17 Miracles

October 17

I am excited to begin this week by informing you all of the miraculous journey we had this week!

we began this week in fenglin, probably the dopest place ever. as we began this week on a nice train ride to ji an to spend the day with the zoneleaders and the other elders in our ward. We ended that day with a pretty nasty roller skating crash down a hill, and getting free food. we continued, on into tuesday where we had our first DTM an endeavor not to small for fenglin. which took us much traveling and walking. but after that we visited brother chao in the top of the mountains(he runs a paragliding business) we are preparing him for the temple with his wife. the Beutler's our areas senior couple is in charge but asked us to assist them in this work. which we ended up driving across half the road because the rain had broken the road to the point that driving across it would cause falling. the next morning we arose and biked up the mountain and again as we crested and were returning the road was covered in a landslide. we had to lift the bikes across this area and then continue down. after which we biked about 40 minutes south to guangfu, and spent the day there, we are very poor because starting the area takes a lot of money. so we ate delicious bread with raisins. and picnic'd on the way back to the "village" we call it the village because of the distinctly defining factor that we set them all up together. and went and got to know them a little bit, they are all aboriginals very poor, and extremely humble and kind. after we met them we set them to come back again so we can share restoration with them all. and then specifiaclly met with the host family, who came to church our first week in fenglin(yesterday) they have 3 highenergy kids! and are very devout to christianity but are very willing to here. needless to say this whole week was full of miracles.

we tried to count them and couldnt cuz we kept thinking of more! this area is prepared to hear and accept this gospel,i am priviledged to serve here!!! we had the chance to visit wang family and they took us to a aboriginal game fest like oncwe a year  thing (bought ties there) and then they showed us an ancient secret most people dont know (they took us up near a members home) very pretty place, they proceeded to tell us about their good friend who lives around the area (our member) and said we should meet him. you can imagine how delighted we were to hear this. #miracle the member after knowing about this asked us to invite him whenver wemeet with them. (we dont have many members around to help with lessons #doublemiracle!

In church wang family came, loved it! the ward helpedso much, and the second hour the dad shared his testimony about family... (we just need to fioll the font already) i love this place!

I love you all a whole butt load!!! we might have to switch email day to tuesday... this is the onlyplace to do emails within an hour bike ride.... its really ghetto... and isnt for sure open monday just FYI

LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!!

(no pictures today) this place is to ghetto

October 9, 2016 Passed Go Collect...

thanks for joining in the 6 week monopoly game. let me fill you in on what you missed. Elder Conover and Elder Zhuang rolled the dice, and landed on a chance card, Elder Zhuang pulled the card and was told to return to "GO" to recieve a baby, while Elder Conover pulled and was told to advance to the next unowned railroad. He needed to pass "GO" so he was told to collect his luggage, a new phone, and Elder Hamiliton to move on. He arrived that afternoon in the neighboring city and had to pay the Player "Zoneleaders" their due rent of Elder Hamilton and a one night stay. The next day Host arrived to help conduct him to his new railroad, Elder Conover was also allowed to bring a business partner Elder Miner was previously selected. When they arrived in their new railroad, Host(bishop) asked if they were interested in purchasing or just passing through. Elder Conover and Miner purchased the fenglin railroad property, they have already managed build 1 house in the property. what will happen next?!

So this transfer i recieved the message as to where i was going and for those unfamiliar with my strange speach i came down to hualian (east coast) which is about a 2 hour train ride down the coast by fast train. We came and stayed with the zoneleaders for a night as we had no iea how toi get down to fenglin. me and elder miner are actually both from bingham we had the same chinese class. we are now starting this area where missionaries haven't been before as in they haven't ever opened an area here. the only time people have seen missionaries is when they had to go up to taipei or into main city. fenglin township its self is about 3 roads going long ways, and about 5 roads the short way. its about a 5 minute ride from one corner to the other(longest) and is very dope feeling. however our area coversd about 5 or 6 of these little cities. we have a large area going from hualian ji an area down to yuli.... its freaking dope!!!!!!!!!!!!! we have started this area and so far it has rained every single day. we have pure finding everyday all day:) it is probably the best place in the world, i still have a lot of mountains im in a valley again. with good rivers, and the ocean only like a hour and a half straight over the mountain by bike. our chapel is about a 40 minute train ride, and 15 minute walk. i am in love with this place, our first night there we had 4 people give us food:)

we have the best miracle ever, so we stopped off the side of the freeway to talk to this little community a little bit, we get to the back corner and talk to this old lady who makes yuan zhu min(aboriginal) clothes and got to know her, and we then found out she has a son the has no bone of the sides of his head because of a major motorcycle accident and we talked with him and her together, we ended up setting them up for tuesday, and they asked if they can invite all their neighbors to meet with us to! and we simply said "yiding keyi" for sure can, they said they would host it. pretty sure we are just gonna baptize all 20 people in that community. just sayin.... 

