28 August 2017 - TRI Force

"Book of Mormon Power, keeps me safe from sin,

Book of Mormon Power is the power to win!
Book of Mormon Power, every day they need
The tool to help them plant the faithy seed!"
(Elder Meanea Copyright 2017)

Monday, 21 August 2017
Miracles begin as we start a week as a tri-panionship! We had a fun time playing at a board game shop for P-Day, and then went up to one of our member friends house to share a little bit with him. I would say the miracle today was to see Elder Hansen's love for him as we shared. It didn't matter that we aren't trying to get him baptized, when he bore his testimony, the Spirit immediately came in and you could tell that he really was trying to receive revelation for him to help him feel God's love. It's amazing to see him work so hard. 

Tuesday, 22 August 2017
We were a little bit gummed up this week and couldn't meet with this investigator called Marilyn that we met last week, so we gave her to the sisters and they visited her today. She accepted the Restoration super well and believes it! I'm so excited for them and the growth they'll get to continue to see in her. 

Wednesday, 23 August 2017
Biggest up today? We had 8 lessons scheduled. Let down? 6 of them stood us up. But even with all the things that fell through this week, both of my companions are still fireballs. I can't believe how brave Elder Hong was. I couldn't imagine doing half the things that he did when I just got in the field, and he's never been a missionary before. It was great to work so hard with him and Elder Hansen, and you can really feel their faith in their undying optimism. They were my miracle today!

Thursday, 24 August 2017
A member invited us to eat with her today and she brought her husband! Her husband is less active, but very willing to come and meet with us and listen to the Gospel. It is great to see him around, which I think lead to on Sunday him going with his wife to a stake conference activity in Yuanlin, so that's great! Then, the very last door of the night we knocked and a man answered. His name is Song, and at first he was not very willing to talk to us, but we began sharing about the Book of Mormon and he asked for one on the spot and asked what he could do to learn more! I think he knows how to make missionaries happy. We'll be meeting with him this week! 

Friday, 25 August 2017
A day full of hard work. Again, there wasn't much to report from today except that we worked very hard and I feel like the Lord was pleased with us, even though maybe we didn't find many people today. The miracle was undying faith of my companions! They are so great and we had a blast being out and talking to as many people as possible!

Saturday, 26 August 2017
Another day of hitting the roads looking for prepared souls. We found a few that night which was great, and Elder Hong did a great job on his last day. The entire week here we never had to wait for him or ask him to keep up or keep working. He is so ready to get out in the mission field. I'm excited to see what he does. 

Sunday, 27 August 2017
Great meetings and our friend Huang Shun Ting came again! That was his second time at church, and the sacrament was really great, I think he enjoyed it. And then that night we were out contacting after we sent Elder Hong home, and without any help of mine, Elder Hansen set up two people on the streets. All by himself. No Chinese help or anything. He is such an inspiration of what a hard working consecrated missionary is, and I'm so proud to be his companion, but only a fool would think I was actually training him. 

A hard working week, not a lot to report, but the Lord has not held back His Arm from us and helping guide our work. I know in every part of our lives He will bless and prosper us as we hearken to Him. I love you all and I love the Savior!

-Elder Meanea

21 August 2017 - Week of Miracles

"There can be baptisms! When you believe."
(Copyright Elder Meanea 2017, I know it isn't a hymn, but close enough)

Monday, 14 August 2017
The week of miracles began early as we pulled over to talk to "just some guy" at a convenience store on P-Day. We sat down with him, His name is Huang Shun Ting, and we taught him the full first lesson right there and set up to meet the next day. That was so cool! And just because we kept looking. It was a great start to our week of miracles. 

Tuesday, 15 August 2017
Our miracle today also came from the streets as we stopped to talk to a lady cutting potatoes. Or... something that might have once been a potato. I don't know for sure. But she was really receptive to having us come and share about the Gospel. Her name was Mrs. Wu. She has a 14 year old son who likes learning about Jesus, and they invited us to come visit them.

Wednesday, 16 August 2017
Wednesday miracle was that I made it through another round at Tang Mama's. Man does that lady know how to cook! It was amazing. We had tacos and peanut butter chocolate cake. One of my new favorites. And our Recent Convert Sister Chen was there as well. And she's been continually reading the Book of Mormon, which is one of the biggest miracles of all. Because I know that the Book of Mormon can keep anyone close to Christ for as long as they are willing to continue reading it, and every time we get just a little bit closer. I love the Book of Mormon, and it is a part of a few other miracles this week!

