First Week of Real Work October 18, 2015

Having an extra hour and a half of proselyting time is pretty exhausting. However, this past week was great. We had a baptism and we celebrated my new companion's birthday! That means we went and got really good (but also expensive) food. So worth it though! The baptism was awesome and I almost cried when our girl, Sister Zhang, started bearing her testimony of eternal families! That's what it's all about! Not much time though, I'll let the pictures say the rest!

 Her cousin (a bishop in another ward) got to baptize her!

For Elder Chan's b-day we went to a place called Mr. Steak. :)

Another American place called Shark Bites Toast. They're famous for  their papaya milkshakes... so good.

Training Complete October 12, 2015

I'm officially just a junior companion! Training was an adventure, and I'm ready to start doing more work. This movecall I will be staying in Taiping and my new companion is Elder Chan from Canada! He's been out for just over a year and he's super chill. We're gonna do some great things here, I know it! This last week was one of my favorite weeks of the mission. We had a lot of great things happen. First of all, that buffet last pday was so amazing and was just as good if not better than the first time we went. I have learned to love sushi. I ate like 3 rolls of this smoked salmon sushi... soooo good. Then Wednesday we had our English class's Halloween party. As English leader (the least desirable calling) I was in charge of planning it, but it actually turned out pretty decent! English class is one of our best ways of finding new investigators, fun fact. Then Friday we had Alex's baptism! It was my first time baptizing someone! It was awesome even though I had to dunk him twice because the first time his knees came out of the water. Afterwards, Alex bore a powerful testimony but instead of closing in the name of Jesus Christ, he said, "any question?". Lol. Then General conference was awesome. All the missionaries had a room to ourselves and we all bought a bunch of snacks so it was awesome. Very few things are better than getting spiritually and physically fed at the same time. I loved so many talks and I especially enjoyed the first talk given by President Uchtdorf. I definitely think that sometimes I make my discipleship more complicated than it needs to be so that is something that I'm going to work on. I'm also gonna start ponderizing every week and I encourage all of you to as well! I also really liked the quote (I forgot who said it), "You don't need to prepare yourself to start becoming who God wants you to be". Seriously, general conference is such a blessing and such a great way to receive revelation! This week we've got a lot of work to do, gotta find some new investigators!!!

-Elder Poon

The Spirit of Revelation October 5, 2015

Many miraculous things happened this week! To start off, I will tell a quick story. This last Saturday I was on exchanges with a certain Elder Stevenson. He is the son of the newly called apostle, Gary E. Stevenson. During the exchanges the conversation came up about conference and his dad being a general authority. I then asked Elder Stevenson, "Dude, what if your dad gets called as an apostle?!" He replied, "There's no way!". I thought for a second and then said, "Well, there's 'apostle'-bility!". Lolol so I basically prophesied a new apostle with a pun. Life is good. However, last Monday my companion and I rode our bikes home from the chapel in a typhoon with approx. 832 mph winds. Perhaps one of the crazier things that I've done life. In addition to the risk of trees and other things falling on us, my companion almost got his leg chopped off by a passing motor scooter and I was almost blown over into a barbed wire fence. We made it back to our apartment safely though! My entire body was super sore the next day though from battling the winds! Fun stuff. The work is awesome. This week we've been stressin' out a little bit because our golden people have had a few little issues, but we've worked them out and as long as nothing else happens, everything is ready! Tracting sucks. However, I've learned that tracting is a great way to show the Lord your diligence and He will bless you for that! It seems like every time we go tracting, there are very few results, but afterwards (like the next day) we will have a miracle new investigator or a miracle lesson. God works in mysterious ways! It's my last week of training and the movecall is next week! I'm thinking I'll probably stay in Taiping though... but who knows? 

Have a great week y'all

-Elder Poon

Swimmin' in Moon Cakes September 28, 2015

The Mid-Autumn Festival aka the Harvest Moon Festival has been going on over the weekend and it's been so awesome! There's this exclusively-Taiwanese tradition that during this festival, people BBQ. So in addition to about a thousand moon cakes that have been given to us, we've also had the opportunity to go to a few bbqs. Last night was the best one. The bishopric and their families and a few of their friends met at our second counselor's house for this bbq and invited my companion and I. I legit just sat there for an hour as people brought me rounds of meat and shishkabobs (no idea how to spell that). It was also awesome to see how happy these gospel-based families are. I mean, that's what the gospel is about, right? This week we also did a lot trying to get our two golden investigators ready for baptism. One of the coolest moments of my mission so far happened on Saturday. The other elders in my district had a baptism and our golden girl, Sister Zhang, attended. It was a way spiritual experience and at the end, the Dongying bishop spoke and bore his testimony. Even though I still can't fully understand all things, I could feel the spirit that this guy brought. Our investigator felt it even stronger and after the closing prayer, she left the room bawling! Elder Zhao and I were pretty concerned and started asking ourselves, "Shoot man, are those tears good or bad??" After she returned more composed, we asked her what her feelings were. She replied, "I feel that it's true". So awesome! I definitely have a testimony now of the powerful spirit that is present at baptisms! This week is gonna be awesome, we have interviews with the president, his wife, and the APs and our investigators have their baptismal interviews! There's also a typhoon going on right now so that's cool. :)

-Elder Poon

This was the coolest moon cake that I got, it was also the least delicious. I don't understand why people like red beans so much here...

Some scenic parts of Taiping

It's been a while, but I can still take a dece mirror pic!

From the temple trip a couple weeks ago

Chinese is still really hard. September 21, 2015

We got fang'ed (stood up) 9 times this week. Therefore, it wasn't a great week as far as numbers go but I had a whole lot of fun! Every other movecall we get the opportunity to take a bus two hours north and do some temple work at the Taipei temple! This was perhaps my favorite day of my mission so far. I went in fasting just looking for a little personal revelation, and it was so awesome. The session was in English, but it was super cool seeing the Asian influence in the art and symbolism. It was a much needed spiritual recharge! Later that day, however, we were in the park and what we like to do is have one of us making calls and the other one contacting people walking around/playing basketball.  So I see a lady walking around the track and in Chinese I say what I think is, "Hey Mrs., wanna come over here with me and take a break for a second" but what I really said, "Hey Mrs., want to rest with me?". She gave me a weird look and my companion started laughing way hard and then after he told me what I said I just had to laugh cause I know my Chinese needs so much work. We also got great news last night that we can keep our baptismal date on the 9th of October! We were worried because that weekend is general conference so the confirmation can't be on that weekend, but Pres. Blickenstaff said we can just do it the following Sunday! I'm super stoked and I'm super excited for our investigators cause I've already seen how much the gospel has helped them have more happiness and come to know our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ!

Saw a miracle! My comp stepped on this huge nail the other day, but good thing he has the thickest soles I've ever seen!

Got a chance to chuan the jiao (preach the gospel) with my homie from the MTC, Elder Parker! 

Tai-Bling Wk 9 September 14, 2015

After a pretty rough week last week, things are really starting to come back around! I am currently sipping on a winter melon tea with fresh milk and mint added in. It tastes like... Christmas. Drinks are seriously a way of life over here in Taiwan! This last week was suuuuuper busy. Elder Zhao and I decided that we were going to focus more on inviting people to baptism this past week. In doing so, we went from having no baptismal goals to having 5!! 3 of them are questionable, 1 of them is solid, and the other 1 is GOLDEN. She's a bishop in another area's cousin and we're gonna dunk her the day before general conference! This week I learned a lot about the blessings of work and how when you're really working and really striving to improve yourself, mission life is a lot more enjoyable. One reason why is because when you're working on improving yourself you can see how much you need to improve and it's a lot harder to be prideful. I'm gonna really try and remember this throughout my mission because I've also learned that when you let your pride win, missions suck. I have also come to really love the Sabbath. Church is awesome over here. There are a tooonnn of little kids and babies in our ward so sacrament meeting is crazy! It sometimes worries me what our investigators think when there are like 7 babies losing their minds at the time, but the spirit is still there! I <3 Taiping.

P.s. We get to go to the temple on Wednesday and I'm stoked.

This is our 92 year old investigator Principle Chen! Notice his Patriots breast-cancer awareness hat with the rim cut off. So cool. On the right is one of our members, Tim. He helps us with lessons all the time. Great guy.

Got some real American pizza :)

Whoooooo'lll Stop the Rain? September 6, 2015

This past week has not been very exciting. It has rained. A lot. I keep having Creedence Clearwater Revival songs stuck in my head lol. This week we switched into more of a finding mode which has been fun! There's this awesome park in our area and the Taiwanese park scene at night is always bumpin' (unless it's raining). There's a large basketball area with like 5 courts and it's way fun to go talk to bros over there about the NBA or their Nike's. So many people have way cool Nike's over here! and the Taiwanese loooove Kobe. I've got some real good numbers from guys over there and hopefully something will happen! We ask people if we can walk with them and they usually say no but some people are way chill and we get a good walk in and share some gospel! There's also a big zumba class that happens a few times a week I've been trying to convince Elder Zhao that we should go join them and contact, but I guess dancing is against the rules lol. This week I've really been trying to improve the effectiveness of my prayers and apply the things stated about prayer in PMG. This has helped me a ton and I love how PMG says that "effective prayer requires GREAT effort". There's a ton of things to pray for every day and it sometimes gets repetitive but I know that the only way we can get blessings is by asking for them!

This is at the trainer follow up meeting! It was way cool to see all my homies from the MTC and get some insight from President and Sister Blickenstaff!