Week 29

Service at the Disabled Youth Center.  Tic Tac Toe to an extreme.

Our Christmas tree from Care4

 你好!

To begin off, I hope that back home was not nearly as cold as it got here this past week.  If you look at the weather online (not sure what it will say), I am sure you will see with the wind and everything, I was time to wear layers of clothing.  We both were wearing 4 layers of clothing for the past couple of days, which seemed to make contacting a little challenging.  I have been so use to being able to grab tracks in seconds, but now with the cold, it takes more that a few seconds.  Contacting in the cold is definitely a lot different than contacting in the heat.

With that being said, we can definitely tell that Christmas is coming.  And we have done a couple of things to prepare.  To begin off, the ward is looking at doing a white elephant Christmas part.  Elder Ure and I are both still thinking of what would be the best thing to do for it, so if you have any genius ideas, we would love to hear them.  As for the more spiritual aspect of Christmas, we have been challenge to help people get baptized by meeting a certain goal.  For us, it looks like we will be having a baptism the day after Christmas, which is really exciting.  We started teaching Allen (張世興) back when I was with Elder Meeks, and now he looks like he is finally ready.  He is a super cool college student and has a huge desire to learn and grow.

As for describing this week, there is only one real word that can describe it, Crazy.  This week, we had two days where it literally was one lesson to the next.  It was super fun, but also a little stressful because of it all.  Making sure that you are on time for everything can sometimes be a little hard when people want to talk a lot. But with that being said, I would change it at all.  The two days for us that are usually the crazy days for us are Wednesday and Sunday.  This week, just with those two days, we had 9 lessons, 7 of which were with a member present.  As for this next week, just on those two days alone, it looks like we will be getting around 11 on those two days.  It really is going to be fun.

Also, with making Wednesday crazy, we have English class and service.  English class does count as a lesson though because we teach at the end of the lesson.  But they were both really fun.  For the service this week we played "Don't Eat Pete," which they all loved.  We went out and bought M&Ms for them, which they really liked.  We found out that anything that includes snacks or food, they love the most.  So, we will be trying to play more games like that in the future.  They also wanted to play tic tac toe with us again, but the thing is that every week it changes just slightly, and this week was really crazy.  I have attached a photo of the tic tac toe we now play with them.  Just to let you know, this was not the game that we taught to them, they just felt like this was a better version of the game.  Also, I am not sure how turns work either, so you will see that one side is completely 'O's and the other is completely 'X's.  Elder Ure and I think that is more of a speed game now.  You can make your own conclusion when you see it too.  Let us know if you have any ideas for how to play.  We could really use some help to understand how to play the game with them.  It really is quite the challenge. :)

As for English Class, we played pry one of the hardest games I have done so far, but surprisingly, they did better than Elder Ure and I did at first.  The game was finding body parts or organs that began with all the letters in the alphabet.  Elder Ure and I got about 20 by ourselves.  Luckily, last Monday Mom helped me find the other six. The class though was able to get 22 with out any help, which we were pretty impressed about.  We had to help them find the last four after that.  The weirdest one that we used though was Zenith for Z.  Elder Ure found in the dictionary while I was teaching English.  He told us that it is pretty much a fancy name for joint, but it counts.

Also, for Sunday, which made this week a little crazy, was attending the Christmas devotional at the Chapel.  We were told that it started at 7 pm, but in reality, that was when it ended, so a member quickly downloaded it so that we could watch it together.  The funny part about it all was that they downloaded it in English, so Elder Ure got to practice his translating for a while til they figured out another option.  It was really the experience, especially since the first talk had a large portion being quoted from the Bible.  Elder Ure pretty much translated the general meaning of story.  Doing word for word on that was going to be impossible.

As for something cool that happened this week, it had to do with calling formers.  This past week, we worked on finishing up calling all of our formers that have cell phone numbers.  And we came across one that we actually had seen a month before, but decided that we should call her later, so we put her near the bottom of the call pile.  Just this last week we called her and invited her to come to church.  She was super willing.  At church on Sunday, she told us how this last week, she had been having a really hard time with work and everything, and then the missionaries called.  All Elder Ure and I were thinking was, timing.  If we had not held off on calling here, things may not have worked out so well.  So because of the timing and everything, it looks like this next few weeks we will be having the opportunity to meet with her and share more about the gospel, which is really exciting.

