July 17, 2016 - Chinese Proverb

Not too much happened this week so I thought I could just share what has been on my mind.

In my time as a missionary I have memorized this ancient proverb by Chinese philosopher Mencius. Mencius is the most famous Confucian after Confucius himself. I say it to myself as I ride my bike. The proverb basically translates like this.

"If heaven wanted to give a man a mission it would first grind down his mind. It would exhaust his body. It would allow him to starve. It would deprive him of worldly things and constantly put obstacles in his way. Only by doing this would he be fit for the task at hand. "

It is more beautiful in Chinese and it reminds me of what all missionaries are trying to do. We don't spread the gospel to make lives easier. We spread the gospel to teach people to "choose the harder right rather than the easy wrong." We all have trials. We need to allow those trials to make us better, to wear us down so that we can be made into something better. If we let our trials bring us down and then submit to them then Satan has won. We need to pick ourselves up and fight to get past the trials that come our way. If we stay low, we will not become the people our Heavenly Father created us to be.

In Ether 12:27 it says, "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."

Question: What do you do to find people to teach?

We go to places with lots of people like the library, museum, parks, shopping malls and talk with everyone as we go. But it is sad to say that people just don't care about religion anymore. "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge and where is the knowledge we have lost in information." That is my feeling most of the time when I talk to people. 

I love you all and I hope that we can all stay on the old ship Zion.

p.s. Last week I went and got my erhu fixed and I was in heaven. It now sounds so good! 

July 10, 2016 - Typhoon, Sort Of

Well there was a crazy category 4 typhoon in Taiwan last Thursday night.  It had winds up to 140 MPH. It was huge!It made landfall on the east coast of the island. I am in the north central part of the island. The weird thing is, the storm completely missed us here in TaiZhong. We are protected by the mountains that separate us and TaiDong (Where the storm made landfall). We didn't even see a drop of rain. It really was strange! Everyone in the city was preparing for it all week. Other than the crazy storm prep this week, we went to a meeting with our new mission president, President Teh. He made some pretty big changes. We have a TaiZhong mission rule book and at the meeting president said "The white handbook is sufficient" and he told us all to throw away our old rule books and not to hold on to things of the past. Some rules were taken out and some were added to our new mission. We can now ride in the elevator of the church...! He also said I could play at EFY in August with David Archuletta. So that should be interesting!

My new companion Elder Gasser is really cool. He is enthusiastic, he likes sports and music. He is from Payson and their family raised some horses and he has four sisters and no brothers, just like me. 

We picked up our new mission T shirt. 

The character on the front is Zhong the zhong of Tai zhong  (台中) it means middle of the island. and Taibei means north of the island. Taidong means east of the island. Tainan means south of the island. They weren't too creative with their names, but very practical.

The abbreviation on the back stands for "Teach Repentance and Baptize converts"

The Chinese is "yu xinxin yu banfa" which means "With faith there is a way" 

​The back also says "With faith there is always a way" and the sleeve says "champions"  My old mission president, President Blickenstaff, always signed off his letters by saying "Sincerely President Blickenstaff Mentor of Champions" So that was kind of a cool little tribute to him.  

Independence Day party at English class

Silly Selfie as I left this morning. 

Because of the potential typhoon nothing else really happened this week. All of our plans got cancelled even though Taizhong was unaffected by the storm. 

I love you all!

Sincerely Elder Erwin

July 4, 2016 - Independence Day

This week was pretty cool. I got a chance to play my Erhu probably drove my companion nuts because it was pretty bad at first but it is definitely getting better. The picture kind of describes the way my companion probably felt listening to it, dark and sad...haha

We got a chance to teach some great lessons this week. Our twin little girl investigators came to a wedding that was held at the church and they had a lot of fun. We are working on their parents... they really love us but they are super busy on Sundays, so they just don't come to church. We also got to meet with our investigator Mark, he is really prepared and just wants to know the truth but he goes to Taibei every weekend... It is so hard sometimes to get people to church. 

There is more pressure to do well numbers wise because our mission focuses on that a lot. Our mission last year in Tainan zone baptized just as many people as the whole Taipei mission did. So there is a lot of pressure to be "lihai" (impressive or amazing) ... I know that it is not important but our mission has a culture that is kind of like that.

Since we are in the same Zone as the mission home we got to go and greet our new mission president when he got here. I don't know him too well yet but on Wednesday we are going to have a meet the mission president conference. My first president speaks fluent Mandarin but my new one doesn't. His wife is Pilipino and he is half Pilipino. My new mission has a super special situation because he isn't released as a member of the first presidency of the 70 and he will only be here for 2 years so he can more quickly return to his other things he has to do. It makes me wonder why they sent him here in the first place. Maybe he is supposed to do something special.

For the Independence Day our district went hiking!! Super American! I drank a coconut that was pretty cool and my district took a pic at the top of the mountain together. It was a lot of fun. The only thing that in concerning are the spiders that are bigger than my head! My companion, Elder Gasser, is next to me wearing the Taiwan flag T-shirt. We all went and ate ice cream and hamburgers in order to celebrate. It was a good celebration of America's independence here on the other side of the world. 

Nothing too crazy happened this past week... There is supposed to be a typhoon in the upcoming days. That is always super fun makes our days super crazy. 

Sincerely, Elder Erwin

 
​God bless America!

Pictures

Independence day hike with my district.  We enjoyed a coconut drink in the mountains. View from our hike. Taiwan is very green.

June 26, 2016 - New Companion

Dear Family and Friends,

Spiritual: This week the most spiritual thing for sure was Saturday when 8 people in our district were baptized 4 of them were from our ward. We were so happy to see a married and soon to be married couple be baptized in the other ward. It felt so special, a family and a soon to be family that were all starting a new life. At their baptismal service however I became fairly ill. I felt dizzy and nauseous. Later it started getting worse and worse down to the point where I was on my knees in the bathroom sick to my stomach. I could barely stand afterwards.

At our baptismal service that night I was originally going to help the sister's investigator be baptized and one of our investigators, but I could hardly stand. Elder Nipper and I prayed for strength to accomplish all of the things that we needed to. I was asked to play the violin and in the end was able to get up and play the musical number and quickly return to my seat. I had a long bike ride home but was so grateful to just have a chance to rest. The baptismal service was really good. There was such a special spirit to it all. I was grateful for strength beyond my own.

Fun: Well this week we have eaten a ton of mango ice cream... because of how hot it is. Don't worry mom, we call it ice cream but it has no dairy in it. It's more of a shaved ice.  We were just really busy all week I can't think of anything to especially fun. I will send pics of everything that happened this week in next week's email. I forgot to bring my SD card reader.

I got a new companion on Monday. Elder Nipper finished his mission and is headed home. My new companion's name is Elder Gasser and he is from Salem, Utah. He has been in Taiwan one transfer (six weeks) less than me. I am the senior companion.

One of the members here gave me an erhu. What is an drhu you might ask? It is the Chinese violin. They gave it to me after hearing me play the violin. They said they were going to get rid of it anyway. I have fixed it up a little bit. I really need to get it taken to a professional to get it completely repaired.

I love you all sorry this week's email is so short. I am still just going at a million miles an hour.

I love you.

 Sincerely,

 Elder Erwin

*These pictures are of me at President Blinkenstaff's last zone conference, and a picture of my new erhu.