New Years/Earthquakes!!! February 8, 2016

or those of you that didn't hear it on the news, Taiwan got hit by a 6.4 earthquake this week! It was only like a 4 here in Minxiong though... BUT it was still one of the craziest moments of my mission so far. It was approximately 4 in the morning (or so I've been told) when the shaking starts. Elder Mitton and I both bolted out of bed and I was going to run downstairs and outside so I wouldn't get crushed but Elder Mitton had a better idea and stayed in the door frame. We kinda just stood in the door frame waiting for our house to fall over but it never did and then the shaking stopped. Then we were both super tired so we went back to bed without saying anything like nothing happened lol. The earthquake had pretty much no effect on the work here in Minxiong but it did some pretty hard core damage in Tainan which is a little bit south of us. All missionaries are ok though! Besides that, it's been a fun week. People have been in a really good mood because of Chinese New Years. However, this week is supposedly the worst week of the year for mission work according to people who have been here before. It is probably due to the fact that we get fed by the members for every lunch and dinner and we have an hour longer than usual to eat. I'm super stoked to feast though! Last night we were invited over to the district president's house to eat a traditional Taiwanese feast with his family. There was a lot of really good food.... and a lot of pretty weird stuff. I can't wait for all the weird stuff I get to eat this week. And the good stuff. Tonight our branch president is taking us to, "the best restaurant in all of Jia Yi county" (using his words). I feel so blessed to be here in Taiwan during Chinese New Year and so blessed to be in a place with such awesome members! Well, I'll try to eat enough for all of you at home (and probably still won't gain weight)! Love y'all Happy Chinese New Years!

-Elder Poon

Rainy Daze February 1, 2016

t has rained. A lot. The work continues though! I feel like I blink and then I'm waking up, I blink and I'm riding my bike, I blink and we're planning/going to bed, and then blink and it all starts over again. That being said, there weren't any special activities this week. We met a Japanese guy named Kenji who is super cool though! Oh, and fun story: Elder Mitton contacted this guy at a light who had a lot of interest. They pulled over to the side of the road and then we got a call from a member so I went to the other side of the road to answer it. Elder Mitton finished exchanging info with this guy and I was still on the phone. He started biking across the street and then WHAM he gets drilled by a Mazda 5. Elder Mitton put a real nice dent in their hood but Elder Mitton is also a beast (and probably had some heavenly help) so he walked away with no injuries! So I guess that is this week's miracle. My comp didn't die when he got hit by a car! New Years is starting up this weekend and we're stoked. We're probably going to have to eat a lot of crazy weird stuff but it's a week of free food so can't complain! 

Fun Fact: Mcdonald's in Taiwan has delicious corn soup. with one of our members, Craig.

Catan 4 lyfe

Caught a fly that was swimming in my fried noodles. Call me Mr. Miyagi!!

Re-Assigned/Happy Banana Monkey Year January 25, 2016

This last Friday Elder Mitton and I got reassigned to the newly created Antarctica mission! To clarify for those of you how who might not understand this joke (mom & dad), I did not actually get re-assigned, but the last few days have supposedly been the coldest few days in Taiwan in the last 30 years. IT SNOWED. Not in Minxiong. But up north and on a lot of mountains there was a few inches. Ridiculous. I thought I was gonna be safe from the cold for a few years but I guess not... The cold is super awesome for the work and tracting though because people are super hospitable and are very willing to invite you into their homes. We had a worldwide missionary training mission this week! It was titled "Teach Repentance and Baptize Converts". It was a great meeting and it got everybody super pumped to go out and preach the gospel again after it was over. My favorite part was during one of the training segments they stressed how we don't need to consciously notice that we are receiving revelation. "Revelation is thoughts to the mind and feelings to the heart". As missionaries we are (if we are worthy) constantly receiving revelation. We don't have to worry about being able to point out when we are receiving revelation, rather we should just go to work and the Lord will put thoughts in our minds and feelings in our hearts. That principle applies to all y'all at home too! Anyways, Elder Mitton and I had been speculating what crazy new announcements they were going to announce at this meeting. We were pretty much just hoping they'd announce that we would all get iPads, but we definitely over hyped because they didn't announce anything. Great meeting though! Besides that the people in Taiwan have all been getting ready for Chinese New Years and their Winter Vacation is starting which is nice because we can visit with more families!!!!