As for the last bit of my email, it has mixed feelings about it all, but over all it was funny experience.  To begin off, in my first couple of letters home when I got to 苗栗 (Miaoli), I mentioned multiple times that we really were out in the boonies, we have a huge area, and we don't really have much contact with people in the outside world meaning other people in the mission.  So, on the calendar, we saw that English Leader Training was on Thursday.  English Leader Training is basically a meeting for the leaders in a area to go to Taipei and learn what they need to do as the English Leader.  To let you know, Elder Ure is the English Leader, so I was just going to study during the meeting. So, Thursday morning, we arrive in Taipei around 9 am for the 10 am meeting.  At about 10 am, when we realized that we were pry the only ones in the building, we decided to go the the Mission office and ask them what was happening because no one was picking up their phones when we tried calling them.  All I can say was that we really surprised Elder and Sister Peterson.  They know we are pretty far out, so seeing us in the morning was really surprising.  They told us that Wednesday night everyone got notified that the English Leader Training meeting was cancelled.  The only thing was every did, but for some reason, we never got that notification.  So, we pretty much went to Taipei for the travel experience.  It was pretty fun to say the least though, we got to chat on the train for a bit which was nice.  With that being said though, we both had packages, so we actually got to pick them up and take them home.  It really was a nice bonus.  Thanks for the package from home. :)

Well, my time is about up for this week.  It was great to hear from everyone.

我愛你們還有聖誕節快樂,

柯長老

Elder Okeson

P.S.  As for language study this week, it is always fun to learn new crazy stuff.  While studying the vocab provided by the mission, came across this word: 殭屍 (Jiang1 shi1).  You can use google translate to find out what that one is.  And if you can't, let me know and I will tell you next week :)

Chen Chen says don't forget to go to church, read the scriptures, and say your prayers. 
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Week 28

Elder Okeson's District

你好!

Well, to begin off, I think the transfers are going by faster than they should be.  I am now starting my fourth transfer on the island, and it feels super crazy.  The only cool thing about it was that I started to think of how stuff has changed since I got on the island, and the biggest one probably has to do with language.  This week, I really have started noticing that I am understanding stuff.  For example, on Sunday, we had to go pick up a less active who lives in 公館, which is about a 25 minute drive away from the church. Elder Ure stayed for PEC.  I went with our ward mission leader to pick up the member.  The less active, who is Indonesian, and her boss who is not a member came to church.  The only thing was that I ended up doing a lot of translating for both of them because Katien can't speak that much Chinese.  It was really cool to see how much I could actually speak during it all.

This week, we got to meet with the 李家庭 (Li family), who have the two really cute twins.  It was really fun to see them again because they had not been able to come to church for the past two weeks.  During the visit, we shared the "He is the Gift" message, which is on mormon.org.  That is one thing we really have been focusing on this month is sharing about Christmas and the meaning of Christmas.  It really seemed like a good lesson.  The one thing that I noticed from the lesson, was that I am becoming like Dad a lot more.  They had a whole box of the dried sour prunes that Dad loves. You know the ones that no one else seems to like in the family.  I remember back home, thinking they really were not that good, but that has seriously changed.  I actually really like them.  My companion can't believe I actually liked them, and neither did I for a little while.

This week, we also had zone meeting, which was really good.  They really focused on the "He is the Gift" message as well.  The funniest part of the meeting though, was when one sets of Elders were reporting numbers at the beginning of the meeting.  Every zone meeting we report how many baptisms we had during the month and how many new investigators you got.  This set of Elders did have as high of numbers for those two, but they sure did have a good punch line for it all.  After writing their numbers down on the white board, he said "This month was like the dogs would say, 'ruff'."  It really was one of the memorable things from that zone conference along with the training about Jesus Christ being the Gift.  

We also had our English party this week.  We are usually suppose to have our English parties every six weeks, but because our English class was pretty small before.  We decided it was better to still have class those weeks, but play more games through out the lesson.  But for the English party, we played ping pong.  Some of the people at English party were pretty good too, which made it even more fun.  As for the lesson we taught at the end of the English class, we shared the video "He is the Gift." It may sound like a little bit of over kill, but it really is a good video.

