ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON #74 -- OCT 20, 2014

ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON #74

OCTOBER 20, 2014

This week was awesome. I think the "things are picking up" feeling is probably one of the best, because it just means that we're getting better and better. I think that's the perspective we are supposed have about our eternal progression - that even though we are never perfect, we are always improving and should always seek to improve. So I like it :)

Lunch between General Conference Sessions
Elder Chen's English is really funny. He's a pretty energetic guy and loves to speak the English that he knows. He's slowly learning more, and hopefully he'll have enough of a background to get him started in the MTC! Every time he says the word "successful" it sounds just like "saxophone." But we set a goal to learn 20 new vocabulary words every two days, which we are doing well with so far!

Elder Chen and Elder Wilson in front of Taibei 101

I had a realization about my Patriarchal blessing this week. It came from the conference talk that was in Portuguese. He talked about how as he read his patriarchal blessing, he realized that the way he was living his life would not make the promises in his blessing happen. That made me realize that the promises in the blessing are not a statement of what will happen, but more like a explanation of our potential, and it's our duty to do the things that will allow us to achieve that potential. In that way, a Patriarchal blessing guides us to make the correct choices in order to fulfill the promises, rather than just wait for the promises to come true!

Met some members visiting from Mainland.  He is a future missionary.

 On Thursday and Friday, I went on exchanges with Elder Greenhalgh, one of our zone leaders. We really enjoyed finding together, and had a great lesson on the street with a guy who said he wanted to go back to church. It was a great miracle!

I tried to talk to a guy on the street, but he took off running and said "I thought you guys were only in America!" Too bad for him that the Gospel of Jesus Christ goes to "every nation." :)

Notice the wording:  "KEEP OUT OF CHILDREN"

 We had a lesson scheduled with Nanete, who is from the Philippines. But the only directions she gave us was that she was in a small park near a certain intersection behind a tall building. The problem is that Taibei has a lot of small parks behind tall buildings. We ended up walking around for about 40 minutes until we finally found her. Even though we called her multiple times, we couldn't really understand where she was! Luckily, we finally got to teach her and her two cousins a lesson, which they really liked. It will be hard for them to come to church, but hopefully it'll all work out!

We each ordered 1 dish.  Elder Chen ordered 4 -- he was hungry!

 I've started learning to play Ukelele for singing in companionship study in the mornings. The problem is that I only really know one rhythm, so we've been singing to the same rhythm for every song!

We finally got to have another lesson with the Williams family. It's been about four weeks since we met with them, but we got to sit down with just the mom and dad at one of our members' house. It was such a great spiritual lesson, and they said they really want to get baptized; they just need to figure out when! Hopefully it will be on November 22.

There is no 4th floor

Yesterday we had a miracle. We sat down because Elder Chen's feet were hurting after walking for a few hours. While we were waiting for the light to change, a guy from Hong Kong came over to talk to us. He wanted to know if we were the same church as in Hong Kong. He had attended church and met with missionaries a few times there, but had lost contact when he came here a few weeks ago. He is really excited to meet with missionaries in Jingxin!

That's it for this week. Add oil!

Elder Richardson

任淳楷長老