Thursday, 17 August 2017
Which was today. On Tuesday we met with Huang and he hadn't read what we asked him to. So we postponed Plan of Salvation and read with him for a few minutes. We thought it went alright, then we came for our lesson today and he read! He read all that we asked him to. And then we taught the Plan of Salvation and the Spirit was so strong. And at the end when we invited him to Church he said yes before we could even finish. He is a 50 year old man whose kids live outside of Puli now, and he has been a widower since the big earthquake about 20 years ago. It is amazing to just feel how ready he is to accept this Gospel.

Friday, 18 August 2017
Today's miracle comes from the Banana man. He is an investigator we found about 2 weeks ago. He was a little weird, but we stopped by to visit him and he let us in. And he was very interested about our religion. We taught him about his Heavenly Father, and at the end of the lesson, we invited him to kneel and pray with us, which he did. And the Spirit was so amazing there. It was so great to see him really feel that praying to his Heavenly Father is a real experience. And his name is Gan, by the way. Not just Banana man. That'd be an interesting invite. "Banana Man, are you willing to be baptized by one holding proper authority..."

Saturday, 19 August 2017
We hit the streets hard today. Both Elder Hansen and I got exhausted by the end. But the end of the day brought two great miracles. We ran into a lady tracting who let us in, and we shared about eternal family's, and she agreed to meet again this week, and she said it was basically destiny, because usually her old mom is home who is super traditional, but she was gone at the very moment we knocked! GOD IS PREPARING HIS CHILDREN. And then we knocked a door nearby and found a Philipeno lady who only speaks English, so that was a bit of a new experience! She is Catholic and was willing to listen to a message about Jesus. It was a great night. 

Sunday, 20 August 2017
Huang came to church today! He came for Sacrament and I think he really liked it. We are going to work on getting him progressing towards baptism this week, so I'm really excited for him! And we also got a Duanchuan (short term missionary) this week! His name is Hong Zi Ting from Zhang Hua. He is super cool and I'm excited to see some miracles with him this week!

That is truly just a portion of the ways I see God's Hand move in my life every day. I love the Gospel and I love sharing it. And I love you all! I wish you all a Spirit filled week of amazingness!

-Elder Meanea

14 August 2017 - Season Two of Training!

Once there was a Taiwan Taiwan Taiwan, once there was a Taiwan, HOT HOT HOT!

Monday, 7 August 2017
After our illustrious P-Day we had a really good night of working hard and just running into a ton of cool people. I can't say enough about how Elder Hansen's faith pushes me to keep going, even when I'm tired and things aren't exactly turning out like they are supposed to. He really reminds me that we have the Savior's commission to "Find the lambs, feed the sheep." It helps me remember where to turn when things don't go well, when people say no, and when you need to know exactly what to say.


Tuesday, 8 August 2017
We had Elder Hansen's first pass off for Phase one. It's just a program where the trainees have to teach a lesson by themselves without my help, and he did great. He taught Sister Jones who pretended to be an investigator and Elder Hansen taught. Then that night we went on another mountain adventure to find a college where a student from Hong Kong wants to be taught the gospel. It turns out all we had was an English name and the address of the college, so we're going to have to try again some time, but I love seeing mission work going on all over the world!

Wednesday, 9 August 2017
Mostly a finding day. We had a lot of interesting lessons with some interesting people, but it's really interesting to see how those who are prepared always have these certain qualities, like being willing to act on the message when they hear it. I love how often the Spirit is willing to work with us to tell us what people need to hear.


Thursday, 10 August 2017
We were going to have a lesson with a kid named Huang who we met fishing the other day, so we went there, waited for him, and then he didn't show. We were about to leave when an older guy walked up to us and asked if we were the missionaries. We said yes, and he said he was named Huang, which was good enough for me. He told us that he wasn't feeling well and that he met Elders before who gave him a blessing. And he asked us to give him one, so we did, and he started making really weird noises during it, which freaked us both out really bad. Afterwards he was normal though and said he felt a lot better... so it was good? We biked away really fast. But it was fun!

Friday, 11 August 2017
Again, lots of contacting, but today was cool because we had a lesson with Jerry! We found him on the street the other day and he set up to meet. He is super cool, a little wordly, but he has a real desire to change, and agreed to come to Church on Sunday! Otherwise just weekly planning. Originally we were going to Taichung for trainer follow up meeting, but it got cancelled, so a lot of finding time!!! We actually get a fair amount of adds each day, which is really encouraging.


