Week 45

你好!

Well, this has truly been an amazing week.  The weather was great, by my definition; we found lots of new people to meet with; and then it was Easter week so there were plenty of things to talk to people about.

So to explain the weather, I really thought it was great, it was sunny all week.  The only thing about it being sunny was that we are starting to see some intense farmer tans with watches and the white shirt collar which makes it funny when we got to work out in the morning.  As for my companion though, he feels like the weather is pretty brutal.  This last week, he has found the true blessing of having a working air conditioner in our apartment.  My only thoughts about that, and I have told him this too, the worst of the summer heat is yet to come.  Also for the water shortage, it seems like the other week we got enough rain so we have not had to deal with the lack of water yet, but the ward is still telling us that we need to pray for more rain so that we won't have to do it in the months to come.

This week, we also had a few crazy things happen too.  First of all, we had a hornet in our apartment when I we were on exchanges, so Elder Brinton was lucky enough not to have to deal with the hornet.  All I can say was that we were super happy when we finally caught it so that we didn't have to worry about it disappearing in the apartment.  As for the other crazy thing, it was actually church.  As a missionary, one of the scariest things is when you finally get an investigator to church and you just have to pray every time that everything will work out normal.  Well, church was going great and then it hit half way through the third hour of church, when one of the members decided that he did not feel like the church leaders were spending the tithing money right and wanted to inform everyone about the way he felt. After about 15 minutes, the bishop was finally able to pull him aside and talk to him, but it really was pretty crazy.

As for some of the things that happened this week, we had the half way meeting for Trainers Trainees, tomb sweeping day, exchanges with the zone leaders, and then a flat tire.  For the Trainer Trainee meeting, it was pretty much a time to see how training was going and see if there were any problems that we may be having. As for our companionship, we aren't having any problems or anything so the meeting was an opportunity to see how blessed we were to be companions.  With tomb sweeping day, it brought quite a few challenges in the aspect that everyone was going away to clean their ancestors graves and to bai bai (worship them).  For exchanges, we both thought it was pretty fun.  I got to staying in  新埔 (Xinpu) with Elder Wilson (吳長老) and Elder Brinton got to go to 土城 (Tucheng) with Elder Clark (柯長老).  It was really fun just to be able to see and learn from how they do missionary work because everyone does it a little differently.  And lastly, we got a flat tire which was really fun waking up to Sunday morning as we were just about to go to church.  Luckily we were wanting to leave early so that when we found out that Elder Brinton had a flat, we were able to just get there in time for church to start.  So, for all of yesterday, we were on foot, which actually brought quite a few blessing when we were going between lessons because we actually were able to meet some really cool people.  So, that probably counts as a blessing in disguise,

As for some of the people we have been meeting with, there are two that I will quickly share about.  One is Charlie, who was actually was baptized in Norway, but then became less active when he moved back here.  We had the opportunity this last week to watch the Joseph Smith video with him because he was having a lot of questions about his story and everything.  It was super fun to see as he was watching the video almost all of his questions were being answered.  The only challenge at first was helping him understand who each of the characters were at the start of the video, but after that, it was super good.  The other person we have been working with is 隨弟兄 (Brother Sui).  We were just able to set a baptismal date with him and am also working on starting to meet with his wife as well.  We really are super excited to be working with him and hopefully with his wife this coming week!

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

我愛妳們,

Love you,

柯長老

Elder Okeson

P.S.  Craziest thing, my trainer is going home this week! 時光飛逝!!!