week #80 Monday, Sept. 15, 2014

大家好！Hey everyone,

      This was a really good week. We went and did a bunch of BBQ's on Monday. I'm still super full from that. The first one was a member family. Super fun. Then on Monday night as we were contacting, we pass by a family who is having another bbq, we yell "happy mid-autumn festival". They then yelled "come eat with us". So we went over and ate with them, to find out it was a bunch of foreigners. We ate with some cambodians, indonesians, and a bunch of others. It was super crazy. We invited a few to come to church and they actually came!!!! 

     On Tuesday I went on exchanges with the elders in our four man. It was a super fun exchange, we contacted, taught lessons, and then we discussed how the district was doing. Wednesday, Thursday, both pretty good days.... Then on friday went on exchanges again. This exchange was pretty good. We had a lot of good lessons. The spirit was super strong. 

     Oh ya Wednesday, we had assistant exchanges. We were with Elder Sumsion. That was fun, that was my 4th exchange with him. It's fun serving around the same person for over half your mission.   I'm sorry, It seems like a lot happned but struggling to write a lot about it. Maybe next week I'll record to help have more stuff in it. 

     Something cool I studied this week though was in Ether 2. Brother of Jared is trying to fix the ships and make them able to bring them all the way to the promise land. He notices there are 3 main problems. 1）direction, they have no way to direct the boats 2)air, the ships would not have enough air 3)they would not have light. God answers the questions about direction and air. But then he leaves the light one up to Bro.of.Jared. This part puzzled me. Why is it he leaves the light one up to the Bro. of Jared? The air one could have been solved by Bro. of Jared...possibly, obviously the direction one needs the Lords approval. I have thought a bit more of that bit. I thought about how the Lord is the "light of the world", He is "the source of all light", it seems like it would be obvious that the Lord would be the center of this solution. But why is it something that the Lord didn't provide in the first instance. Then I thought about our investigator's, we show them the way (direction). But they can't be converted until they go and search for the "light". They must develop a desire, they must act on it, and then they will receive. I think this is a good comparison with the Bro. of Jared. He had to go and search for light, the Lord couldn't just give it to him. I'm not sure how close I am to that one. But maybe I found it...

Well that's all for now folks.

love you all,

 

Elder Brandon Bean

week #79 Monday, Sept. 8, 2014

Hey everyone,

     So this week was a blast. We went to Costco last week and bought a ton of food. So much food!  Muffins, m&m's, milk, pepper jack cheese, like we bought everything! But the best part is we bought a costco card!!! So as long as I'm able I'm going to go to costco for my groceries. Woot Woot! 

     Then we had another ZTM (zone training meeting) this last Tuesday. It seemed to go well. It's fun having Elder McCulloch here when he brings a great energy to almost every meeting he is in. Got the zone pumped up and everything. Then we went on exchanges with Donggang elders. Then after our lesson and while we were eating, I didn't feel so good. Turns out I got a nice bit of heat stroke. Felt dizzy, super hot, Elder Jiang (he's a taiwanese) asked me how I felt and was like "you probably have.....zhongshui" but he didn't know how to translate it, so we had a member look it up. And it means heat stroke. So we went and had to stop for a bit. Call apr, lay down, drink water. and eventually I overcame it and now I'm fine. Wooh!

      Wednesday we had the greatest english class ever. A student came in and since he was the only student we asked him what was going on in his life. He's 40 and lives with his parents (like most taiwanese) and was telling us lately they've been more and more angry because he's not married yet. So we had a english class on "How to date" soon more and more students came and we had a great discussion, on first dates, ensure a second date. It was the funniest/best english class we had. The entire class had a blast. 

      Thursday we had a long day. We were all over our area. In the morning we had to go to lingya and do a language evaluation. Afterwards we raced back to visit a LA (less active). (we skipped lunch to do so). We sat in a lesson for an hour where this man would not stop complaining and making excuses for why he was LA (even though we never even asked him about how he was enjoying the bible (he's been reading it so we just asked)) and he went on forever not listening to any advice we tried to give. We showed the mormon message "mountains to climb" and he ignored the entire time Elder Eyring was speaking and said "well it's different, I have all the trials in that video, so my life is worse" Finally after a long discussion he finally accepted for the ward to bring him the sacrement so he could retain his baptismal covenants. Then we raced over to visit an active member who served with Elder Mcculoch and I in Taizhong. She's a Sister Liu, her mother was just recently baptized. Afterwards went and had a feast at Costco because we hadn't eaten lunch yet. 

      Our investigator XuDx has been doing awesome lately. His biggest concern is the fact that his mom might oppose him getting baptized. But we might have overcame that concern on Friday.

      Well that's all for this week. All is great, loving the mission, loving my companion, loving my area and my investigators. 

 

with love, 

 

Elder Bean

week #78 Monday, Sept. 1, 2014

Hey everyone,

 

      It was a great week! Last week we went on the Ferris wheel on top of the Dream Mall. That was fun. Gotta see my area from a higher perspective. Then On Tuesday we went to help someone move. That was crazy, had to carry a fridge and a washer machine down 4 flights of stairs. Needless to say we were exhausted. Then we booked it to Zuoying to participate in their DTM (district training meeting). Good Dtm, then went on exchanges. We went out and taught a less active, had a good time, liaotianed a bit. Wednesday we had English class, good class, talked about writing stories, then had a great spiritual share watching the "Because of Him" video. If we had more non members in our class it would have been better....but still a good class. 

       Thursday we woke up bright and early to head up to Taichung. We got up at a whopping 4:30!!!I think I was so dead the entire train ride up. Slept most of the way. It was a great inspiring meeting as always. We discussed the importance of increasing our fundamentals. Being more effective. Came back, taught a great lesson to one of our amazing investigators. 

      One thing we've been trying to do is help our baptismal goals rollover. In order to do that better, we've decided to bring back project purification. We started it on Saturday and we've already seen a bunch of miracles from it. Yesterday a new investigator came to church and had a great time. He felt the spirit, we were able to help him realize what he was feeling and that if he recieved baptism, he would be able to feel that great feeling more. 

     This week was even better than the last. Love working with Elder Mcculoch. He's a great missionary, super creative, has a lot of fire. I love the area, excited for the next week, we have ZTM (zone training meeting), I'll try and have some good stories about it.

With love,

 

Elder Bean