As for exchanges this week, we had the opportunity to go with zone leaders.  Last time I went with Elder Anderson, so this time I got to go with Elder Bake.  It was really an interesting exchange for a couple of reasons.  First of all, I don't think he is even 5 foot 6, so there was a huge height differences.  Lots of people through out the night made comments on the height difference too.  Also, I found out how hard contacting can be if you don't have the same style as your companion.  I guess I have just been lucky so far with my two companions and all of our contacting types have been the same.  The funny thing about exchanges this time though was at the end of exchange, when Elder Ure and Elder Anderson were suppose to come to 苗栗 (Miaoli) to exchange back, but on accident took the wrong train.  Looks like I haven't really taught Elder Ure how to use the train system here yet, cause we ended up having to go find them.  It was really a funny experience.  I got to tease Elder Ure about that one for a little while too.

Something similar from two weeks ago and this last week, we meet another return missionary that served in 苗栗 (Miaoli) about five years ago.  He is from New Zealand and has super good Chinese.  It was really neat because he was able to help us find a few more of our less actives in the ward.  It really has been a huge miracle for this to happen two weeks in a row.  Just have to see if it will happen again this week.  That would really be another miracle.

As for our investigators, they all seem to be doing really well.  The biggest thing about them all is that this week, a good number of them actually attended church, which was really good.  At church we had 6 investigators,which really kind of blew our ward away.  They were really surprised to have that many investigators at church too.  And to be completely honest, we did not think that we actually get that many at church either.  We set our goal for the week to be 4, but we got 6 which just felt so good when we were counting the number of investigators at church. Also, this week we got to teach the third hour of church, talking about missionary work and updating the ward list with new photos and everything.  It was really fun.  And again, I am sure you can guess what we shared as the closing part of the lesson, "He is the Gift," and invited each and every one of them to share the Gift with a friend.  Our ward really is pretty awesome.

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

我愛你們,

柯長老

Elder Ure filled Elder Okeson's "empty" roll with bread.

The lone youth of the MiaoLi Ward

Week 27

你好!

This has yet again, been another amazing week.  So many miracles and fun things happened, which because of time, may be hard to get them all in this week, but I will try.

So, to begin the week off at p-day, we finally got to play volleyball in Taiwan.  We went with some college students to their school to play, which was pretty fun.  We played outside, which was a little weird, but we got to use to that part of it.  The only part hard part about playing volleyball again was that I could tell I had not played in a very long time.  As Graham told me in high school, my volleyball coach, I have white boy disease, and I was definitely feeling it on Monday.  I lost a large majority of my ability to jump, which felt really weird.  Guess I know what I am working on now during morning exercises now, jumping higher.

On Monday after p-day, we also got to meet with an old investigator from 2008.  It was really cool when we were calling formers because he was one of the few that actually set up with us and then actually came to the appointment.  It was really the coolest thing because when we meet with him, we really didn't understand why he was dropped in the first place.  He has a lot of interest in learning about the gospel and about just church in general.  It was a really cool experience, especially teaching about the restoration.  It is really is a powerful message we are able to share with people.

This week, we also got to meet with one of our new investigators, 謝先生 (Mr. Xie).  It was a really good lesson, but in my opinion, I would consider it one of my hardest lessons I have taught, with teaching the restoration.  On my mission, I have had plenty of times teaching the restoration, but with 謝先生, we really had to take it to the basics.  He comes from a family that doesn't have any religious background, so we were teaching everything has basic as possible.  For example, when we were teaching about prophets, we went from a normal definition of him having a man who has been called of God's, using His authority, to lead the church and its members to just being a leader for the church.  So, I am definitely learning how to teach the gospel in its most basic form, which is pretty good, but it is really making me think because most of the times, the people we are able to teach have a bit of background about religion.  Also, just to give you a little about 謝先生, he is a college student that also does Latin dancing all over Asia for his job.  The only thing about it was that when he first tried telling us, we both 聽不懂 (didn't understand), so he showed us some photos.  It looked really cool.

As for English class this week, we were teaching about emotions and played hangman.  The really fun part about it all though was the hang man.  With Chinese, they can't really play hangman so it was actually their first time playing it.  It really was fun to see the words that they were able to come up with.  The only thing though about our English class is that we only really have about seven people show up, and 3 of them are members.  We really have been wanting to split the class, but with so few people, it really is a challenge to get the support from the members because they do not really see them numbers coming from the English class.