Well, I'm gonna go play Settlers of Catan with some other missionaries now.

Happy Banana Monkey Year, everybody!

-Elder Poon 

It's not just raining cats and dogs... It's raining MIRACLES. January 18, 2016

It rained a ton this week. I still don't have good rain gear.... Lol, but the rain doesn't stop us from preaching the gospel!!!!! The rain also helps a ton with the pollution which is terrible in the Minxiong/Jiayi area. If you were to use the scale that is used back home for pollution, the pollution here would probably be ranked "quadruple red death". Anyways, the Taiwanese presidential election was also going on this week. That means that there were parades and there are campaign cars driving around 24/7 with ridiculously loud speakers blazing, "VOTE VOTE VOTE!!!!!!!!!!!". Lots of things in the campaigning process here would never fly in the U.S. The work is super interesting in Minxiong right now. Elder Mitton and I are working pretty dang hard. Probably the hardest either of us have worked in our lives. However, we have 0 progressing investigators. We've taken a step back and looked at how we are doing things and decided that much like sports, we don't have to switch up the entire starting line-up (we don't have to make drastic changes), but there are small things that we could really focus on to do better! We got a lot of insight from our interviews this week with President Blickenstaff. He counseled me to make my personal study as effective as possible and really use that time to "put on the armor of God". President Blickenstaff is the man! Oh, and we found out that in July we will be getting out NEW mission president. President Teh! You can go look him up. I'm pretty sure he's serving as a seventy right now... Anyways, even though we don't have an progressing investigators, we have still seen a TON of miracles this week. The biggest one is perhaps this:  We walked into Costco on Saturday night and there were a gajillion people in there, we had like 10 minutes before dinner so we decided to talk to a few people. The VERY FIRST people we talked to were super cool. It was a guy and a girl (cousins) and they spoke English super well. We talked to them for 10 minutes and then exchanged contact information. Anyways, we went back to the food court to eat and then right when our dinner ended those same people came and offered to buy us pizza (obvi we weren't gonna refuse that). We then got invited to go over to their apartment and we found out that they had met with missionaries 6 years ago, but for some reasons lost contact. They expressed that recently they have been feeling a lot of distress with things that are happening in the world and were "seeking peace". Elder Mitton and I couldn't believe how golden these people are! They also expressed how they felt like it was a miracle and was God sending us to them. I couldn't agree more! We're meeting with them again tonight, I'll let you guys know how it goes!

-Elder Poon

oh, and I got pooped on by a bird last night while I was riding my bike lol

My Burden Is Light January 11, 2016

The mission just gets better and better! Taiwan is the bomb.com I really need to invest in some good rain gear though. Last Sunday it was basically a torrential downpour. The rain gear that I have currently was not built for the Taiwanese acid rain I guess so all my clothes still got soaked. I brought an extra pair of pants, but I spent all of church with a soaked shirt and tie... But besides that the weather has been pretty much perfect this week. The weather has been so good that even though we spent one day pretty much biking the entire day, it wasn't too bad!  Minxiong is super cool because there's 5 different colleges/universities in our area and so there are surprisingly a lot of foreigners. We've met a ton of Indians, a ton of Indonesians, a few folks from the states, some Europeans, and even a black guy from Idaho! It's been great being able to see people that don't look exactly like me! The work in Minxiong has been a little slow lately and we're having some struggles getting real solid investigators, but the work is still super fun and we try not to get too down on ourselves when we bike an hour to an appointment and the guy doesn't show (or when that happens four times in one day lol). We also had a great ZTM this week about how each missionary has responsibility to "be the light of the area". After ZTM I got to go on exchanges with one of the Zone leaders, Elder Nipper. Exchanges are one of my favorite times as a missionary because there are a lot of incredible missionaries out here and there's a ridiculous amount that can be learned from each one of them. Anyways, Elder Nipper is a stud. A convert from Oklahoma. One of the most Christ-like dudes I've ever met. Well, we were talking in comp study and we read a scripture, Matthew 11:30 which states that "...my yoke is easy, and my burden is light". We took this to literally means that our burden is LIGHT. We are called to carry this "light", the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to wherever we are called to serve. As David A. Bednar says in 'Becoming a PMG Missionary' (paraphrasing), "Missionaries are the conduits of light". Now all Elder Mitton and I have to do is go out and be the lights of Minxiong!

