July 10, 2011 - He2 Di Xiong Baptism!

Dear Family,

I do miss the 4th of July, I hope you guys had a good time. So yes.
He2 di xiong got baptized and confirmed. He will be getting the priesthood next week hopefully. His service was really good. Really smooth in the water and out. One solid dunk. He said that the thing that made him want to be baptized in the first place was that he had a great feeling when he attended a baptism last move call. And ever since then he has really wanted to experience the same thing. I'm really glad that we invited him to go to that baptism!
Other recent convert news, Lin2 jin4 tian2 (baptized last month) is having his interview to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood next week. Sweet. And he has three callings! I love that man. So willing to serve the Lord. He is slowly sharing the gospel with his family as well.
Rudi. Rudi is slowly progressing. Right now he has a goal to be baptized on the 30th of this month. We are helping him work towards a baptismal interview this weekend.

This week is zone conference. I can't wait. They are awesome. And next week is the temple trip. Which means I won't be emailing until Wednesday of next week.
Here is just has been really really hot. I sweat all the time. No matter what. Even if there is AC. Its an auto-sweat zone here. When we come back we are all going to die.
We found out that in the next couple months, there will be 40 new missionaries coming on island. That is a lot of newbz. But it also means that there will be lots of trainers and lots of young leaders. Oh boy I hope I don't train. haha

OK. there is a missionary rule... That I am super tempted to break. Every single Sunday. Every Sunday all the members bring their cute little Asian babies to church. And here babies are just passed around like a bag of chips. Everyone gets to hold the baby. And every week someone offers me a baby to hold. They hold the baby out and expect me to take the cute bundle of angel sauce. But like cigarettes, I have to avoid it as best I can and just say no. It makes me so sad.

So yeah. I miss holding babies. Like, Jesus said bring the children unto me. And I'm just trying to be like Jesus!!! gosh... But it's against the rules. Someone better give me a baby to hold when I get home. I miss babies.

Anyway. I have to go now. Love you peeps and I will email you next Wednesday

July 3, 2011 - Rudi not ready

Dear Family,

Yeah sorry our whole zone went to cao tun to play frisbee and football. I was the only one who didn't bring a change of clothes. So i played in my proselyting clothes. so after getting all sweaty, we went and ate an all you can eat bar b q. It was really good, but as always, too expensive. 400NT.

So yeah. Anyway. So this past week... Well our investigator Rudi failed his baptismal interview. He isn't willing to stop drinking tea, or pay tithing after he is baptized.

But there was an investigator he2 di xiong. He was our investigator but then we found out that he lives in the other elders area. He is getting baptized on Saturday. He asked me to baptize him. Sweet. we are trying to find him some girls to date because he is 43 and doesn't have any family. His parents ditched him when he was 13. And he is taking the eternal marriage class that is every Wednesday at the church. And there are plenty of older women in both wards who aren't married. Sooo hopefully we can set something up.

Hmm lets see.

Pops the translator that I have can let you do that, but I think you can find programs like that on itunes for my ipod touch, or something like that.

When I talk to people on the street, I call them a 帥哥 and then I talk to them about their families. Like it says in Preach my Gospel. Sometimes I ask them a question of the soul like 你相信神的存在嗎? But then they say yes, but they are talking about idols and stuff. But sometimes we just ask them questions like 你覺得人生的目的是什麼? Man it is a million times harder to type in Chinese. Especially cuz they don't use pin yin here. They use ㄅㄆㄇㄈ. bopomofo. So its a little hard to type cuz I'm still learning. I could just write it a lot faster..

Well I hope you guys are doing good. Its really hot here too. Even in air conditioned places it is really really hot and I just sweat all the time. I drink lots of water.

Oh yeah. Happy fourth of July. That's today for me. Nobody here even knows about it.

OK well I have to go now. You guys have a good week.
Elder Graham

June 26, 2011 - 4 Converts to the Temple & Rudi

Hello family.

Sisi I don't know what that means. You had what talk with Sarah?
I also did not know of the sunday tradition of eating smores.

Yeah so last week our district gained two new missionaries.

Something pretty cool happened this week. Last month not a single one of our recent converts went to the temple. But this month, we got four of them to go and do baptisms for the dead. So it was really sweet. They all loved it. Hopefully it will help them all endure to the end.

Pops, the plan of salvation is : 救恩計劃 or jiu4 en1 ji4 hua4

Not a lot has happened this week, but last night there was an earthquake. And it was raining really hard for a couple hours.

My companion is a really hard worker and I want to be as diligent as he is. He is on the phone calling investigators or members until 10:30 when we have to go to bed. really li hai.

Thats really cool that Geoff is in the MTC. He should have a good time in there. The mtc feels like a long time...

The investigator that lives in the other elders area is super solid and is having his interview tomorrow. We helped him find a job and so he is going to try and stay at his current apartment. His name is He2 di xiong.

We also have another investigator who's name is Rudi. Rudi has been an investigator for over a year. He may or may not be ready but he is going to have his interview sometime this week.

Everyone here claims to be Buddhist, but then you ask them certain questions and basically nobody actually believes in it. They just do it because their parents did it and they don't want to break tradition. They don't even know what Buddhist believe. They just go to the temple every month or so and bow down before the idols.

Anyway. Thats all I have for today. Not much to report on. I have a goal to be able to write 500 characters from memory by the end of next month so hopefully that works out

Elder Graham

June 19, 2011 -

Dear Family,
Today is move day. My companion and I are staying here which I think is good. We are starting to get this place built up again. We are working with the members and working hard. We had three pretty solid investigators at church. The problem is that the most solid one.... Lives in the other Elder's area. But he might move at the end of the month. He is so good. Anyway.
So... Ok today my trainer goes home. He was only on his 7th transfer when He trained me. I am on my tenth. At most I have 42 weeks left on this island. This time is going by pretty fast. The last few days have been spent thinking about goals and plans for those goals. I want to master the art of setting goals and then doing them. What I need to work on is making daily plans and then recording every day how my plans are doing.
Other than that nothing really happened.
I got a letter from Josh that was sent over 4 months ago. Weird. I hope it doesn't take that long for my letter to him to get there! Thats crazy.

I didn't get the stuff from mitch but I don't think he can send emails to me with attachments for some reason.
Sorry this was short. I have to babysit a junior companion while we wait for his new companion to get here.
Love elder Graham