This next little bit has to do with the power of music.  Recently, one of our converts has been having relapse with smoking and 檳榔 (bin lang, which is pretty much a bin lang nut with chewing tobacco in it), and has just been having trouble seeing the happiness in life.  His job is collecting recyclable items from off the street and getting money through that.  So because of that, his house is full of just items that can be recycled, which don't always looked the prettiest.  We have been talking to our ward about getting things to help him with his house, work and faith; and this week we got somewhere.  One of the members gave him a new CD player with some primary songs that he could listen to at home, and it was amazing to feel the difference.  The power of music can really change the entire feeling of an environment in only a second.  Since then, we haven't been able to visit him, but this upcoming week, we are excited to see the change that has happened because of the primary music.

As for something weird, this week was had the weirdest 請客 (Dinner invitation) with a less active.  We got 請 (invited) to a restaurant to eat the the less active.  And the entire time, the less active would not talk to us.  Half way through the lunch, the less active had to leave, so we ended up finishing our food by ourselves.  It was pry one of the weirder experiences I have had on my mission.

This week, we also got invited to attend the young single adults family home evening meeting to share a message and activity with them.  We taught about using prayer, scriptures and church as being the basis for us to be strong in the gospel.  The activity that went with it had one Book of Mormon, three knifes, and three bowls.  They had to figure out a way to use bowls and the knifes so that the Book of Mormon would not touch the table.  Not sure how exactly to explain it in the email, but the purpose of it is to show that as we use our scriptures, pray, and church, we will be able to avoid the largest temptations the world may throw at us.

As for a miracle this week, I am actually going to copy part of what my companion said in his email home.  "We were riding our bikes home on Saturday to drop some stuff off at home. As we were biking we heard someone call out 'Elders! We need to talk to you!' We stopped and turned around to see two Americans crossing the street towards us! Apparently it was a missionary who served in 苗栗 (Miaoli) thirteen years ago! It was a pretty impressive thing! They came to church the next day. We had a really good time talking about the people he met and working with him to help us find a few Less-Active members!"  Just little things like this are what make the coolest miracles.  We were not expecting it, but we were both grateful for it.

The other big thing for this week was that elections finally finished up.  Dad asked me if it was anything like his experience in Japan, of "I knew it was election time because for about a week before the election, the candidates and their supporters would drive around in big vans with signs and loud speakers.  The loud speakers would broadcast the candidates message throughout the neighborhood where they were driving.  I used to think that if I were Japanese, I would vote for whatever candidate did not use such obnoxious campaign methods."  My answer to that, is YES.  The only difference that it wasn't just for a week.  It started when I got to 苗栗, I just didn't actually know what was going on for a while.  But now that it is over, we actually get go through studies in the morning without one of the loud speaker cars driving by telling us to vote for one of the candidates.  It really is pretty nice.

Now for the biggest part of the week, Thanksgiving.  For some of the answers about Thanksgiving, we did not get mashed potatoes or stuffing, but we did get to eat turkey and a pie.  With that being said, the pie that was made was very similar to our first thanksgiving we had at SSIS our first year in China.  The one here actually looked like a pie, but other than that, it was pretty similar to the one at SSIS.  But other than that, it really really good.  It was pretty much a big pot luck.  And after everyone eat, we were asked to prepare a message and activity for the ward.  The message we prepared had to do with being thankful, and the activity was tug of war, which they loved.  It was really a good bonding time for the members and for us to be able to work with the members.  They really are great.

Well, looks like I was able to fit pretty much everything in.  Thanks for all the prayers and letters.

我愛你們,

柯長老

Elder Okeson

My husband and I returned to Taiwan 13 years after he served there. We were looking to find some of his new members. We couldn't get a hold of anyone, so we thought, maybe we could locate the missionaries in Miaoli. We said a prayer, left our hotel room, and not 2 minutes later, we saw your two sons flying down the streets on their bikes!! We couldn't believe it.

They looked so healthy, happy, handsome, and TALL!!!

We were able to visit with them at church the next day, too. Both my husband and I were so impressed with what great missionaries they are. Their Chinese is really good! The people of Miaoli love them. The kids and young people flock to them. They are both confident and full of light!!

What great sons you have raised.

Hope you are well,

Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA