Grayson's Mission in Mandarin: 感恩節快樂

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I know it's a bit late to be saying this, but I missed getting an email out last week, so I can update you all with what's happened.

We had a big zone conference in Taidong on Thanksgiving Day and we got to eat duck! President had bought lots of ducks for us to eat which was really good and we went home with full stomachs. The zone conference went really well and I learned a lot. President Peterson has really been pushing us to build the church in Taiwan. He wants us to work with the members of the church more in order to give them desire to help the church grow here. We're hoping that putting this new focus on the members here will help the church be much stronger in the future.

Elder Zhang and I visited a member in the branch the other night and had dinner with them. They were telling us a bit about the history of Yuli here. He was telling us how it's had a lot of struggles in the past. He was trying to not be negative, but him and the rest of the members have seen so many missionaries come into Yuli with the same attitude, that they want to change it and everything. He says they do the same things and it doesn't work. He looked at me and said we need an Alma here. Hearing all this made me realize this area has had a lot of missionaries come through with not much success. It's made me think about what else I can do differently so that it does. It's really humbling me and making me ponder on what needs to happen here. If you all could pray for me out here I would appreciate the support. I need all I can get.

We've been riding our bikes a lot lately, which is super fun. We just get on our bikes and ride like 24 miles in one day. It's a beautiful place that you can just enjoy while you ride. We went and ate dinner with a family and they're so awesome. They love the missionaries and play with us all the time. One of their kids has 6 fingers and he's the sweetest kid you'll ever meet.

We taught this guy we found this week named August. He is Taiwanese, but he's from Venezuela. He's one of our only friends to teach but he's really hard. He's into philosophy and thinks about everything so much that he kinda doesn't believe in anything anymore. He doesn't even believe that anything is good or bad. He also talks a lot. We had a lesson with him and it was us teaching him for 10 minutes and him talking for like 60. It really tests my patience and listening when you have to sit there and listen to them that long, but that's how he knows he can trust us and is willing to learn. He accepted a Book of Mormon and told us he will read it. If you have time, pray for him to find the truthfulness of the book of Mormon.

Nothing too crazy happened this week, they had elections for city officials so there were fireworks everywhere. We don't know anything about politics as missionaries so it didn't make any difference to us. It was fun to watch the firework show though.

The saddest thing that happened this week is that I broke my Tag. Nothing special I was just trying to put it on and then it snapped. I've worn it every day basically so it's really sad. I'll have to get a new one probably.