Gabriel Johnson, Claire Sanford, Amanda Ahlman, Jacob Bigler

Last week was Prom.  Claire went with a nice guy named Gabriel Johnson.  She had a great time.  her best friends were in her group.  That means they all went on a day date and then to dinner and to prom together.  I understand they even went on a stroll in the local Macey's Grocery store.  I guess coming down the majestic steps of the Library wasn't enough "airtime".

You might wonder why Claire has a black heart on her dress.  SHE DOESN'T.  It's an arrangement of peacock feathers.  She really wanted to jazz up her dress, so she did.  I think she looks beautiful.

This picture is of Claire and her best friend Amanda and their dates.

This is Colby's 69th week on the Island, and here's his letter:

I really like what you said about the Atonement. It sounds like it was really well thought out. Elder Zhuang is entering his last few move calls and keeps reminding me of how old he is. I have been in the office a lot longer than I thought I would have been. It seems like Elder Zhuang will be getting a  new guy to train as a new Recorder on Monday and that will go for 3 weeks as a 3 some. and then I think I may have as much as one more move call in the office before getting out. We'll see, it may be more. Most are in for 3 and it's already been 3.5. I'm loving it though.

 It is raining a lot here. 

 We have one guy who we have been working with that is doing good. He should be baptized in the end of the month. We finally got to meet at his house the other day and found out that it was a 9x9 room with a bed and a lap top. A little bit sad. I got to see into who he is kind of a little bit more. I could see that we need to get him some pictures of Christ to hang on his wall. We went to storage today and picked something nice that is framed. There is good power in art.

 I had a chance to help give a blessing to one of the brothers in the english branch the other day. He is in the hospital across the street. For the first time, I really felt the weight of what I was saying as I had my hands on his head. That I use Priesthood power that I am worthy of and is real and I do it in the name of Christ who makes this all possible just makes it so real. I know that the things that he was blessed with are true.

 Well, I'm just trucking along and having a good time. I hope you have a good time as well. The technique with the vacuum is tough at first but once you get the swing down it flows pretty well. It took me a while. It's hard to think I did it for so long. But yes, that was finite too. 

 Have a good week

Week 63 on the island of Taiwan

Dear Family,
This week really was very good. We got most of our time out on the streets because there wasn't much happening. The computers were down. I did what I could, which wasn't much but in the end we got it up and running. We had to call in one missionary who has some sort of computer degree. I really want to know how it all works. I'm asking a lot of questions and stuff, so I am learning a little bit. I'm still really missing Macs. Did I tell you last week that I had a huge project to do with the Dan Jones Video? I got to use Sister BIshop's Mac for that. I estimated that it would take me around 18 to 20 hours to do what I was supposed to, and that was on top of all the other crazy stuff that was happening. But I think is was last Monday? yeah. I said a prayer and it came clear to my mind how to do it. It took 2ish hours and I'm all set. That is the power of working by the Spirit!
I'm having a great time here. Thank you for all of the help.

The work is coming along great. We got out every night this week! It was all on time too, other than Monday when Elder Zhuang had a few things that he wanted to finish up for the next day. I really can see what you mean when you say that happiness comes with diligence. We have seen many blessings this week. 1 member referral turned out to be very amazing. He is in sales and has had a horrible life for the past 3 years. We have met with him once. When meeting, I really tried to focus on using the spirit to teach. It went really well and I feel like he really understands why it is that we are the true church. He doesn't have that much time on his hands, but he is willing to set up his schedule to meat with us. The other great miracle is somebody who walked in off the street with a whole bunch of questions. He originally lived in Nan Tou but recently moved here. He has been thinking a lot about his after life. He wants to make the right decisions in this life. The second time that we met with him, he asked a question about why we need to follow the commandments. We shared with him out of 3 Ne 27 that no unclean thing can enter into the kingdom of God. Later in the lesson, he said to us that he would need a few weeks of reading and praying, and if he felt is was right, he would like to be baptized! His goal is for the 31st. A wonderful lesson. It was a testimony to me of 2 things. That when you are diligent, the Lord will prepare the way before you.