i liked this conference a lot (because i just barely watched it due to time difference) i think they gave us a lot of amazing counsel! i hope you can all take the oppurtunity to listen to the PROPHET and APOSTLES seriously that is something i lacked until later in highschool, but i can give you a personal testimony that if you lisen, take notes, and think how you can apply it. you will ALWAYS find good assistance, they're advice though given to everyone applies even to the babe that cant understand. i invite you to just take it seriously and watch again even one of the talks it can be completely random, but honestly watch that one, i can promise you it will help you rright now in life. 

Elder Conover is back to work .... peace!

Here is his new Area Hualien he said it's a large area with very small towns. He is so excited to open this area. They have not had missionaries here before. 

All packed up

On the train with new comp. Elder Miner

Mission pres. Van loaded 

Spending a night en route with zone leaders and opening a coconut with a sword. Seems like a good idea. 😳

New apartment 

No beds yet 

New area

Elder Conover and Elder Facer make the National Taiwanese News

A sweet member sent me a message on face book with a link to the news story with Jason and his companion. This was back in August if you remember, they have since upgraded to a bigger Poké Ball  and still make a lot of contacts In the park and on the street with the Pokémon craze. 

Here is the Link to the story.... Sure wish I new some Chinese. 😜

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNgMWESOa3M&feature=youtu.be&t=1m10s

October 3, 2016 Kao Rou King @6

So i would like to start this off by saying that i have now been out for over 6 months 1/4 of my mission is gone... mother goose with a pickled leapard that was fast. now this week was a party!!! to start off my companion spent the majority of this week like this "im so poor" "wow you are crazy rich" "i cant do that i just wont eat" and by the end of the week he was like this "im rich" "tell me im rich" "i dont need to care how much money cuz im rich" as well as "call me kao rou king" "you are so weak" kao rou means BBQ just in case for some wierd reason you didnt know.

so me and elder zhuang decided that the very last day of this month (6 month mark) 9/30 we would kao rou chi dao bao "BBQ eat til full" which is probably one of my favorite things about taiwan! but also this month i had to make several major purchases for our apartment as well as a large exercise ball. normally we get a pretty easy month to make it through. i lived this month on about 3000K hahaha thats not alot. but ironically i still ate just fine and in the end it ended up being just slightly over how much i needed this month. i went into the first day with about 40NT left #godfeedsme no problem! hahaha so this week elder zhuang isnt very careful with money so he was scaping because he buys very expensive food! also this is the very last Pday of this transfer i am almost garunteed to leave. large bunch of new missionaries coming in elder zhuang hasnt trained yet, and he is pretty much for sure training! so we played moving madness in DTM everyone guesses who is going where and what they do, and if they are dying how long til married. i have been told 3 times i will go to miao li, because i love mountains, 2 times i go to taoyuan because its the promised land 1 time to zhubei. and as the seasons are running late i should either go to zhubei or taidong for some slight patterns that have occured lately that i am too lazy to explain. but we will see. 

so this week me and elder zhuang had a lot of fun he has been teaching me how to solve a rubics cube, im really close to knowing how! yay my 3rd grade dream is coming true. last pday we got haircuts and played basketball with a whole lot of elders at the BU(mission home chapel) it was super sick! then we spent the week as missionaries do. ya know. preachin, then we were finally at kao rou day and elder zhuang decided that if i didnt eat the last piece of meet that was clearly his piece he would be kao rou king, and since i am obviously more humble;) i consented him to be kao rou king, as he said "why are you so weak? bow down to me and call me kao rou king" i didnt bow down but i do call him kao rou king, but thats ok today we are going again with the zone, and he will be crushed. 

we had exchanges with zhuwei, and we ended up having to do them on sunday which was fun, in which we and danshui investigators all got together ate to end our fast abd went to the big firesidse tpgether. at which i got to see sam again! (he was a shilin baptism, but me and him havebeen really good friends!) as well as jim a danshui inv. that i have a very good friendship with, jim will be baptized soon but he doesnt want to set a date cuz he feels forced if its liek that. but he knows everything is true and wants to be baptized, and ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. jim just needs to go he is awesome love that guy. 

also elder zhuang became a man, he shvaed for his first time this week! i taught him how to shave! he thinks he is super manly now! it was literally so funny!

i love you guys to the end. Elder Conover out peace

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.....