Elder Simonson and his constant companion, helping 李念禪 take the final step to receive the Holy Ghost – his new constant companion!
Yay! Our investigator, 李念禪, got baptized yesterday, on Sunday! He’s the one who was a former investigator and has met with missionaries a lot before, but never ended up getting baptized. The missionaries would always contact him during a hard part of his life, so he’d be willing to meet with them, but then things would start to get get better so he’d focus more on work and stop meeting with the missionaries.
李念禪 embarking on his new spiritual venture!
Finally, about my second week in 中和, I called up his number and asked if he could meet with us. When I called him, his life (again) wasn’t going too well – he was in a job he hated because all they do is scam people into buying their products. He realized the pattern in which missionaries would always end up contacting him during these parts of his life and decided that he was going to get baptized this time. Over these last 6 weeks, we’ve been reteaching him the lessons and working with him to change a lot of the things in his life which weren’t really that great. At this point, he’s actually moving to 台中 to start his own business where he will go and help the people who have been scammed by businesses like the one he worked for before. It’s awesome!
Last week we went to 淡水 with a couple of families that we know. They aren’t church members, but all the moms are home during the day with the kids, while their husbands are at work; they like it when we go over and eat a meal and talk with them. They’re also very willing to drive us anywhere we want to go, and since they have some super nice cars, like BMWs, we don’t mind! (The families are all from China and have lots of money…) We went with three of the families as well as two other people we know – Penny and Milly.
“Housewives of Taipei”
First, we went to this really nice restaurant on the beach – afterwards we were planning to play on the beach, but it ended up continuing to rain, so instead we went back to the house of one of the moms and played games there for a couple hours which was pretty fun.
Having fun in the game room at 藍熙’s community!
I also had my district leader training meeting this last week which taught us what we should be doing as a district leader. It was a nice 3 hour meeting! President Jergensen said that the district leaders are actually the most important people since they talk with all the missionaries in the mission everyday, and can work with all of them to help everyone become better. Yay! It’s actually pretty fun – hopefully our district will be able to do really well this transfer!
A couple days ago I bought radish, mint, lavender, and some flower seeds to plant at our house. I also got some pots, potting soil, fertilizer and grow lights – in only a couple of days, there are already 37 radishes that have sprouted and 3 mint plants! We’re going to see how it goes. We’re not allowed to keep pets of any kind, so I guess this is the next best thing!
– Elder Austin Simonson
文長老