ELDER RICHARDSON Weekly Letter #40 -- FEB 23, 2014

ELDER RICHARDSON -- Weekly Letter #40

FEB 23, 2014

I think this week started out kind of slow, and slowly got better and better. 

Last Monday we went to the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall in the middle of Taibei. It's a HUGE memorial building with a giant statue similar to the Lincoln Memorial. Then we went inside to the museum about his life. It was pretty neat. They had two full-size Cadillac cars because apparently he was a huge fan. It reminded me a little bit of the Mao ZeDong thing in Beijing, but less weird.

Investigator update:

ZJ is doing really good. We were a little worried because her friend went back to school in the south of Taiwan, but we think that she is continuing to do really well. She said that she has been praying this week for an answer, so we will keep praying for her! We hope that she can get baptized at the beginning of March.

The Zhang family is doing super good. I went there on exchanges with Elder Tay, and we got to share a little bit more about the plan of salvation. They have been reading and praying pretty well, and we hope to get them to church again next week!

G got to go with us to our stake conference and got to hear Elder Holland speak. I think he was really touched by it, and was really impressed.

Of course the best part of the week was the miraculous opportunity we had to hear Elder Holland speak. On Saturday night, we had a meeting with just the missionaries. Elder Holland spoke to us for over an hour, but it felt like it was so short! It was easy to see that Elder Holland usually restrains himself during General Conference, but with just the missionaries there, he got pretty fired up. But all his fire and pulpit pounding and voice raising, it never made me feel that he was scolding us. One thing that I liked that he said was that "the Spirit always inspires us to repent", and that's what the meeting was for me. It inspired me to change, to be a better person and better missionary, and I think clarified some questions that I've had recently.

Another theme of his counsel was about how a mission really is hard, but that's part of the point. “A little bit of your mission must be spent lugging a cross” because that's what being a disciple of Christ means. That we are willing to experience what he did, and that's how we become like Him. I definitely felt some of my mission already has been spent "lugging a cross." I think Elder Holland reminded me that the difficulty is part of the point, and part of the reason I came on a mission. He also reminded me that pushing through the difficulty is how we grow the most, and that is both a comfort and a 

So I can no longer call myself "not a redhead." Because as we all got to shake Elder Holland's hand before sitting down, he said to me, "How's that red hair working for you?" So now that an Apostle of God has decided that I have red hair, I can no longer deny it.

This week we went to the big library in our area and find a service opportunity that we could do every week. While we were there, we met a lady who was the perfect "librarian" stereotype, right down to the glasses and smile, except she was Asian and was speaking Chinese. I thought that was pretty funny.

My last companion, Elder Wang, liked to eat sour skittles, and would sometime bring them to teaching appointments to share. Now, our recent convert, Wu Dixiong brings us sour skittles every time we meet with him. It's possible that he thinks it's just the polite thing to do. We're not complaining.

So it was a good week, and next week will be even better!

Add oil!

Elder Richardson

任長老

Hyrum's new companion -- Elder Rasmussen