March 26, 2017

Hello everybody! Taiwan is doing fantastic and I hope you are too!

Last week for p-day we went to the Taibei 101! It was really awesome! (Really expensive, but really cool!) We met up with some of the missionaries from Elder Cooper's area and my MTC district and spent the whole day with them. It was an awesome day! After touring the 101 we went and did probably the most fun thing you can do on island. Went to the Tesla outlet. It was awesome. Elder Richards and I spent a good hour making every one of the missionaries want to buy a Tesla. Haha! It was really just a great day to relax and hang out with some of the missionaries that went home last week.

This last week was transfer week as well. Elder Cooper and I are staying together for one more! It will be awesome! I love being his companion! This next transfer should be pretty great too. Some of the other missionaries left, but that's alright, there are some awesome missionaries here to take their place!

Jim is progressing pretty well still but he is having a harder time believing the word of wisdom. Especially because he read 3 Nephi 18 and read that they drank wine... But we're still working with him! Also this week we met another person named Marshall. He is awesome and extremely prepared! Sadly, he doesn't live in our area so we can't teach him everything but we will be there when he gets baptized! Also, one of the referrals I sent out last transfer, I just found out is getting baptized in the coming weeks! I didn't really think those referrals did too much so I was really happy to be blessed with this kind of miracle!

I know that Jesus Christ is our savior and redeemer, I know he wants to help all of us. We just have to let him.

Elder Holderness

March 19, 2017

Hello Everyone!

This week was a little crazy so it is kind of hard for me to remember it all! Hahaha!

Last P-Day we went into Taibei for an exhibit called "Team Lab" it was really cool! It was pretty much just a bunch of cool artwork that they had setup but a lot of them were super interactive. They had places where you could color your own drawings and then they would scan them and make them become part of the art. For example we colored fish and then got to see them swimming in a giant aquarium with the ones other people had drawn. (Ours of course said mormon.org" and "Free English Class" on them!) They also had art projects with Kinect set up so you could interact with the art. It was really really cool to me just because of how much I love technology and stuff! Hahaha!

After that the next thing this week happened on Wednesday. Now that the church has adjusted to the age change they have switched back to having big conferences every transfer. That meant I got to go back to TaoYuan again because that church is one of the biggest in Taiwan! It was super fun and we got to see about half the mission. After President and Sister Jergensen gave their incredible training we got to hear from Elder and Sister Funk of the Asian Presidency. They gave us some great incite on how we can achieve our new mission goal of 600 baptisms in 2017. The mission is pumped and the we learned a lot. Sister Jergensen was my personal favorite talk. She talked about Jesus' first miracle, turning the water into wine. I had never looked into it so much! She even talked about the winky face! ;) Hahaha! The point of her talk was that if we are willing, Jesus can take us and make us into the best wine. Not just normal or good, but the best.

Oh and always to get to the Conference we rode on uBikes. They are these public bikes that Taiwan uses. But they are tiny! And they only have 3 gears. There were 8 of us and we for sure were the best looking uBike squad ever!

On Friday we had interviews with President so we got to see them again! We didn't really do training this time because of the zone conference so we just did interviews and a questions and answers with Sister Jergensen. I really love both of them. They are inspired.

Other than those crazy things. This week was some real progress with Jim! Mostly he is having a hard time believing the things we teach him. But this week we watched "The Prophet of the Restoration" with him and it went super well! He said he believes that Joseph Smith is a prophet! We can tell his faith is growing! He is even trying to make church a priority but it is still hard for him to get up in the morning so we are working on it!

Things are going well for Elder Cooper and I! We keep working hard and having fun! But this week is the transfer and we will see what happens! We should be staying together for one more but we will see!

I love being a missionary and I love the scriptures so much! This week I was reading about Captain Moroni. He is one of the most incredible people in the Book of Mormon! My personal favorite part of his story is just how much he defends the people, continuously improving and preparing. We can all learn from him. Always keep getting better. Keep preparing. Keep reading the scriptures everyday. If we do this we can be ready for any challenge in life.

