Chinese New Year - WOW!!! Fish Brains - OOOH!!!

Dear Family and Friends,

Fish for Dinner!

Do not be alarmed by the title of the email! I have just eaten so much this week that I am at the point where I can't get up.  hahaha!  It was crazy, our ward all of a sudden just decided that we needed to be fed tons this week because of GuoNian!  (Chinese New Year)  haha so we had lunch and dinner appointments every day this week!! haha These weren't just any lunch and dinner appointments... they were all ChiDaoBao's (all you can eat).  It was crazy.  If you love rice, and love fish... you would love GuoNian!!  I ate some crazy things this week... haha!!! Every fish here has it's head and eyes ... and you just eat it. haha, it is actually really good.  You are supposed to eat the head too.  I was given multiple fish heads this week to eat at dinner and lunch appointments.  You need to eat the eyes and brain and all!  haha I thought you guys would like that part. I am sure Taylor got his fair share of that in Tahiti.  Our members are too kind, and give everything they have for us.  It is really amazing, and very humbling.  I am so grateful for them.  

Sucking Out the Fish Brains from the Fish Head

GuoNian is interesting here... it is like the 1 time a year where people don't feel like they have to run a million miles an hour to work and get things done.  In fact, when it starts... there is not a store open.  Everyone goes back to where their family is and everyone just eats, and eats, and EATS!!! hahaha! The hard thing is is that no one wants to meet up and talk or meet up with us.  We spent a lot of hours this week tracting and contacting with little or no success.  It was hard, but was understandable. I almost can't even think right now writing this email... haha I am so full!!  We still have ward members feeding us for the next couple days both lunch and dinner!!! haha.  It is just crazy.  It is awesome.  

I was lying in bed the night of Chinese New Years, and I was woken up at like 12 by all the fireworks. They were so loud and lighting up our apartment window like crazy.  I laid there thinking about all these wonderful people who are all spending time with their families and how much this gospel would bless their lives.  It was a powerful thought that is really hard to describe the feeling.  The culture is so different here, that sometimes you almost don't feel like it is real.  It almost feels fake and that one day I will wake up and this will all be a dream.  During that moment I felt how real all these people are.  I felt to a deeper level that their needs are just as important as mine.  I felt a special love for them.  It is so hard for me to imagine how deep the Savior's love is for all of us.  It is so powerful.  

Chinese Lanterns for New Year Celebration

At one of the dinner appointments this week, a member shared his conversion story.  It was so cool.  He just talked about the importance of working your very hardest as a missionary!!  He said that the only reason he let the missionaries in was because they were dripping sweat they were working so hard.  He said if they weren't he would have never let them in and never heard the gospel.  He also told us the similarities between the Chinese people and the Children of Israel.  That was pretty deep stuff and some rather advanced Chinese! haha it was a little tougher to understand!  Here the people hang this red paper around their doors, because they believe that on New Years night this monster comes and eats everyone.  They believe that the monster passes by everyone who has this ChunLian up on their door.  It is just like the Children of Israel and the lambs blood on the door.  There were a bunch of other similarities that were really cool.  It is interesting.  

A cool miracle this week was when we were tracting.  We had been tracting for hours with zero success!  We came across these little kids playing with a ball in the street!  We walked by and I told the little kid to pass it to me.  He did, and then I spun it on my finger for them.. haha!! They thought that was the coolest thing ever.  hahah they loved that!! They then followed us for the next hour while we were tracting!! They were starting to get a little crazy, and we were thinking about telling them to go away, but just let them be.... Thinking if anything they could only help us get in someones home!  So we continued, and no luck.  We walked with them back to our bikes and on the way the kid says, "that's my family! Go talk to them" His whole family was outside getting ready to leave and we talked to them.  They gave us an umbrella because it was raining... (the people are so giving) and said we could come back again to share more!! That was awesome!!! 

I sure do love you guys so much!!  I wish that you could have been here for GuoNian, because it was awesome!!  We will just have to celebrate it when I am home!!  I love you all so much and am so grateful for your prayers and your faith.  Love you all!! 

Love,

Elder Redding

David Got Baptized!!!

Dear Family and Friends,

David's Baptism Day

Hello everyone!!! This week was so great!!!  To top it all off... DAVID GOT BAPTIZED!!!! It was so awesome!  It was really a miracle with him.  He made a lot of changes in his life and I know that Heavenly Father is so proud of him!  He bore his testimony after the baptism and it was so neat.  There was such a change in him from when I first met him to his baptism.  This is what the gospel does, it changes lives and give us happiness and peace, even through the hardest times in life.  I was reading in the D&C this week and read in section 50:41,42.  This spoke volumes to me of the great love our Savior has for us.  I loved the end of 42 "that none shall be lost".  If that doesn't give you confidence in Christs mission as our Savior I don't know what does.  I love that.  We also had a neat opportunity in the baptism to sing as missionaries.  We had about 7 missionaries there and we sang Nearer My God to Thee.  As we sang and I looked out at David and the tiny little DaKeng ward.  I just felt love.  I felt love for them, for this gospel, for my family and friends, and for my Savior.  It was really cool.  He did it!!!  

