Basketball Finding!

Weeks keep flying by! This week was a little different than most weeks on my mission because we've been using new ways to find other than just hitting the streets. One of the ways was basketball! Started a few weeks ago we began sharing with everyone we talked to on the street about a '3 on 3 Basketball Tournament' that we'd be hosting in our Chapel's Gym. We had a Messenger group we would add everyone too as well so people could start getting excited about it. The weeks prior when we would see kids outside playing basketball we'd go play with them and then invite them to the basketball tournament and to a Chapel Tour to learn about Christ! It has worked so well because they see that we're normal people as we play basketball with them and it makes them curious about why we are here in Taiwan and what we believe. We've seen tremendous success doing so. The basketball tournament came around and we had about 50 non-members all there competing! I reffed the games which was super super fun. We ended up getting multiple new investigators from the activity as well! We are taking the winning team out and buying them dinner next week too!

Earlier in the week we saw an awesome miracle. We were knocking doors and night and after a while a family let us in! A mom and a son. The son was 17 and has a twin brother who wasn't there at the moment. We got to know them and shared a message about how Jesus can help our weaknesses become strengths. We read Ether 12:27 with them and taught them how to pray. The 17 year old son started zoning out and not really paying attention, so I was trying to think about how to get him drawn back in. In getting to know them before we started sharing our message he talked a lot about how he loved video games. I was able to use an analogy from one of his favorite video games and tie it into how through Christ we can improve and become stronger. Somehow it ended up making sense and got him interested in the lesson and asking some good questions. They invited us back this upcoming week and said they wanted their other brother and father to be there too!

As some of you may have heard, there were a ton of earthquakes this week and they were pretty scary on the top (14th) floor. There were about 5 or 6 we felt over the course of two days (but many other ones we didn't feel). Most were at night time right before bed or right after we got in bed. The first one that hit freaked us out because the entire building started swaying back and forth for nearly 10 seconds. After it hit we (me and the other 3 Elders I live with) all talked about how when it first hit we all thought we were just getting super dizzy and about to pass out, but it ended up just being the building swaying. The big one hit while we were all laying in bed. It got us a little worried because the beds started to slide a little bit as the building swayed back and forth. The chandelier above us was shaking pretty good too. Luckily I'm no where close to where the epicenter on the island was so there wasn't any major damage in our city.

This upcoming week is Chinese New Year so it is very hard to meet with people during this time. But for the current people we are teaching: Huang Zhen Dong set a baptismal date this week and is doing very well. Huang Tom is still progressing towards baptism but is busy with Chinese New Year. The Hong Family said they can't meet till after New Years. Phines has faced too much family opposition and is no longer coming to church, at least for a little while. The South African family (Shaun, Tina, Rosie) are continually progressing little by little. We were finally able to help Shaun over his concern about Nephi killing Laban and now the only thing that's left is for them to pray and read The Book of Mormon on their own to recieve an answer of it's truthfulness.
The new people we found and taught this week include: Yang mom, Wei son, Japser, and Ken.
Elder Smith (施德臻長老)