Saturday, 12 August 2017
Super weird day. I got a text from a former investigator, the drunk baseball guy, and it said it was his sister, and that he passed away last week. I was pretty sad, but they invited us to the funeral this morning, so we went. It's amazing to see how sad funerals are when they aren't backgrounded against the plan of salvation. It gave me a huge desire to help everyone in the world understand this plan, if only for the reason of lessening a little bit of heartache. We also had a ward music night which one of our investigators came to! His name is Chen, and he recorded us missionaries singing as we were dressed up like angels. (Member's idea) Hopefully those get deleted some day.

Sunday, 13 August 2017
A great Sabbath. Jerry came for the last two hours, and really liked it! After church we met with him, and he agreed to a baptismal date! He really wants the Gospel to give him a new start on life. He is truly one of those prepared people we are searching for. Then tonight we gave a blessing to a sick member, and visited a part member family. Those both went okay, but we were exhausted by the time we finally made it home. It was a good close to a good week.

I've been thinking a lot about miracles, and I'm pretty sure we've seen one every day this week. So next week in my letter I'll let you know about all the miracles that we see every day, and I would hope it would help us all look for the miracles in our everyday lives. Because God is a God of miracles, and He is always on our side. I love you all so much, and pray the Spirit will help you feel God's love as well.

-Elder Meanea

7 August 2017 - Lots of Contacting and Village Finding

Taiwanese people, I can see you there,
hearing my bad chinese I utter with every prayer,
some say that Jesus is Buddah too,
but I'll read some scripture and prove it's not true!
(Copyright Elder Meanea 2017)

Monday, 31 July 2017
A good P-Day in which I got Elder Hansen his first Taiwanese Haircut. It didn't go too terribly wrong, so that's a plus! We also played pictionary and mailed a wedding present to Elder Hansen's sister. Most of our investigators were busy this week, so most of it was contacting and working hard, which is always great! Elder Hansen really has such a drive to serve and love the people here, and it is truly inspiring to see that he's already decided what kind of Elder he wants to be.

Tuesday, 1 August 2017
We had an all day contacting marathon. Our goal for the zone is to get 4 people a day to set up with us to meet later, called an "add." So we shoot for 4 a day. And by dinner time we didn't get any. But we had been pounding the pavement all day, so we prayed, set off, and what do you know? In the little time we had left we got the 4 adds that we were shooting for for the day. I really know that when we put our best effort in, God always makes up in His own ways for it. It's really fun to see.

Wednesday, 2 August 2017
So... we might have made a tiny mistake today. We met a man yesterday who said that he lives up in the mountains. I made a little video rant that you can watch that will explain most of it, but suffice it to say he wasn't lying to us. It took most of the night to find the village he was talking about, and then we had to hurry back to and teach English class, which was one of the most exhausting experiences of my life. I have no idea how the sisters do it every week. Props to them. But we did find a lot of cool people in a little colony up in the mountains, so as long as they aren't cannibals, it's a win!

Thursday, 3 August 2017
Most of the day was taken up in traveling to Yuanlin for interviews with President Teh. It's always great to see him and just get to do a little catching up and discussing how we can make the work flow more smoothly. Then that night we basically just did some contacting and hit the streets hard again. We didn't walk away with any new investigators this week, but we met some cool people who could become investigators next week!

Friday, 4 August 2017
We had to do weekly planning and district meeting since we were in interviews yesterday. Another day of contacting. I really can't slow Elder Hansen down at all. He is a beast. In a good way. But yeah, not much interesting stuff today.

Saturday, 5 August 2017
This morning we played basketball with the youth, and I actually made two 3-point shots! (And yes dad, they were for my team, thank you) Then we did a rehearsal for a music activity that we are putting together with the ward next Saturday. I'm super excited! It reminded me of many hours spent rehearsing for Musicals and stuff in High school, so that was pretty fun. Another working night after that. Talking to all the brothers and sisters and living the dream.

Sunday, 6 August 2017
An amazing fast meeting! We had two returned missionaries come visit, one of which was Elder Hansen's teacher in the MTC, so that was fun for them to meet up. Then we had two dinners that night. One was with a member named Monkey Zhou who we helped plant banana trees for a few months ago. He invited us to a members house to eat with them for Father's day. It's August 8th in Taiwan because father is 爸爸 and August Eight is 八八. A clever little play on words that I at least appreciate. Then that night we ran into a guy who looked like he was going to bury some bananas, and he gave us some and told us in English he likes American friends. So he'll probably be an investigator next week as well.

And that is my week! One of serving, loving, learning, and it seems continually trying to humble myself sufficiently to do the Lord's work. I know it is His and I'm so grateful that He is allowing me to learn how to do it with Him.

-Elder Meanea