Super chill preparation day. We grabbed some lunch with the 花蓮 missionaries and then went to some shops! At the shops I saw a Supreme hoodie with a skateboarder on it so I bought it. It looks super cool!! Then we went to a western style mall thing where we spent some time just walking around. All in all, today was very chill since we didn't play frisbee or anything like that. The missionary work for the night was chill too. We made some videos for our English class and small group to get them pumped for this week! Then called some more formers and cleaned up the area book. It was a super productive time for us. This week is gonna be a fun week I am excited for it.
Tuesday was a pretty interesting day. We spent the whole morning and a chunk of the afternoon helping our group leader build his house!! It was so much fun. We helped with the concrete for his foundation. We got these super slick work boots and were walking in the cement and moving it around and stuff. It was a lot of fun. All the other workers were a bunch of old dudes drinking beer and chewing betel nut so they were having a good time, for obvious reasons. It was such a good time and a unique experience too, just helping a guy build a house in the middle of the forest in Taiwan. It was awesome! When we finished we just went back and did studies and that was the whole day, so lots of service!
Wednesday we did some more construction type work for our group leader, but we didn't do it for as long. It's hard work though I just hope that by the time I move out lots of progress will be made! I think we are planning on helping him out some more in the future so it'll be cool to see the progression. Other than that, we had a lesson and it was with a former investigator but she accepted a baptismal goal and we are meeting with her again next week to help her prepare for baptism! We also taught English class and it was really cool. We got another appointment from it for next week. Things seem to really be taking off for our area. We only want to move forward and upward from here.
Thursday was another fun filled day going to 台東 for a Zone Council! We had a great council today and I walked away with a renewed motivation to be diligent in the work and to really improve myself as a missionary. We talked a lot about goals and baptism today so I really want to go forward being more bold in my invitations for people to be baptized and confirmed a member of the Church. I also had some good discussions today with other Elders about language study and I got the impression to change up my study plan to help more with retention of words. All these refinements going forward are really going to help me I am confident of it. Aside from Zone Council, we had dinner together and than it was a train ride back to 鳳林 to end the day. So nothing super exciting there but I am also thinking of changing my Chinese last name. Since Michael learned mandarin for his mission and his last name is 謝 (from the word thank you) I think I will change it to that. People have changed their names before so I am not worried about that and I think it would be cool for all the Ciminski Chinese speakers to share the same last name!
Busy day Friday. We did our normal studies and then got weekly planning all done as well. That left us the late afternoon and evening to go out to work. We made 5 visits today and as a result got 3 return appointments from it. One of the visits was a member visit and they made us dinner too which was awesome. The last visit didn't answer the door, can't win them all I guess. It was a very good day though. Today I also began implementing the plans to act on the inspiration I received yesterday. The biggest difference was in my language study. Today I reviewed over 100 words and began a new method for better retention. Throughout my whole mission I've always struggled with language study. From being distracted to having no motivation, but now is the time for me to repent and buckle down. I have other goals and things I am working towards as well but those are still getting plans made for them.
This week has been busy. It feels good having stuff to do and I enjoy that a lot. In the morning we did the latest adventure in helping our group leader build his house! That was a good time and then we got taken out to lunch and started our day. We had some appointments today and one was a great Plan of Salvation lesson and the other one the lady was drunk so we ended up playing basketball with these kids that were following us around. I can only imagine the thoughts of two white dudes dressed up playing ball with kids, but now they are our friends and will hear the gospel someday! We finished up the night going to a night market in town and trying to hand out as many English flyers as we could to try and get more students! Hopefully that will yield the results. We hope it will.
Started off today (Sunday) pretty normal. Got ready and headed over to the chapel to get ready for church. On our way though we saw a member across the street and he's obviously drunk but he's calling for us to come over, we just say we need to set up and prepare for church and we walk inside. As we are setting up the sacrament the same member walks in and literally starts yelling at us. I thought things were going to get physical but thankfully he just yelled at us. I actually got pretty scared but he ended up just leaving midway through sacrament and nothing else happened. Pretty crazy experience. Other than that, today was pretty relaxed and we had to bike a bit but that was no big deal. Super solid end to the week.
Elder Heber Chase Ciminski
謝希伯長老