Also, that when you teach by the Spirit, teaching actually works and the message really is brought to the heart of the people.

Thank you so much!
I've got to fly!
Have a good week

- Elder Sanford.

a new pic

Colby has been a Missionary for 17 months as of March 13, 2012. It went VERY slowly at the beginning, but the speed is picking up. After a busy summer he'll be back with us right in the middle of the fall holidays. hurrah!! We got a pic of the Colbster. He's still as handsome as ever.

Pic came with the following caption:

from left to right, Elder Nickell (ELder Buenning's current trainee and my "brother") Elder Buenning (My Trainer and "Father"), Me, Elder Kasner (my trainee and "son"). yeah.

61--more fun!

Dear Family,

This week was ever more intense then last week. And it is still pretty intense.Yeah, the other day during personal study, I looked up at my calendar and saw that is was Claire's birthday. I felt bad that I didn't say anything last week. Then I almost fell out of my chair because I saw that it said 18. Happy Birthday Claire.

We are working on a lot of family history stuff recently. In May, a senior couple named "the Walkers" are coming to be Family History Missionaries. It is going to be cool we are now in the early stages of doing prep for them. I've been helping put together a cool pass along card. It's going to be pretty cool.

Last night, in the buzz of the Taiwan city streets, Elder Zhuang and I decided that we were hungry. I have been thinking about getting a new back pack because this one isn't doing what I want, so as we stepped out of the Subway with our foot-long Veggie Supreme, I thought to myself," We had a pretty sweet investigator down the street named Alex that sells back packs and some other stuff. I wonder how he is doing." In mentioning my thoughts to Elder Zhuang, he said "It's the spirit, it's got to be, we're going to go and see him". "But Elder Zhuang, we have a lot of stuff that we need to do to get ready for the surprise zone conference next week. We've got to start heading back." Despite my sudden loss of focus and loss of faith, we started heading in the direction of Alex. As we approached, he was just hopping off of his motorcycle with his dinner in his hands. Perfect timing.

We ended up sitting and eating our dinner with him and getting to know him a lot more. He asked a lot of great questions, even though he hadn't been reading the Book of Mormon at all for the past few days. We found out though, that he is really great friends with a member of our ward named Stallion. Next time, we are going over there, we are taking him along as well. On our way back, I was saying a little prayer of thanks for the perfect timing.

At that time, a nice looking biker passed by me and waved. I waved back and smiled. He passed me and then went to pass my companion who was in front of me. Elder Zhuang did the same thing that I did, but the wave turned into a motion to pull over and talk on the side of the road. We all stopped and I took off my helmet. The kid was 19 and super cool. He was a performer in a band that played at another church and a third generation Christian. He has been having a little bit of problems with his family lately. We testified of how the Lord loved him and invited him to come to church. Even though he declined, due to his solid belief in the church he currently attended, he asked us to pray for him and what he was going through. We bowed our heads and prayed with him right then and there. He said that later, he would come and check out the church.

It really is fun to see what the Lord has in store for you as you serve him. I'm glad that I have such a great companion that is always focused on his purpose. I know that the Lord will continue to bless us as we focus in more.

So the adventure this week started on Tuesday night. The conversation went like this, "Hey, Elder Sanford, if we were to have a zone conference next week, would you be able to have Costco Bags ready by then?". And then I said, "Umm..." and that was the end of the conversation.

The next day, we had two apartments to move. I was told that it took 2 hours to move an apartment. So I thought that it would probably just be done super fast. We got to the first one at 9. After 15 trips back and forth from apartment to apartment and up and down the elevator and taking the bed frames down the stairs and having a fight with the man that was moving the air conditioners to the new apartment for us (interesting fact: it is illegal to touch your air conditioners. you need to have a professional come and move them for you yo ) and then we had him take the fridge for us as well, because everybody knows that you can't tip fridges because of the freon, yes after all of that, it was about 9 at night and we were taking the last trip back to the old apartment to get the table, dryer and washer.

