YMerry Christmas and Mery Deathmas

Yeah i skyped, it was dope. my little siblings (male) their voice shave dropped an octive or two. My older bro now has a super 帥 beard, my parents look pretty much the same, and my sisters are crazy bomb. it was such a good time to see them again!!! Christmas was awesome we ended up havng no one at church. but right after, our awesome family showed up hoping to make the last hour their kids had been sick and had to go to the doctor. But then i got to open my christmas present, i got some freaking awesome socks! and gummi worms! 好吃!!! 

I don't really know what happened this week. We went up to taipei, to have the mission christmas party! so all of the missionaries were together! i got to see my old comps, and got to eat delicious food! It was so fun! we were in this crazy nice place called the "American Club" They served us a bunch of mini cheese cakes and crembulett in a cup. buffet style. they had all the american food, mashed potatoes, ribs, chicken, tots, everything!

We also had a great time, Elder Miner was packing up for the week, getting ready to go home! because he is dying!!! He waws even taking the suitcases up for the christmas party! But he did a great job not getting distracted. He went hard all the way to the end. He goes up to taipei in a few hours, and then tomorrow is home. so therefore it is death-mas. It has been such an awesome chance to serve with him, learn from him, and work with him! He is a good man, And has served honorably. He went until the end, never looking back, always focused on improvement. And he is one of the most relaxed and hard working elders i know.

I will be with the zone leaders in a tri-pan, for the next couple days until they send the new guy.

Also we had an awesome chance, our ward came down to our area and helped us carol to LA's and investigators, and some members, just to keeping lifting the spirits! It was so fun to work with the ward a little bit. And we got special permission to stay out a little late with them, and they were super excited about us staying out late just to carol with them. I think it really changed some hearts to see so many people coming down and showing their love for them. I think they will have a little more fire to be active or to join the ward, it really helped build a lot of relations!

Anyway i Love you guys a whole lot, I'm outa here!

How the mighty fall

we had our cookie! our chistmas dinner with the ward, and we are angels

On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 9:36 AM, Jason Ray Conover <jason.conover@myldsmail.net>wrote:

Many of you should know, that my companion will soon die. This week was a lot of preparation for such things. We had to go up to 台北 this week so that he could have his exit interview. Well he failed and will be going home in about one week! HAHA😂😂😂 I spent the day on exchanges with the 木柵 area. We had a tripan for the day. And then we stayed the night with the central zone leaders. We went from 鳳林 to central 台北... there is a big difference there. But in the morning we played frisbee, i ended up seeing Elder Jensen there! super fun! i played frisbee in a sweat suit basically, it was a little gross after we came home. oops.

But aside from that this week was pretty awesome down in our area. We visited some of our investigators that have a lot of potential but are just not progressing, and they have just been hitting the perfect trials i guess. because they have all been having their desire for the gospel grow. And we can just feel the difference as we teach them. 

Me and Elder Miner have been really trying to commit ourselves to improve and to do everything we can to help this area. And i have seen so much change, and improvement not only in myself, but also in our area. investigators seem to just be getting it. And it feels amazing! We still are having troubles getting any of them to church, because they are all crazy poor and have to work or they just don't want to drive 40 minutes and stay for 3 hours and drive another 40 minutes home when they have little kids. However the best and my favorite part of our area is that there are families!!!!! When we first got down here we only had families to teach since then we've grown to potential families and stuff like that, but people have like 3 and 4 and even 6 kids and i love to see families again! a lot of taiwan doesn't like to have a lot of kids. they just think its too expensive. I love playing with kids man! it is literally so fun!

Also we decided that we wanted cookie, but our toaster broke so we made the dough and put it in a rice cooker. guess how steamed cookie turned out.... actually freaking delicious! a little douoghy in some parts but super good!

We had a super bomb ward christmas party! Our ward was making this huge deal about it, and they didn't tell us much about it or anything but when we got there we were blown away, they had a bunch of non-members there for us to meet, and crazy decorations, and they had us do a skit we previously prepared, and then they did a nativity! and that was super impressive!!! literally blew me away!

Love you guys! 保持你的罹癌

Elder Conover is out!

Member Madness

I would like to let you all know that this week was very special time in my life. i hit a very big milestone. I ATE MY FIRST BIGMAC! So just so you guys know, i ate it so hard. 

In other news of the week, we went down with the beutlers, to visit our good friend 朝弟兄 and taught him the last temple prep lesson, the only thing left is for him to start being more active. Witch is incredibly far when you literally live on the top of the mountain that he takes people flying off of. (he owns and runs a paragliding business) He is also 60 somethings years old, and his wife has 4 or 5 major body problems, some of which effect her back. But he is awesome! then we had the chance to meet with 林美綺 and she started progressing again!! She is so cool! she bears her testimony everytime we visit her, she knows that reading and praying help and effect her life, and makes a point of telling us about every miracle she sees from it! 

