It truly is a small world!! On Sunday, the Bishop and his wife came up to me and started telling me about how they knew a missionary that served here and lives in Suzhou. At first, I thought they meant Elder Richardson, but then they mentioned the Bensons and it all connected up. It is really cool how my first area is Sister Benson's hometown.
Now for the week. This has been a week tons of miracles and experiences, none of which were food though. All of those experiences were last week. As for this week, the biggest experience I had was going on splits with the Elders in 頭份 (Tou fen), which was fun. Elder Shelton is on his third transfer and just barely passed on phase 1, which says that you can teach all of the lessons without a problem. He is about 6 foot 3, so we may not have had the Chinese, but we did have the height. It was really fun. Along with being on splits, it was the first time that it rained and that I did tracking. It was crazy. There was an intersection that we rode through that had about five inches of water. It was really cool. Also, with there being that much rain, I am sure you can guess I was soaked, with the exception of the parts that my poncho could cover. One funny thing I found out though is that my shoes hold water pretty well, guess water proofing the shoes also means it helps keep the water in the shoe too. So we were completely soaked as we were tracking. It was really fun. A good number of Taiwanese people told us we were crazy, but it was really fun.
As for miracles this week, we got three very possible new investigators. We have not meet with them again, but when we do, than they will be considered new investigators. Probably the coolest one out of the three was a 17 year old. His American name is Jack. He told us how about a month ago, he was really having a hard time in his life and started looking for something out there. One of his friends introduced him to their church, a local church in Miao li. So he already knows how to pray and he already believes in God, which is not very common in Taiwan. So we talked to him for about fifteen minutes on the street. About half way through, we asked for his number so that we could see about meeting with him to explain more about what we believed. He gave us his number and then we just kept talking. At the end, Elder Meeks felt prompted that we should pray with him. When he finished the prayer, we all could feel the spirit. It was so cool. We knew Jake felt it too because he looked pretty happy too. He then told us he thought he may have put in the wrong number, and just wanted to check. When he saw the number, he told us it was wrong and pretty much changed the entire number. It was really pretty cool to see how prayer can affect people and bring them to have a desire to find out more about our message. The one cool thing before this miracle, was that we actually had an appointment set up with another investigator, but he got delayed by thirty minutes, so we decided to go out contacting and that was when we meet Jack. It really is cool how everything just worked out with our investigator being late and us running into Jack as he was leaving from a different store as well.
As for food, we didn't have anything crazy to eat, but we were blessed in that we had four qing ke, dinner invitations. This was also a miracle as well, but it is a little more hidden. Since we have spent so much money on travelling this past month, we have been running low on money and just haven't had time to send in the reimbursement papers to get some of the travel money back. That is where the blessing comes in, that the Lord has blessed us with qing ke so that we should be able to make it to the end of the month with out too much trouble. On another note, for food, I have found a love for mangoes. The mangoes here are so good. For one of the qing ke, they had cut up five mangoes for Elder Meeks and myself. They were so good. The funny thing too is that all of the members know that the missionaries love mangoes, so they always give us mangoes. I would guess that while we have been here, we have eaten around 20 mangoes. They are soo good.
As for other things that happened this week, I have learned the meaning of physically tired. We had to bike everywhere on Saturday and because we had set everything up so close for timing so that we could get the most meetings out of the day, we were going as fast as possible. My legs were completely dead by the end of the night. The other thing about it though, was that the lessons were always on the opposite side of Miao li of where we were at for the previous lessons, so we were always biking a good distance. That made it pretty hard for Sunday though. Right now with my Chinese level, I don't fully understand everything that is being said, and with still being exhausted, it was extremely hard to stay awake, but I made it. My companion helped me, and I also helped him a little.
Lastly, my first goof up in Chinese. So far, I have been pretty safe, but this was my first time. We were at a qing ke, and the members invited me to bless the food. This wasn't my first time, so I had blessed the food before, but before they were all very basic. I really wanted this prayer to have more to it than just thanking for the opportunity to eat with the family and blessing the food. So, I added a little more. After dinner, Elder Meeks gave me a translation of what I actually said. I said "Please bless this food that it will help us over come our challenges and better understand our purpose here in this life." I didn't think I strung them together like that, but apparently I did. He got a kick out of it. So, there's my first goof in Chinese, and I am sure there will be plenty more to come.
Sorry for the shorter email this week, but I hope everything is going well at home and can't wait to heard about how the start of the school year is for everyone.
Love,
柯長老
Elder Okeson
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| Elder Okeson after a very wet day. |
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| Elder Meeks in a rain storm! |
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