Week 24

你好!

This week has truly been a blast, and quite a bit different than usual.  With last week's preparation day being changed to Wednesday, this weeks email is a little bit smaller.  But with that being said, there is still so much that happened.

To begin off though, just so everyone knows how to pronounce my companions name, it is said the same way as "your" is pronounced.  And his Chinese surname is 岳.  As a companionship, things really have been pretty good.  Probably the biggest change from Elder Meeks to Elder Ure was their methods of finding.  With Elder Ure, I am really learning how to be bold on the street.  We have had a couple of lessons on the street this week, but not too many.  The biggest thing though was that we were able to get a good number of people from finding this weeks to set up with us in this upcoming week.  We are both pretty excited about this because we have been looking for miracles to pick up the missionary work in 苗栗 (Miaoli).

One of the big miracles we saw this week was with the ward.  Up to now, it has been pretty hard getting the ward to support us in doing missionary work, but for some reason, things just clicked this week and we were able to get a lot of the stuff done that we needed.  The biggest thing was that our ward mission leader will be taking care of getting all of our 陪課 (Member present at the lesson) for us, which is super nice.  I am so use to having to call all the members to try and just find one 陪課, and now he is doing it all for us.  One of the other big ones was that our ward mission leader is going to set up doing 分開工作 (Splits) with the members, which by the sound of it, has not really ever been done in 苗栗 (Miaoli) before.

As for something that has just changed recently, was our studies schedule.  We just found out today that we will no longer be having Studies on Sunday because studies will only be done before Church.  And with our Church starting at 9 am and having PEC (Priesthood Executive Committee) at 8 am, we will not be having studies anymore on Sundays in 苗栗 (Miaoli).

Also, for changes, we are starting to see people pull out there winter coats.  So far Elder Ure and I have not needed to start wearing coats, but here in a couple of weeks, we may start wearing sweaters/vests.  We have both heard that you don't really need to wear a coat til mid December, but at that point, you will be wearing them til March/April.  So as for being cold, it is a humid cold.  Should be fun, wonder if it will we colder than what I experienced in Idaho last winter.

As for things that have happened here over the last last week, we got to attend a member baptism.  It was a great opportunity for us to be able to invite some of our less active to church.  Baptisms are truly a gift from God for missionaries because those are the times where you can really prepare people or help them remember their baptism.  It was really cool.

Also, the last thing for this week, Stake conference.  We went up to 竹北 for Saturday night priesthood meeting, stayed the night in 新竹 with Elder Nixon, my MTC companion, and went back to 竹北 for the Sunday Morning meeting.  It was super fun to be able to stay in 新竹 for the night too because that meant that we didn't need to return back to 苗栗 for the night, which is about a 45 minute train ride away.  That is probably one of the biggest things with 苗栗.  Everything is just so far away.  And to just give you an idea, I am also sending a map of my area home.  The big area, that is my area.  There is a lot of work that can be done.  Anyways, for the meeting in 竹北, it was super good.  Got to practice my Chinese a lot, and there were so many good talks.

Well, my time is about up.  Thanks for all the emails and prayers.

我愛你們,

柯長老

Elder Okeson