We had a chance this week, as challenged by the mission president, to try on friday to visit 5 members, and talk to them about doing their own work. Well there is a slight problem, Our main and closest active member who lives 20 minutes across the valley area away from everyone else, was not home. So we decided we would start from the bottom of our area, and visit every single person on our list. luckily our house is almost exactly in the middle of our area, so we satrted biking down, and it started out really great the 5th person we visited actually was there, hadn't moved, and still was willing to talk. He has absolute no desire to be active at church though. So we kept biking down and got about 40 minutes from home soouth, before we realize we had set up a member that had just barely moved down to our area in the last few days but they live opposite side. And we had to bike up to the member that does the flying thing. So we head back, 20 minutes back and we were at the foot of the mountain with about another hour and a half before our set-up. We biked the mountain in probably 20 minutes, or less. And luckily the weather had gone from sunny to sprinkling rain for 2 reasons it was cooler, and the member wasn't able to fly so he was home. Then after that we biked down the mountain, raining a little harder now. And set off about another hour up and we arrived at the members house, utterly soaked, even with our raincoats. And the wind was chilly and consistant, but they were cool, and ended up buying us dinner so it was all worth it:) then we biked back vistiing members alon the way, and made it home in about hour and 10 minutes, only one other member was home or hadnn't moved. so not a bad day 4 members!!! and the next morning we got to the 5th one who lives here but works in 台東. so good to meet them, has a chance for 2 melch. priesthood holders there, which would be enough to start our branch. her husband and 20 yr old son aren't members.

Also this week was full of miracles of people starting to progress, and seeing investigators really change, as well as just everyay life miracles. The last thing you need to know is that aboriginals are dope cuz they make sick knives, for our pday we went up a canyon with some members stopped buy a knife shop(obviously i got some) and then had a dope hike!

Love you guys a whole freaking lot, don't let anything stop you from going!

孔長老 out!

Here is a goat at the foot of the mountain and us on the way up.

On the rebound

Well there is a few types of rebounds in life. You have the obvious one basketball, the shooter misses and the others all try to get control of it, you have an object hitting a barrier and rebounding in another direction, you have the "just been dumped" rebound, you've got the "coming out of it" rebound. This week was truly amazing for a few reasons. We have this super cool man named Gao Wei Bo, he is 27, very humble, he has experienced a lot of life already, loves is daughter a whole lot! and is looking for a restart, a clean slate he feels like he has found it. And he has it is called baptism. The gospel allows him peace of mind, sense of belonging, and relief. The problem was for about 3-4 weeks he disappeared of to work, and was hard to get in contact with. when we finally visited him he was busy but he was very sorry about everything and as we left he looks us in the face and says "i promise you i will get baptized." We visited him again recently and had a very powerful lesson with him. He is a truly great man, during that lesson he says something along the lines of "you can't travel the gospel path alone, i will let you guys meet my friends so we can learn together." 

This week also had another rebound we had 2 days where we decided we just wanted to bik like crazy, so we rolled up north abouot 45 minutes biking to 壽豐 where we spent our day trying to visit people and get to know the roads up there. the second time we went back we had an investigator up there, he had met with missionaries before about 6 years ago. Then he stopped meeting with them because he had some problems, none of which involve the doctrine. Then a week or two ago he self-contacted us and came to church. He is now a progressing investigator. He lives out past 壽豐 a little way. in the middle of a field. we were biking along and were looking for his house on a little road that had about 15 houses before the road took a slight left turn and continued through fields for a long while. we got to the end of the houses but we were one number short of his address we were confused until we called him. So we biked out into the fields a little way. 

Then that night we forgot that we had meant to visit our 王 family. which live in the other direction than 壽豐 which is about an hours bike to their house. realizing we would be late if we ate dinner we hauled our booties back down south, until we rolled into 鳳林 our home town and were starving and we also knew that it was fast sunday the next day. so we ran into a bakery and bought the cheapest and most filling bread we could and pounded that. We met with the 王 family and read the Book of Mormon with them. That book changes people, it changes lives. the difference between our progressing and unlearning investigators is if they read. literally. If you aren't reading it now. read it. And if you've never read it all the way through read it.

We also had the cahnce for Pday to come up to 花蓮 and shop a little bit, Elder Miner was getting stuff for his mom, and I've been looking for a cloe place to buy some aboriginal knives. They are ridiculously dope. we ended up not getting the knoves way to expensive in that shop. But if you want some dope knives next week i will have pics and you can ask about them through email. And we got some other aboriginal stuff that is super sick! this lady sold backpacks, shoes, surf boards, painting, sow art, all this dope stuff.

Love you guys!!! 愛你們 孔杰叡長老 is outa here!

The ocean is gorgeous, there is a phoenix for you, and that is a cool totem pole thing,