It's 2018!

We had an awesome time this week and it at started with spending Christmas Day on the beach! It was super weird to be in the middle of no where with no one around since I'm used to being surrounded by tons of people all the time in the middle of the city.

Getting to Skype my family was also awesome. It felt like it was just yesterday I last saw them even though it's been months!

This week we also discovered an awesome part of an area. Our area is huge and it has part in the city but then blows up into the country side. We found out that the most northern part of our area actually has a college in it! Colleges are gold mines loaded with people the same age as us and a ton are willing to listen to our message! We've only spent a few days up there so far but each day we are up there we find tons of students willing to meet with us. We also found out that the college has an especially large amount of exchange students from Main Land China! That's the best part because they are all so humble and have no way of meeting missionaries in China. We met an especially cool girl at the college this week named Zhou Wan Yi. We met with her twice already and she's already been willing to pray everyday and start reading the Book of Mormon.

There's just a special feeling when we meet with her and the first time we shared about prayer she was astounded that it was that easy to talk to God! We passed her off to the Sister missionaries but I can't wait to see her progress in the coming weeks.

I got to go on exchanges with week with Elder Ehinger which was super fun. He's a few months older than me on the mission and he loves missionary work. Some new people we found and taught include: Ye Zhi Hong, Zhou Wan Yi, Max, Andy Xie, Chen Xuan Chen, Wu Bo Ying, and Chen Bo Yu. We have an investigator family (Phines and her two daughters) who lives with their extended family and they don't really like that their meeting with us. The mom is going to get baptized this month or next month with her two daughters. We went over to teach her kids and since the family was in the house being loud with New Years stuff so we went into their garadge which had no lights in it so we used my phone for light. We taught them the first vision through the Book of Mormon picture book and they loved it. The spirit was indescribable but it was one of the most special experiences of my mission. Words can't do it justice.

 This week I also got to go to the temple in Taipei with two of my recent converts from 板橋, 黃義忠 and 李志龍. It was such a special experience to go to the temple with them for their first time and see the change that this gospel has already brought their lives. There just so happy now! There is physically a new light in their eyes. There is nothing like this work I get to do here in Taiwan right now!

 Elder Daniel Smith 施德臻長老