This has definitely been an interesting week, especially with all of the new missionaries that came in. There have been a good number of changes with our district and zone. Since the new missionaries arrived, they created a new zone, and 苗栗 (Miaoli) is a part of it. But I will get to that in a bit.
Probably the biggest thing for this week was the finding that we have been doing. We have sadly not had too much success, but we know that we are working hard, which I guess is the most important part. For finding, we have been doing two different types, one being contacting and the other is tracking. Both of them have their challenges and their benefits. With contacting, we are able to talk to more college students who generally show more interest at first but then do not really want to learn any more. As for tracking, we generally able to talk to more of the parents and grandparents who don't really want to talk. They always give us the excuse of being Buddhist or start talking 台語 (Tai yu, Taiwanese) saying that they don't understand. However, when they do let us in, there in generally a true interest with meeting with us. Elder Meeks though has told me that generally for every 100 doors you knock, you may be able to actually talk with one of them, which so far in my mission seems pretty accurate.
One of the other things that we have been focusing on more recently is English Boarding, which is inviting people to come to our English class on Wednesday. So far though, we haven't seen any success from it, but we are hoping that at some point, we will be able to get a few more students. As of right now, we have three people attending the class, and they all speak pretty good English. Because of that, we have been having a little more fun with the class. We have been teaching the usual lessons with a little extra. The little extra are tongue twisters. The only thing is though, that we have about used up all of the tongue twisters that we could remember, so if you have any suggestions we could use them.
As I mentioned at the start, we now have new missionaries in our district and a completely new zone, which consists of six of the eight companionship are in training, so our zone is really young. Pr0bably the best part about it though is that the zone is a lot smaller and closer, so we are able to do more things as a zone. As for our district, we are back up to three companionship, two sets of elders and one of sisters. Also, for zone meeting, it only took us 30 minutes to get there rather than an hour, which was nice. Being out in 苗栗 (Miaoli) we are use to travelling a lot, but we always appreciate having things be a little closer to us. For zone meeting, we did a lot of role playing, mainly to do with setting more baptismal dates with people we meet.
As for my Chinese progress, it is still coming, and there is still plenty to go. Right now, I am just about finished with phase 1, which is all about religious Chinese. I am super excited about it because then I can start studying phase 2, which actually teaches you how to communicate with people on the street. It has about 2000 words, which if you memorize all of them, you are then considered to be fluent in Chinese.
One of the other crazy things that is coming up is the end of training. Elder Meeks and I have really been having a fun time together serving in 苗栗 (Miaoli). Probably the biggest thing that I have learned from him is how to get use to finding. The first time, I went finding with him, he said if it is not awkward, than you are not doing it right. So far, I have found that so true. It is always a challenge to just walk up to random people on the street and start talking to them. But with that being said, the purpose of it is good being able to share the gospel with everyone on the street.
As for weather this week, we have been blessed. As for the Taiwanese, I don't think they think it is that great because they are now needing to wear winter coats, but for us, we think it is amazing. It has been about 80 degrees for the past week and we are both praying that the weather continues into next week.
As for the biggest thing this week, we got to listen to General Conference. It was truly amazing. The biggest thing that popped out was the number of talks given by the Apostles about following the prophet. As for a talk that left the biggest impact on me was Elder Jörg Klebingat's talk in the Saturday Afternoon Session. The six points that talked about all seemed so simple but hard at the same time. My favorite quote from his talk was: "acknowledge and face your weaknesses, but don’t be immobilized by them, because some of them will be your companions until you depart this earth life. No matter what your current status, the very moment you voluntarily choose honest, joyful, daily repentance by striving to simply do and be your very best, the Savior’s Atonement envelops and follows you, as it were, wherever you go. Living in this manner, you can truly 'always retain a remission of your sins' (Mosiah 4:12) every hour of every day, every second of every minute, and thus be fully clean and acceptable before God all the time."
General Conference has so much amazing stuff in it and I know that as we work to apply the things that we learn in conference, it will be able to affect our lives in ways that we could never imagine.
Well, that was pretty much my week. I hope all of you have a great week and thanks for all the prayers!
Love,
柯長老
Elder Okeson
P.S. Sorry about no photos again this week. We both forgot our converters for our cameras again. I'll send the photos next week.
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