Promptings

Alright so this week has been really cool!

We have been finished up with all the crazy fun of transfers now we are preparing for the coming zone conference! I am so excited i have found one big thing that has changed since i have been out here is my desire to learn, grow, and improve has become a driving force for me. I have found my need and my desire to be more than who i am always have been, i want to be an effective messenger of the truth and i want to help more people so i am working and trying to change and it is so fun!

This week has been awesome we have done a ton or stuff. So our english ward has been on fire lately with bringing people to things to meet us and inviting them to come and learn about things. We have had a ton of really awesome phillipino members bringing their friends. And we have a new couple in the ward form honduras. And they are awesome! They gave us a really cool talk last sunday about working in the church and doing the things god commands. Brother Mauricio gave a really cool thought about how if just half of the members of the church brought one friend a year to help get baptized then within 20 years we would have 1 billion members!!!! how cool is that! that is 1/7 of the current population! I never new how fast that would work! pretty sweet!

The chinese ward has been super cool too! We got a new ward mission leader this week! It is gonna be really fun to see the changes our ward want to work with us super bad! They are great people that just want to help the church to grow and improve!!!! I love serving here we get to see so many miracles. The hand of the Lord has been manifest to me often and many times a day through simple things that don't "normally" happen!

we had a beach P-day last week!!!

WET indoor and outdoor

We have had a crazy week this week! So for starters there was a typhoon that went nearby Taiwan, so for about four days we had a constant rain and wind all along the mission! From Taidong to Miaoli! Which really put a whip on my feet, to quote my fantastic companion, "my feet feel like frozen raisins." We decided to turn off the AC sometimes! hahaha.

But the coolest thing that happened this week, was our good friends周世樵 and 張育誠 got baptized! Not only that but 周世樵 made some huge changes and actually invited people to his baptism! And decided that he would be baptized with the other guy! Originally he kept telling us "I don't want to be a zoo animal for people to look at." But then he later realized they weren't there for that, but to support and welcome him! And even after 3 days of rain, and a constant down pour and another activity happening, our ward was super supportive of them and we had a great turnout! 張育誠 gave a fantastic testimony, got everyone laughing he is a super solid middle aged sales man, and he is naturally good with speaking, so it was fun to see him up front bearing testimony for the truth! And then we also had a good friend 董宇峻 the old missionary i just replaced here came back up to see the baptism! He is a good friend of mine, i love that guy!

We have had some really cool people start showing up, we just met with one of our youth, he is about 15 and he brought to friends to play ball, and we asked if they would want to learn about the church, and they both agreed, so we shared a little restoration with them, watched "because he lives" and then gave them Books of Mormon, they both are planning on every week whent hey come to ball, they will just meet with us and then come to church the next day! We are excited we could use a few extra youth!

We also got to go ice skating again this week but for free! Our investigator that just got baptized has a little cousint hat is a figure skater, and her mom took us and him over there for free! Elder Johnson started to learn how to do the pretty little spin jumps! i was still working on the spins!!

Love all of you! Elder Conover

General Confrence

Man i love the prophets and apostles. I firmly believe they are all prophets, seers, and revelators. They are set apart by God, for the imparting of his word to us. They do it wonderfully! So i know most of you saw it last week, but due to translation needs i just barely watched it yesterday. And it has once again reminded me of the need for improvement. I felt an amazing theme throughout these sessions was the need for humility, repentance, and being reliant on the Lord.

This has also been a big theme for my life lately. I have shared a little before as to some of the lessons i have learned with this new transfer. And also the things i have learned from my companions. I just want to again share my thoughts as to the fact that all things come by and through the merits of the Lord. My favorite saying lately has been "relying wholly upon the merits of him who is mighty to save." I love this saying just reminds me that no matter what you do, you cannot earn anything of yourself. In the end, success, happiness, peace, salvation, and exaltation are gifts of God given through the merits and mercy of "HE who is mighty to save" I love my Savior, he truly has sacrificed himself for all, including me and you. And he speaks to us today, by the mouth of holy prophets and also through personal revelation. I have ran across Ether 12:41 lately. And just want to say, those who seek find, i would follow the counsel of the scriptures and also those who are currently writing scripture;) It will bring much joy to our lives.

We have had a really fun week, we met some super cool people! I got to go back up to 北投(beitou) where i was first "born" to teach someone we thought was a phillipino but turned out we went up there and she was not, so long story short she is not someone we needed to go up there to teach we could have had the sisters up there do it! She came to church last week, but we didn't see her, they just gave us a name, number, and said call! So that was pretty fun, they took us to a crazy nice house way up on the mountain and they kept like 30 dogs! i have never been to a house that literally smells like a dog! they are awesome though! super nice, and most are injured in some way! It was a great little experience. We also had two of our awesome friends pass their baptismal interview!! It was so cool! We also had one of them randomly call us and ask if we wanted to BBQ with his family! So we did, his family is loaded, it was fun! they love us, we will slowly baptize them all!:)

Love you all! Elder Conover

HIGH stakes

SMan this week has been a crazy one again! So we have had to go to the Training with President this week and the other leaders of the mission. So a group of great people all together! Some of best missionaries I've known and President told My companion and I that we were gonna do a training for a time limit of about 45-1hr minutes. He let us know the day before. Man my nerves were high!!!!!! Elder Johnson and I talked a ton, and woke up early that day. And when we were setting everything up we were just so anxious to get going! Eventually the Lord allowed us to do well, and everything went smoothly. We have been really focusing lately on relying on the Lord. And I have come to know in a very real sense that ALL things come of God, whether allowed, or done for us. It is all of God, there are things he wants done, and if we align ourselves with his will, he will allow us to work miracles. If we rebel against him, we are left to our own power and knowledge which if you have ever tested is 不多！ hahaha.

We have also been meeting with some super cool people lately! We called an LA and he ended up bringing his girlfriend along with him to the meeting. We have had the priviladge to continue working with these two, as we are working to get him active and her baptized! But super cool miracle. We went to meet them and we had not had time to lesson plan what we wanted, but as we focused on her and the whispering of the Holy Ghost. The lesson went really smoothly and I felt very easily to invite her to baptism. The very second i invited the Boyfriend fearing the pressure would worry her. Jumped in and went off for 5-10 mins about not needing to be in a rush and to not worry if you don't want to and stuff. Well she was just looking down at the BOM(which we just used to teach the Plan of Salvation) looks up at My companion then glances at her boyfriend and says "I've decided i will attend." shocking all three of us with the dedication behind her voice. I truly believe the Holy Ghost had made clear to her the the Plan was for her, and all things were true. Giving her the confidence to say i will be baptized!!! Super cool miracle!

Aside from that we also had exchanges this week! I went with Elder Smith and Elder Cheney! Elder Smith is a champion! he is currently one of my favorite people! Because pretty much what we did all day was to just go and work hard all day and just enjoy what we were doing the whole time! HE is a killer missionary! And Elder Cheney my old companion back in Hualian! HE is back down on the east coast but he came up and chilled with me for the day! He is so awesome! We had a really good day our exchange got cut short a little but we got to teach and find and work so that's all we need:)

Really good week! The Lord has blessed us greatly.

we had a fun week