We were a little bit frustrated because everything was going wrong and we were planning to have this and another apartment 3 hours away also moved and done that day. Need less to say that when we found out that the faucet that the washer was connected to was broken, I wasn't super happy. We turned it all the way off, and it was still spraying out water. We went up to the roof to turn it off, but the key that we had didn't work and the person at the front desk didn't have the key either. So I went to a quiet room and prayed. It was a pretty sincere prayer. After the prayer, I was pretty calm too. and I knew exactly what to do. I slipped a hose onto the end of the spout because that is pretty easy to get on even when it is all spraying everywhere. Then I kinked the hose. It was still leaking out pretty bad, so I got the handle of an old toilet scrubber and snapped it in half and shoved it in the end of the hose. That brought it down to a steady little stream. So I grabbed some zip ties (the old hose was held on with a string of 4 or 5 zip ties all together so I cut the the head of one and the slipped the one that was on that off so it was usable again) and I zipped it all down in 3 places. That stopped it all together.

It was 10:15 by that time, so we ran to the closest elder's apartment and crashed there for the night. we woke up, moved the last couple things and were out of there,and drove 3 hours down to Tainan. The second apartment went way fast. We had the help of another couple of missionaries and we called the air conditioner mover ahead of time. We got in the door at 11:00pm. Only a full day behind schedule. Lots of fun though.

I had a good study this morning on the Atonement. It seems that the more I study it, the more I know. It's not that I am leaning anything new I don't think, but that the Spirit testifies again and deeper of the need for the Atonement. We are all fallen and imperfect. We need to be come perfect in the far future and the only way that that is possible is through the Savior. It is as easy and complex as that.

Anyways, I've got to get going. I'm going to start filling bags for Zone Conference this next week probably.

I hope you Have a good week,

Elder Sanford.

week 59 on the Island

So I don't know if I have told you or not, but Cruise Control is illegal in Taiwan.

This week was almost all full of driving. Monday wasn't too bad, but then on Tuesday afternoon, we went down to Tai Nan to get a new apartment figured out down there. We did that last week too, but the one that we wanted was sold to somebody else. So this time, we went with money in our hands to put a down payment on the apartment. That only kind of worked... while down south, we set it up to do more than just a normal trip. We drove a little further south and stayed at a zone leader's apartment there over night (I also fixed their shower while there) we woke up and we had to turn a 2 man apartment into a 4 man. We bought all of the things there and had orchestrated it perfectly to pick up some extra mattresses from a sister's apartment that had 2 too many. We also had to get shelves for sisters that needed more.

So it went like this.

1. fix shower

2. pick up stuff needed for the day

3. see that something was falling off the back of the car and going back in to the store to buy tape to keep it on until we had time to think about that

4. dropping of a set of weights for some Elders somewhere (we didn't have time, to actually run them up, so we put them in their mail box)

5. getting to sister Peterson's apartment, taking off my backpack and putting together 2 shelving units in a record 21 minutes.

6. getting horridly lost and confused because the GPS was being unclear (let's face it, it was probably user error)

7. One hour later, we got to the Gao Xiong elder's apartment and dropped off the stuff to turn it into a 4 man.

8. Stopping for lunch and realizing that, yes, Elder Siebert would have to spot me for late afternoon lunch because, drum roll please, my back pack was still back at the other sister's apartment along with the wonderfully constructed shelves.

9. Yeah, getting my back back after another couple hours of back track and GPS madness.

10. getting a call from the person that we gave 5,000 dollar down payment yesterday telling us that the actual land lord had sold the apartment that we wanted to somebody else the previous day, just before us. (Just an awesome side note. and the real miracle of the day: Because of all of the back tracking and crazyness with parts of the car falling off, right at the time that we got that car, we were positioned about a 20 minute drive from where we could drive to and talk to the guy and find another apartment. Good timing or God's timing?)

