Well, to start of my letter, Elder Meeks has moved to 台北 (Taipei). And with that, I have gotten a new companion, who is 大同半 (Senior Companion) in both aspects of things. While I was with Elder Meeks, he was 大同半 in the aspect of being older, but I was 大同半 in the aspect of being taller. With Elder Ure, my breaker and new companion, he is both an older and taller missionary than I am. He is about 7 cm taller than I am (I am 196 cm), so he has broke to 2 meter barrier. He has been on his mission for five transfers now (I'm on my third) and has super good Chinese. He is from California, has three siblings (Older sister, older brother and younger brother) and has grown up in the church just like me. He also went to BYU before his mission and is studying music education.
As for my second transfer meeting, it was pretty stressful. What happens is they have everyone up on a power point and then your new companion appears next to you. So, it is stressful in the aspect of waiting to find out who your companion is going to be. As for my area, I am still in 苗栗 (Miaoli), so I get to show Elder Ure around, which means that I have to actually know where I am going. So far, I have been doing pretty well, but we have stayed in all the areas I know pretty well, which is basically the city of 苗栗 (Miaoli). But for these next couple of week, Elder Ure and I are looking at going to a lot of the other cities in our area, so we will be spending a good amount of money on traveling over the next couple of weeks. Should be fun.
As for Elder Meeks and my last P-day together, we went with a bunch of other Elders to the 新竹 (xin zhu) beach, which was super fun. The best part about it was that at the beach, they actually had a bunch of little restaurants/stands that were selling seafood, and it was good. The shrimp that we got was pry the best part. After eating, we all went down on the beach and played American football til about 4:30, when we had to go back to home to get ready for our 請客 (Dinner invitation) at 6. As always, the 李家庭 (Li Family) took us out to eat dinner with them. Usually we eat at their house, but since with was Elder Meeks last time seeing them, they took us out to an Italian restaurant. It was pretty good food, but in reality, the best part of it was getting to meet with the 李家庭 (Li Family) again this week. They really are a super cool family!
As for 請客 (Dinner invitations) this week, we had a ton. Since Elder Meeks has been here for nine months, he knows all the members super well. Over the space of 3 days, we had five 請客 (Dinner invitations), and they were all amazing, the best part of it just being that we were getting a lot of authentic Taiwanese food. However, one of the 請客 was with a Filipino family, so we had some Filipino food which was also super good.
As for teaching this week, we were able to meet with a recent convert that has been having problems with smoking again. We have started visiting with him about twice a week again to give him support. He is a super nice guy and knows the gospel super well, just is having trouble overcoming his smoking addiction. With our visits, we have been working on him with going through the 12 step program, which seems to be helping. Right now we are on step three with him, but will pry be reviewing step two again with him this week because we feel we may have missed something with him when we were going through it with him.
We were also able to visit with Allen again this week. He really seems to be the golden investigator and it looks like he may be getting baptized here in the next month or two, depending on if he is willing to keep all of the commitments. So far with Allen, we have taught the first lessons and invited him to baptism, all of which he accepted without any problems. So over the next week, we are looking to teach the second lesson and set a solid date with him for a baptismal service.
Also, we had a member referral, which went really well. We taught him about prayer and the Book of Mormon, which he seemed pretty interested about. I don't know if is currently still interested in meeting with us, but I know we were able to plant a seed and maybe in the future he will be interested in learning more about the gospel.
Pry one of the harder things that we did this week was going through the area books. Before with Elder Meeks, we only went through the one area book that we knew about. But with cleaning out our only junk room, we found another five area books, which in return mean more people to call. So over the next transfer or so, I expect us calling everyone in the five new area books. Personally, I am not a huge fan of calling formers, but that is always because if is always pretty scary when you hit the call button, not knowing if the number is 空號 (Invalid), really the person, or someone else. But with that being said, it is cool calling and seeing if anyone that meet with the missionaries before would be willing to meet again. So far, out of the hundred or so that we have call, two people have set up with us for this week, so I will tell you about those next week.
Well, my time is about up for this week. I hope you all have a great week!! Thanks for all the prayers and letters.
我愛你們,
柯長老
Elder Okeson
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