Love you all so much! 

Elder Holderness

March 12, 2017

Hello Everyone! Another Week in Taiwan!

Well, let's start with last P-Day I guess! We woke up to a rain storm so we had to cancel our trip up north and decided to just spend the whole day relaxing by playing bowling and then board games! It was super fun and a good way to avoid the rain.

The rest of the week was just a lot of work! Jim is still progressing pretty well but he says he still doesn't know if he believes completely yet if what we have taught him is true so he still won't commit to the Word of Wisdom. But when we asked him how he thinks he can gain a testimony, he said "That's why I am reading the Book of Mormon" so I don't think we need to worry to much about him. Just give him some more time to read and pray. Lu DiXiong on the other hand won't really meet with us and just says that coming to church is enough but he also won't come to church so we are going to have to try and help him understand he needs to meet with us to learn more.

Other than those two, we have found a couple of new Investigators. We met with both of them for the first time this week so we hope that we can start to get things moving with them. Also, there is an eternal investigator named Benjamin here. He is totally ready to get baptized but his parents will not let him. He has been investigating since last March and is half way through the Book of Mormon for his second time reading it. He is really awesome but hasn't been able to come to church because of him parents. But last week he randomly showed up at church and he said that he will try to help his parents be Ok with us visiting their house sometime in the future to talk to them so we have some big hope right now!

We have spent most of our nights out on the streets this week though. We are talking to everyone and it has been working pretty well but we actually aren't having a lot of success. We had about 20 first lessons either cancel on us or not show up in the last 2 or 3 weeks. Of the 3 people that actually showed up, they are all investigators now. So it is kind of a bummer that we can't meet with more.

I'm loving it here in Taiwan! The mission is going by way too quickly now and I am starting to really truly love the work now even though I haven't seen too much "success" on my mission yet! I look forward to the rest of it and I am pumped! Hahaha!

Elder Holderness

Also, I think my attention span for these emails just keeps getting shorter and shorter so sorry if they don't make sense of don't say a lot! Hahaha

March 5, 2017

Hello Everyone! And welcome to another week in Taiwan! Currently there isn't too much big or exciting happening but the missionary work continues to progress!

Last Monday was a holiday here in Taiwan but we still decided to go to Costco. That was a mistake! I barely made it out alive! Hahaha! There were so many people there! But even more incredible: I made it back home with all those groceries on a bike! I bought two things of milk, muffins, a giant box of cereal and a whole lot of other stuff; put it into one bag, then put that bag on my shoulder and biked home through the second most crowded area of Taiwan! Hahaha! After that was a little more relaxing, we headed into Taibei to buy tickets for some event we are going to next week and then bought Coldstone!

As for the rest of the week, we had exchanges on Tuesday to Wednesday so I was in the other Elders' Area for a day and got to go finding with Elder Diener. It was a lot of fun and we found a family that they are starting to teach now!

As for our area, we are still struggling with finding new investigators and keeping our current ones. We have two right now that are really our only progressing investigators. One is Jim and the other's last name is Lu. They both have come to church and as far as we know they are praying and reading the scriptures! We just need them to keep building their faith so they have desire to keep it up without us asking them everyday!

Other than that we are on the streets every night for a couple of hours trying to find people! Some of the ones we found before dropped because they said that they thought church was boring but that's okay! That's better than the usual not telling us and just standing us up! Hahaha!

I'm doing well! Taiwan is great and our mission is awesome! We'll just keep on working and see what happens this week! I can't believe that it is already March!

Love, Elder Holderness

P.S. - Just a personal note from Brian to us this week...

"Yep things are going well here! I am really starting to love Taiwan and my mission! Chinese is really coming along for me now. I have always had an interest in it, but now I know it was one of God's gifts to me too! I have learned Characters so fast! I can do 250 in a week right now!"