"Call me when you get baptized. I'll be there."

I'll start off with explaining the title. Last night we had a Stake Fireside and we brought our most progressing investigator, Huang Yi Zhong, to it. We taught him the Word of Wisdom this week and he said it would be super hard to not drink tea or coffee but that he's willing to do it! He explained that "if you find out about a law but then keep breaking it, it's SUPER bad". I'm so glad his faith was strong enough to think this way, I was worried no tea or coffee would be too hard for him. He hasn't had any for a whole week now! Anyways, at the Fireside our mission President gave a talk and then afterwards introduced himself to Huang Yi Zhong and then told him, "Call me when you get baptized. I'll be there". Huang Yi Zhong freaked out and nearly peed his pants. For the rest of the night he kept saying, "I'm going to have a VIP at my baptism". It made his day and probably sealed the deal that he'll be baptized haha.

On P-Day last week one of our investigators took us to one of the famous Buddhist Temples in the area and explained a lot about the Buddhist religion. It was a super cool experience to get the chance to learn even more about the most prominent religion in Taiwan. I LOVE the people here in Taiwan. They're amazing. 

We had a ton of lessons this week but I'll focus on Harry (Huang Hong Rae) and Li Zhi Long. Other than Huang Yi Zhong these are our most progressing investigators. Huang Hong Rae is completely ready to be baptized but we are trying to help him develop a better habit of coming to church first. He said that we could pick any date and he'd get baptized. He loves The Book of Mormon and has such strong faith in Christ it's amazing. Li Zhi Long is a 65 year old, retired, single man who we met about a month ago. He's progressed super fast and came to church this week for the first time! He heard a lot of things in church that I think he has questions about and hopefully we can answer them all this week when we meet with him haha. Soon we will be starting on commandments with him. He's been one of my quickest progressing investigators yet on my mission. He has no Christian background but just loves everything we share with him and has already had such great experience with prayer and repentance on his own. 

On Saturday night we had a fun ward activity and played a game called, "Who, What, Where". It was basically charades and then the crowd had to guess who we were, where we were at, and what we were doing. It was super fun.

We went on exchanges this week with the Zone Leaders. I was with Elder Heaton and he's amazing! He's Elder Jorgensen's (my trainer's) childhood best friend. I've been able to get to know them super well and they both love serving the Lord! It was fun to be able to be in another area of Taiwan for a day but it's always sad to lose valuable time in my own area! 

Some other random cool people we met this week and had lessons with were: River (an amateur boxer who is hoping to be able to fight in America one day), Jack (an insurance agent we met last week and set up to meet with us this week), Ren (a 33 year old who waved down the missionaries in another city and told them that he doesn't know anything about Christianity but hasn't been too happy lately and "what's to be as happy as the missionaries are"), and then Maria and Steven Stoles (grandparents from South Africa who are here teaching English).

It's a blessing every week to be able to preach this Gospel and meet so many amazing people along the way. I can't believe I've already been out on my mission for almost 6 months now. Time flies. 

Elder Smith （施德臻長老）