RICH MISSION MEMORIES: ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON #101 -- APRIL 29, 2015

ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON #101 -- APRIL 29, 2015

Well, I feel like my letters are getting shorter and shorter, but in a little while I'll be able to tell you the full version of the story in person, so just ask me later!

An update on 蔡海山 Brother Cai. He went to the courthouse yesterday, and they told him that he would not have to go back to jail! Hooray! We actually had Jonny (who is a lawyer) come with us to look at his papers, and Jonny said that the courts made a mistake, and Brother Cai should be okay! So that gave us a lot of confidence coming up to Tuesday. Unfortunately, they still stuck him with a big fine, so he might not be able to come to church on Sunday for a month because he has to work to pay it off. We are confident that he will get baptized, but it'll have to be in the Lord's timing and not necessarily in ours!

We had a great miracle on Sunday. We went to visit a Less-Active member at Zhou Ba's house, and met a new friend 劉永章. He came from Canada, and he spent the last month in a Buddhist Monastery in TaiNan before coming up here. He found Zhou Ba's room for rent on the internet, and we met him about a half-hour after he got there. He's studied almost every kind of religion there is, he even met with missionaries back in Canada, but he said his job was too busy there for him to commit time to reading the Book of Mormon. But now he's got a lot of time, and we hope that we will be able to teach him all we can before he returns to Canada in two weeks! We had a hour lesson with him yesterday where he asked question after question about the Doctrine of Christ and we were able to answer all of his questions from the scriptures. It was awesome. He's originally from Mainland, so I also get to practice listening to a mainland accent so I don't get culture shock next month!

We also had a great lesson with a Brother Wang. I don't think I've mentioned him before, but we finally got to have a lesson with him when he wasn't drunk. We found him because his mom flagged down missionaries in TaiZhong and said that her son really needed help. And he does. He drinks a lot, and he also chews betel nut which is a nasty (but unfortunately legal) form of opium that gives people gum cancer faster than smoking. The first two times we went to visit him were kind of scary. He likes us, but the first time we went he punched through a window, and the second time he flipped a table over, but this time he hadn't been drinking, and he said he felt really sorry for what he did. I think he's got a sincere desire to quit somewhere down in there, and he just needs a lot of love and prayer in order to get there. He promised us last week that he would not drink the day that we have an appointment with him, so we think that is a good start!

Last week I also went on exchanges to XinDian with Elder Greenhalgh. We visited a member who is a professional 古筝 (Chinese harp - like the kind we have at our house) player. Elder Greenhalgh convinced him to play for us, so he gave us an amazing concert right in his house. I had no idea how cool it sounded when it's played right!

Last week we also had the mission tour with Elder Gong of the Seventy. He taught us a lot, but unfortunately I was translating so a lot of it whizzed past me. Translating is a hard but rewarding service; it was probably my last time for a while!

We went to the temple this morning! It was amazing as usual!

That was the important stuff that happened this week. I'll try to keep better notes so that my letters aren't so short!

Elder Richardson

任長老

Me and Elder Davidson at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall