September 26, 2016 "its bigger" -Han Solo

I think we pretty much just made star war seven pokemon version this week. that giant pokeball has been completed! and used. i must tell everyone exercise balls are not for spray paint. i finished that dang thing though it took a long while! and pretty much we did what we did the last few times but this time it was way bigger! im pretty much the pokemoon master! i dont even need a master ball i just make them big enough that they cant get out! i am very proud of it! 

aside from that me and elder zhuang have started district tsunamis, so we pull the district out of their areas and take them to a struggling area because we have a white wash companionship and another area that isn't flying to the skys yet, we decided as soon as everyone has a large pool of solid investigators with dates we will stop because they have been very effective lately!

last week me and elder zhuang jut kinda chilled for P day we watched 17 miracles cleaned because my companion reallllllly likes cleaning. a lot. its huang miu. but it was fun! this week we had a lot of fun! we went on exchanges with elder vandemerwe and smith! i was senior comp again with elder smith it was fun! (thanks elder facer i played the switch roles game) so i was in taiwan 3 weeks and he 3 months it was super fun! i made a lot of people laugh at how bad my chinese was! then we had a tsunami twice this week it was a party me and elder zhuang were running around and we had finiahed talking to a family that had no interest and i looked behind me adn saw this giant crape thing that they put chocolate on and roll it up and it turns into a giant cookie, and i really wanted one but then i was like "nah bruh you aint even hungry" we walked away. and then i had a feeling to buy one anyway, so i bought one, the lady that made it also no interest we had to get going we needed to head back home but we were like crud we cant eat on the MRT(metro) so we stopped on a corner to talk to everyone and then all the sudden this lady walked by with her 2 kids, we started talking to us and she was like thanks but my husband is a christian he has this cute saying that i like, and conintued to tell us our churches quote... we set her up, her husband is an LA, she is gonna get dunk'd its dope. miracle from food or is it just a miraculous food? i believe that latter.

i love you all a whole lot, i was reading to day in John and came across Jonh 1:5 light shineth in the darkness and the darkness understandeth not. this struck me. many people will see your influence and see your light or even just feel it, and never get the chance to talk to you. this is why our actions are so utterly important "be an example of the believers" when we show forth our light it "leaves people with a sense of wonder and amazment" "many are kept from the truth because they know not where to find it" "i was seeking without knowing" this is our role, shine in the darkness bring them out of their pits and their caves, we are to cry to every nation. and this is not the work of full time missionaries alone, there is a reason every call says "you have been recommended as one worthy of FULL TIME misiionary service. we are all suppose to be sharing this gospel. this is impossible to succeed without members! we have the role to find and invite but when they come and accept the members MUST help! they have to talk with them be friend them. i was a terrible member before my mission, aside from the fact that at church i watched to see who would come especially LAs i would talk with them, befriend them. all of you please read PMG chapter 9 it will change your view if you truly read it. 

I LOVE YOU ALL Elder Conover

September 18, 2016 KAAAAAAAAAAOOO ROU! (BBQ)

well this week was mid autumn festival... it is celebrated similar to the 4th for america. mostly just that every one is kao rou'ing and being that everyone is crazy dope in taiwan they just give you just as you ride by! so we had a member qing us kao rou, then we had a member's family qing us, their granddaughter  is in australia i met her in the MTC, they aren't members she set up with the sisters last night! and we got kao rou non the street especially nice when you wanna set people up! they give you food and a phone number and sometimes a time. and then they tell us xinku ni de (man you guys are crazy hardworking) its a great time!

so aside from that this week was pretty fun we had 2 and 1/2 days of straight heavy rain. we had lessons luckily jk they all said no because of the typhoon... we were outside all day man i love taiwan! so we had 3 days of try find people or call people with very little results due to the typhoon people really dont like to talk aside from jia you(good luck) and xin ku(i feel that bruh) however we have pretty muched reset this entire area now all but 2 investigators are gone. our phone broke so we had to get a new one... no formers, potentials, members, investigators, less actives. all is gone and we cant switch because the other phone cant turn on... hehehe 🙆 

also the whole poke pocalypse we are preparing a new one. a bigger one. we have bought an excersize ball, spray paint and are currently in painting stage.:) if i could explain how fun it was to hand pump an exercsize ball with the tiny pump they included i would. it took about 30 minutes to pump up:) now it is all on my artistic ability.. anyone who knows me knows i am not artistically talented, but i have faith that if we do it late enough and move the ball really fast all of their eyes are already squinting so i think they wont notice:)😂😂🐒

This week i was reading in luke 6:45(this may be wrong i dont have my planner) and it made me really start to think about me before the mission. when i started high school the thing was to greet friends with a simple silly insult "sup ya animal" and other such things. near the end of sophmore year i made a goal to only use compliments and to notice something about every friend. and also to give five random people compliments to make them smile. at first i would do it to people that were already happy, but as it became easier to do i would aim for the out skirts, and people that seemed like they needed it. and pretty soon nobody referred to me as filthy animal or anything like that. and by the end of senior year i would walk through the halls and random people that i barely knew would say hi to me. and i noticed that all my friends used compliments as well. i will not take credit for this, i believe that many had the same feelings and just changed anyway from growing up. however i know that this is scripture is true. what comes in is nothing, but what you let leave you your actions, thoughts, words, anything outward i hope that it testifies of who you want to be. because how you express yourself is who you are. i recommend that every looks at what they do it might suprise you how easy it is to see you aren't who you thought you were. worry not what is brought unto to you, rather take care what you allow to show unto others.

I LOVE YOU ALL ELDER CONOVER

we went back to bali, it wasbeautiful, we took a different way better path then last time:) me elder smith, james and adam zhou and jim

September 11, 2016 ~ Cursed ~

what an supercalifragilisticexbealidoxious(mary poppins word pretty sure im right) week! it was pretty dang fun this week, we met some awesome people and had plenty of finding, and basically we just had a lot of fun! Lets start off by saying this week we saw miracles so i went a mini exchanges with elder clyde he got here a few weeks ago, and we ended up running into a friend joseph who i met with elder facer forever ago and while with elder facer we had him accept baptism twice, but we never set a date with him. well me and elder clyde ran into him because for some reason he hadn't been around for a while. and we set him up, and now he is on date and came to church with us yesterday! and even better he remembered what we had taught him over a month ago! he is awesome we are gonna dunk him and he is gonna help the kingdom of god grow so much! we have been talking on how to really change our ward lately, its a very old ward but in the long run it hasn't seen that many changes especially in numbers and that is something me and elder zhuang want to change. in taiwan 500 people makes you a stake beitou(my area) alone has enough baptized people to be just below a stake, and they are some of the most amazing people you will ever meet. we just have to figure out how to help them feel the power of the church again:) we have been thinking how to usethem to get their friends so they can work together to come back! so we have been pretty busy lately :) 

last P-day was pretty fun we went hiking with the zone leaders and had a lot of fun! we were in beitou mountains a very beautiful place, then later we had a sweet zone meeting and had dope training on repentence and then we had exchanges with zone leaders, me and elder dong were together he is also a bendi and is very crazy! but super fun, while there we ate pizza for lunch, met some cool people. we met an LA that has billions of questions, and asked me why he is cursed with colored skin(ironically this didnt inspire the title) i couldn't answer him to well but i tried my best and told him the only real answer comes from god. he said he still reads and prays but will keep trying. that was a pretty fun experince, the next day we went home and had some lessons and then more finding. and then the day after that me and elder zhuang woke to very sore throats and stuffy noses, after elder zhuang went to the doctor and it started raining really hard we started finding😂 our members found out and were very kindly freaking out, for the best actually one gave us dayquil which saved my life because yesterday and the day before were a lot worse! but we still were out and very nicely it worked out people would be like "xinku keyi bang ni ma?" "that sucks bro, can i help you" and we would be like "hai hao ba, yao tingdao fuyin ma?" "its whatever bro, wanna hear the gospel" so maybe it wasnt exactly like that but thats pretty much how we used it, it helped a good amount of people talk to us. it was crazy fun week over all! by the way the title came from the faact that our zoneleader elder hamiliton was sick first and passed the curse to us. thanks bro.

