and we felt like we wasted the last hour of the week but last night before we went to bed we get a text from the mom telling us thank you so much for helping her do FHE, her son and she enjoyed it a lot, she said she hasn't been that happy in a while. It was really cool. Definitely glad we did it for that family, in fact I'll probably try and go and help more families do just that. 

     I know that our prophets are inspired of God, I know that they know how to help families have the most happiness. I love the church I love the family unit. I can't wait to go help more families find this joy. 

Until next week

Elder Bean