Love each and every one of you!

-潘長老

I need to get better at taking more pics but here's one of this super vast field of flowers we found!

2016: A Year in the Service January 4, 2016

This is pretty sweet, an entire calendar year in Taiwan and an entire calendar year preaching the gospel! It's a real blessing, no doubt! Elder Mitton and I have put a lot of thought and prayer in our setting of both personal and companionship goals. It's a great time to set goals because it's both the start of a new year and a new move call! Pretty much all of our goals are based on helping us increase our effectiveness as missionaries and helping us become more in tune with the spirit. Our scripture of the week was Alms 37:6. Simple things can lead to big results. It's a simple phrase! But it's true. Also, I've learned to not try to catch too many rabbits at once (not setting too many goals). That way I can really focus and hit the goals that I set. For new years we got taken to a traditional Chinese restaurant by Mr. Chao, it was super good but half of the dishes had shrimp in it which means that neither Elder Mitton or myself could eat them sadly. Mr. Chao is hilarious. He tries to speak English with us and it's awesome. Friday night we saw a super cool miracle. We set out tracting and I instantly felt like we should go down this certain street and then Elder Mitton felt like we should start at this certain house. Since it was New Years night, this couple (that usually weren't home at that time of night) happened to be home! It was a super awesome time getting to know them and then as we started sharing about the blessings of the gospel, we could feel the atmosphere of the room change. It was suddenly 15x more peaceful. God leads the way! I'm just super glad that E. Mitton and I were paying attention so we could follow. Now that all the holidays are over, we can really start to get back to work. Happy new year to all it's gonna be a great one, no doubt!!!

-潘長老

dinner with Mr. Chao

Back to Work December 27, 2015

It was nothing short of a magical Christmas week in Minxiong! My first Christmas in Taiwan (and my first Christmas away from home) was a memorable one no doubt! Elder Mitton and I celebrated Christmas Eve by eating a ton of cheesecake that we bought from Costco. Christmas day we went over to our branch president, President Li's house to Skype. Our branch president and his wife are so awesome, they prepared cake for us and gave us gifts. These gifts ended up being just a ton of Ferrero Rocher (Mom's favorite). Elder Mitton Skyped first and then the Li's took us out to "the nicest restaurant in Minxiong" and I got Norweigan salmon which was super good. Then I Skyped! It was super weird and I feel like I had just saw them a few days before. 45 minutes is a really short time when you're talking to your family! Anyways, then Elder Mitton and I had a great Xmas dinner at Mr. Steak (there's another one Minxiong wahoo!). Then later that night a family in our ward invited us over to share a xmas message and eat a ton of curry. A great Christmas! It was amazing how it really felt like Christmas. As Elder Mitton and I went out to spread the cheer to ALL, we found that the people seemed merrier and nicer than usual. I think it's cool that the celebration of the savior of the world is able to bring a spirit to even a predominantly Buddhist small island in Asia. Then the day after Christmas, the Barlows, a half American family in our branch, invited us to dinner... It was the best dinner I've had in Taiwan. It was a REAL Christmas dinner. It was a REAL Christmas miracle. But now it's time to get back to work. Elder Mitton and I just found out yesterday that we'll be together for another move-call which we are stoked about. Just gotta set some good goals to keep us moving forward!

Hope everyone had an awesome Christmas and hope you all have a fantastic new year!

潘長老

The Jia Yi district choir outside the local mall!

Christmas eve selfie

Dinner at the Barlows

My new baby

#themansion