so this week my studies led me to thinking about how to not only "endure trials well" but also how to have joy in all things and "to be an example of the believers" and i've been reading in the new testament, and so id like to teach this principle as jesus would, a parable, of the holographic picture (or whatever those pictures are called that have 2 pictures and you tilt it and see different ones) life is pretty much like one of those as you look ahead and see the mountains and the tirlas, the hard work and all of the obstacles you are naturally programmed to use a natural man's eye, and this is where murmuring and doubt come. but if you are willing to just started one step in front of the other pretty soon you find you are at the top of a mountain, with a glorious view. and you look back down and you see the beautiful scene that you just came through full of growth strengthening and fun. you look back with a god's eye. think about it. i can promise that jesus knew this principle and this is what allowed him to say "not my will but thine be done" this is what allowed him to be so amazing he knew nothing could stop him, he knew every trial was for his benefit, and he knew that the very words spoken to joseph smith in lliberty jail were true "peace be unto your soul" "your afflictions shall be but a small moment" "and if you endure it well you shall be lifted up at the last day" i can promise you this is true. "a moment of pain is worth the glory" or pretty close to that quote -unbroken i love you all, all these teachings these principals and these leaders are true. christ lives, and loves you. he descended below all things that he might know how to lift you from them. he knows. HE KNOWS. there is no words that can replace those 2. i love you all keep enduring well

Kong Jie Rui Zhang Lao

In field tag

When your sick you wear a mask

Beautiful mountains 

Ahhhhhhhhh.....

September 4, 2016 Call from the dead

Pretty much the best thing this week is we went up as a district and zoneleaders to the beach in danshuai, a different one from the epic story of "there and  back again an elder's tale" and we started off trying to bare-hand catch crabs! hahaha super fun! it took some time to get the courage up to actually try to grab them!!!! but it got fun we were touching them a lot but you would be surprised how strong crab's legs are when they are in a whole they dont like to move, and they were only about the size of our hands, i dont want to get one of the giant ones (these were all pretty young) We stepped in the water, splashed a little bit, played some frisbee taught the bendi's (natives)how to throw! it was super frun!!! Elder dong, our bendi zone leader wanted to wrestle me and was asking me to teach him the whole time! hahaha it was so fun! we did a little bit... (i won dont tell him he wont like you;)) he is super funny we are going to go hike today with them!

This week was super fun!!!! we had a lot of time of the streets due to the fact that our 4 best investigators have turned into smoke.... 2 of them (dating) the girlfriend pretty ruined everything and wont let him meet with us... he still really desires baptism but he literally wont tell us he cant meet just the girlfriend will. Tithing caught her... its all good maybe the next missionaries will get them! then one of our other ones september = the busiest month so he lilterally has no time, and cant even come to church which he truly enjoyed. and another one wont answer the phone! we dont know why but he also has some pretty crazy work. so we will stay in touch.

However this week we saw some cool miracles that inspired two things the title, and our project. our cell phone has over 70 former's and our records that still remain(see priar pictures for records that dont) still have a lot! so this week i was reading in PMG and saw the part on formers and felt i should start, i disregarded the feeling and we began the day by the end of that night we saw 3 formers, that i have never seen walking around the streets... and ironically 2 of them are crazy busy and were within minutes of not being outside...(coincidence? I THINK NOT!) so we have began the "calling of the dead" project and we have already seen some success, 2 people of the 5 that have answered have set up! and the rest that have been called so far either didnt answer or phone number isn't around anymore... so im saying pretty good odds so far!

also in better news we opened our emails and my companion was screaming and yelling for like 5 minutes his little bro got a mission call(before he came on a mission his whole family was LA) "We see the effects of one man" (wicked is omitted from this quote of the scriptures) "by small and simple things are great things brought to pass" he says his whole family goes to church and by january will have 2 missionaries!!!!!! taiwan people are literally the bomb.

we have had a lot of fun as companions he really likes to sing, and i enjoy joining in, and we laugh everytime cuz i dont sound good:) our member work has been seeing improvements lately within the week and a half our realtions have gone pretty much tyhrough the rough! hes awesome! more projects in the works(excersise ball sized pokeball, changing how we find, etc...) i cant wait to see what happens!!!!!!!!!

LOVE YOU ALL, IF YOU EVER FEEL DOWN EMAIL ME!

LOVE 孔長老