The other really cool  thing that happened this week was that we taught the English class as usual, but we switched to teaching the GaoJiBan which is the advanced so we speak all English.   The class didn't seem super thrilled to have new teachers, but we went for it and were just positive and happy with them.  The topic was currency and foreign exchange rates! haha so yeah... but as Elder Munger and I got teaching we could just feel the positivity in the room.  They loved it and especially at the end when we did the spiritual share they were all silent and listening.  After the class we had people come up who were really happy.  A man came up to me and told me that we had inspired him.  I thought that was so neat.  I was so happy.  We also had a few students from the class we taught before join the class because they didn't want us to leave.  They couldn't understand what was going on in the class because their English isn't great, but they felt the spirit too.  After a lady came up and told me how much she loved the way we taught, which I thought was interesting because she can't understand hardly anything and should still be in the other class, she also acknowledged that, but I feel like she felt the spirit and love of the gospel.  It was sweet!!! 

I love you all so much and am so grateful for you guys.  Thanks for taking the time to write me each week.  I love you all so much!!  If there is anything I can do for you please let me know!! Love you!!! 

Elder Redding

Missionaries and Monks Having a Birthday Party!

Dear Family and Friends,

Hello everyone!!!  It is another awesome day here in Taiwan!  So grateful to be out here serving the Lord and meeting these wonderful people and sharing this wonderful message with every living soul. It is so joyful.  This week was crazy... so hold on!

On Tuesday, we set up this basketball thing with a RC (recent convert) because he has really been struggling lately and hasn't been coming to church and every time we call he says that he is super busy and that we can meet some other time.  He really likes basketball, so we asked him if we could meet him at this school and shoot hoops with him!! We showed up to this place and it was packed with people all playing ball!!  So when we asked if we could join these random guys game, he said yes!! haha Oh was it a sight to have these two white guys playing ball in their church clothes!! It was really fun and it really helped.  I think he was able to see us a friends who really wanted to help him.  It was fun!!  Also on Tuesday we had our DTM meeting and it was such good weather we sat outside of the church and had it.  It was so funny because as people walked by they would just look at us like zoo animals!! haha we laughed pretty hard at that.  DTM was awesome though.  We talked about the Book of Mormon and using it to address concerns! It was really powerful and I it was super cool to practice addressing concerns and solving them with the Book of Mormon.  

Cab Rides in Taiwan are Crazy!!!

This week we also set 3 baptismal goals for this month!!  It was so great!!! We met with D and he is getting baptized this Saturday!!!  I am so excited and so happy for him!!! I can't even tell you how much I am hoping and praying that everything follows through this week for him and that he can really feel the love and power of the Savior this week!!  We also set goals with J and L for the 28th of this month!!  L will hit it, and we really hope and pray that J will too! She has read the Book of Mormon twice already, and has met with the missionaries for 2 years!!  We are hoping and praying!!  So this next week is going to be awesome!!! 

The craziest day happened this week... haha! We set up with this guy and his wife to go to their house,which is rare!  So we look for their house forever!! (That is something super hard here) We finally found it and they had us come in and were so nice and feeding us these healthy snacks!!! Then they told us they wanted to take us out to eat!! haha so we went to this vegetarian place.... and had so much food and I thought I was going to throw up!!! They ended up telling us that they believe every religion.  It is really common here and is really hard.  It was so weird because the guy just kept saying the same things over, and over, and over.  Then I just decided that we needed to share something, so I asked them if they had ever heard about Joseph Smith, and we told them about the restoration.  We tried the best we could to share the opportunity we had.  They were so nice.  As we left we heard this voice to our left and it was these monks and they were telling us that it was this one monks birthday!! hahah So we started singing Happy Birthday to her!  After, they like made us sit down with them and eat cake!!! hahaha!!! It is not every day you get to sit down and have birthday cake with monks!! hahah it was so fun!!! They were so old and so funny!!!  It was quite a sight I am sure!!  The missionaries and the monks having a bday party!! It was awesome!!

We met this really cool guy last week who speaks really great English.  His name is V and he was really cool!! We met with him and it was going really well, until we got to sharing the gospel.  He told us that he was old and more experienced and didn't need any help.  It was interesting though.  He shared so much about his life struggles with us, and I just felt so grateful for the peace the gospel brings.  I just wanted so bad for him to feel it too.  He needs it!!  We set up to meet him again, but right now he is not to focused on the gospel.  That is one thing that is really hard.  From the outside you can see how the gospel is a perfect fit for someone's life, but they just won't accept it.  Just keep going forward with faith!!  I have hope for him.  

This week we didn't get the new missionaries because of visa issues, so Elder Munger and I are still comps for the next week or two!! That will be exciting!  Thank you all for your prayers and for your faith.  I love getting your emails and letters.  They really give me extra strength and motivation!!!  I love you all so much!  

Love, 

Elder Redding

Miracles!

Hey guys! Sorry, I don't have a lot of time because today we ended up going ice skating with a few investigators and had lunch with them after.  A couple of them are the Beitun Elders and one was ours.  It was a lot of fun, and I learned how to skate backwards... not very well though!  haha  

This week was full of great miracles.  It was a real blessing!  D had has interview and passed and that was really exciting!  Also, P and his wife came to church this Sunday.  We really wanted them to feel the spirit.  So they came, and I just said a quick prayer to myself that they would feel something. Right during testimony meeting P's wife began to cry... she just said she felt something and she had no idea what it was.  It really over powered her though.  It was so neat to see and neat for P to see. I was so grateful!  After we went to a members house and ate food with D and a few other guys. It was supposed to be our FHE, but only the guys showed up!  It was like the guys night!! haha so we sat around after and watched Mormon Messages! 

Also,  J from Portland emailed me and informed me that B was baptized and that he had mentioned to her that he had wished that I had been there to be with them.  I was just so happy that she was able to be baptized.  So great!! Love you all! Great Miracle!

I am so very grateful for this opportunity to serve and love all of you so very much!!!  Have a great week Ya'll!

Love, 

Elder Redding