ELDER RICHARDSON WEEKLY LETTER #17 -- SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

ELDER RICHARDSON WEEKLY LETTER #17

SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

We had a great week this week! The problem I always have is that when I get to Monday, I don't remember everything that has happened! I write it down in my journal, but after that I forget it!

Last week, on P-Day, we went to 楊明山 (yang2 ming2 shan1) which is the mountain between us and another area. We took a bus mostly all the way to the top, and then it was an easy hike to get the rest of the way. The pictures I am sending are from that day.

On Friday, we had an outdoor zone conference with our zone and the two next to ours. It was a really neat experience. As we climbed a mountain, we stopped along the way and had various trainings and activities. It was a pretty tough hike during the last part. When we got to the top, I looked around and realized that it was the same mountain that we had come to on Monday! It was weird.

Mountains in Taiwan are really different from Utah. These mountains are pretty tall, but are just covered in green. There was no tree line that I could see. Look at the pictures I'm sending. The top of this mountain was just all grassland. They even had cows! (The Taiwanese in our group really liked the cows - I don't know why.) It was really neat!

We were tracting in donghu area, and somebody let us in so we started knocking all of the doors. We rang one guy's door, and he started opening the door. As soon as he saw that we were missionaries, he closed the door again, even though we were in mid-sentence. That is an exception for Taiwan, and I'm glad I'm not in a place where that happens all the time!

Our agency is a wonderful gift from our Heavenly Father, and we all choose to express it a little differently in this life. All we missionaries can do is invite people to learn! Many people don't want to listen, but that doesn't stop us from doing it! Missionary work is awesome!

I went on an exchange this week with Elder Cranney, one of our Zone Leaders. His style of missionary work is VERY different from my companion Elder Pratt, but it's cool because they are both right! The Lord wants us to do missionary work our own way, and it should be very individual. That is what He has called me to do, to be me, just a missionary version of me. This is what Elder Cranney and I discussed in our evaluation. Every missionary has to develop their own "style." That's what I've been thinking about this week. What's my style?

I've been thinking about this especially because of our plans for this week. Tomorrow I go on an exchange with a missionary who is a transfer younger than me. So it'll be up to me to lead everything and get things done. I guess this is how Melissa feels! So I'm a little stressed and pretty excited!

We went and revisited the G. family last night. We first met them two weeks ago. When we first got there, the mom didn't want to let us in. She tried to give the Book of Mormon back, saying that she just wanted to keep being Buddhist. But then, to be polite, they asked if we had eaten yet (that's a normal thing). When we said that we hadn't (because it was Sunday night and we didn't have much food in the apartment, they welcomed us in and had us eat with them. Mostly we were just friendly with them, but at the end we shared some more about the Restoration. Before we left, the husband emphasized to us that we were welcome to come back. So we're going to take some food to them next week!

That's all for this week!

田長老