11. Getting to the 3rd apartment that we had to look at and approve in Tai Nan in the past week and signing some stuff.

12. driving up to Yuan Lin to get a different apartment for another set of sisters.

13. driving home. Goodness, it is a good thing that I love to drive and that I just so happen to be driving one of the best cars.

I know that God loves us and is looking out for us. As we do the best we can, he is setting up the way.

Thank you to our wonderful access to Costco, we went the other day. I was a little surprised but pretty happy at what I found. Tillamook Cheese. Medium Cheddar. Great stuff. They don't really have Cows here in Taiwan so most dairy products are a little expensive. Cheese especially just really isn't as developed here as it is in america. Milk is 3 times as expensive as soy milk. Crazy stuff. They also usually don't have flour products. Mostly Rice. You can't find flour in your usual grocery store. But thanks again to Costco, yes, I found some Flour Tortillas. Not quite up to the Don Julio par, but the same idea. Good stuff. My mornings are filled with cheese and have a nice crunch to the outside.

Two weeks ago, we had some exterminators come to spray for cockroaches. Pretty intense. We were pushed out of the office for a few hours. We didn't look too well ahead of time and were actually pushed out for a few hours. Just at that time, we got a call from a few of the sisters in an area not too far away. They said that they kind of smelled a little bit of gas. We went over and checked it out because we had time and were out and about. Usually we would have written a work order for it and got the Land Lord on it. But we went over there. We thought that we could kind of smell it as well. So we turned off the gas. The Land Lord later came and said that there was no problem. But then the Sisters kept saying they smelled it. So we had a person with a meter go in. we found out this week that it turns out that if we hadn't had gone in and turned off the gas, the sisters probably wouldn't have survived. Good thing that the Lord loves and is looking out for his missionaries. One of the pipes was bad or something. It is all replaced and OK now. Yeah!

The work is good.

Have a good week!

58 weeks

Hey mom & dad
I'm excited for your letter and the box. I haven't gotten anything in the mail for a while.
It's weird that people are getting engaged. and married. Being in the office, I hear bits and pieces of missionaries that went home and how they are doing. One of my favorite old AP's is getting married in April. Stuff like that. It's pretty fun.
Yeah, time is going by super fast here as well. I'm not used to writing on Saturdays yet.

Yes, my load is a little full for the next two weeks. We are getting ready for next move call when we have a huge number of missionaries coming on and not many going off. I've been looking into the phones thing. It seems that most of what I have found is for people that are visiting taiwan for a short amount of time. I'm going to go and talk to some of the cell phone shops around the corner this week as well. Alot of people will call you up and say nothing more than "call me back" and then hang up. I was thinking about it and I think that is usually because "their phone has no money on it." If I remember correctly, it is pretty common to get a phone and just "put money on it" to be able to call other people. I need to research more, but that seems like probably the best idea.

I have been trying to keep track of all of the people that I meet here and their information. Everybody from people that I taught down in 潮州 to my trainer to the person who I did his baptismal interview the other week. I'm wanting to keep tabs on them and keep up a friendship. Keep that circle of friends growing.

I've been reading a lot of D&C lately. Pretty good book. I'm finding a lot about missionary work that is nice. I like where it says. I like what it says in D&C 38:41 and the way that missionary work is in this verse. I picked out 3 points. 1. Let your preaching be a warning voice. We should go out and tell people of what happens if they continue not doing what the Lord wants them to do. 2 Every man to his neighbor. I think that the best and most powerful sharing of the gospel is to the people that we know and live close to us. That is why working with the members is the best thing to do. and 3 let it be in mildness and meekness. This is how it should be. I have had a few times when I just get mad that people aren't listening to what I am saying to them. and at that point, the Spirit is gone. It's got to be mild and meek.
ANyways, I've got to go.
have a good week.
-Elder Sanford.