Super awesome day Tuesday. Started off normal and we headed to 玉里 for the normal district council things. Then instead of going home I started an exchange with Elder Zhong! He is one transfer younger than me so two young missionaries took over 玉里! We had an awesome night making some visits to members of their branch and doing some studies. We played lots of ping pong today. We play every week before district council and that's a fun time. I'm improving a lot and definitely better than I was in Kansas when we would play every preparation day. I love putting spin on the ball and it's a big part of my style. It also makes it harder to return and I get some good reactions. We also played ping pong tonight with some potentials and one of them was super good. He is a spinner too and so when we played we were loading up the ball with so much spin. We were evenly matched so we each won 2 games against each other. It was loads of fun I wish I could play ping pong more!
Another fun filled day Wednesday. Woke up and went to the gym for a great workout and then came back and started the day. As we were doing our personal study we had another earthquake! I don't even mention them anymore because they aren't anything super crazy but it's always a strange feeling going through one. We got started with our day however, and played a little bit more ping pong before we took a train to end our exchange. We got swapped back and we did our daily contacting to people and then ate some dinner before heading out to play badminton the rest of the night. Badminton is a tough sport I'm not gonna lie and I'm gonna be sore for sure. It is very fun though and we had a good night practicing and getting ready to play against people for reals!!
Thursday was a pretty solid day. We had 3 scheduled appointments and they all went very well. One especially really inspired me because the man we met with is very old, but as we were talking with him he just said that when we were at his home he felt very happy and he liked it. What an awesome testimony of seeing him feel the Spirit and be able to recognize it in his life! I have faith he will hit his baptismal goal and then always have the Spirit with him! We also had a chance to do some knocking as well and even though we didn't get anyone with a firm appointment we definitely put the effort in. Recently I have been feeling inadequate and that sometimes even my best sometimes just doesn't measure up. Thankfully I have a very skilled companion who can help me learn and improve my own skills as to help me not feel that way. I have to remind myself that we are on the Eternal Progression, not the one-day-and-you're-done progression. As long as we are trying our best then Heavenly Father will reward our efforts.
Friday was a good day! We stayed busy with doing weekly planning and lots of visits as well. The visits were to members of the 小組 to make sure they were coming to church since this weekend it is in 花蓮. Those went well and we got to share a little message with them to help bring the spirit to them as well. Aside from those visits and stuff we filled the rest of the time with studies and that type of stuff. Pretty packed day! Our weekly planning session today was cool. Elder Lee is helping me improve a lot and learn tons of new things so I am really enjoying that and striving to become better. There always feels like so much to improve on but I'll take it one step at a time.
Another day! Saturday was pretty good we started off with the usual routine then waited for an hour for an English class that didn't happen. We just got some advertisements out so we were really hopeful that students would come but luck wasn't on our side this week. It was fine though we had a lesson with one of our people on baptismal date right now and she is looking super promising to hit her goal still! We are very excited for her. We tried to bike out and visit a man we have been teaching as well but we actually ran into him along the way to his house and had a good streetside conversation with him for a few minutes to see how he's been doing recently. Then that was basically the day because we took a train up to 花蓮 for Fast Sunday church and we took the early train for our monthly tradition of getting McDonald's for dinner. Today was a great day!
The Sabbath is truly a delight. We had an awesome spirit-filled meeting and I really enjoyed it. We even had one of our friends come to church which made it the best!! He's totally gonna hit his baptismal goal. After church, I went on an exchange with my good friend Elder Ray. His companion has been on bedrest for the last 2 weeks with a messed up back so I was able to help Elder Ray get out and do some missionary work and we had an awesome night teaching two lessons to 3 people! We taught 2 lesson 1s and it was really powerful I felt the spirit as I testified and that made we want to do it more!
Elder Heber Chase Ciminski
謝希伯長老
謝希伯長老