Elder Chase Millett: Transfers, Service, and a KaoRou‏

Hello Family,

I hope that this week has been a good one for you. This week has been a good one for me. Quite a bit happened so I will try my best to sum everything up.

So, transfers (move calls, as they are called here) are today. The calls have already come in and people are traveling to their new areas. As you have probably already guessed, I am not moving. Elder Watson and I will finish out our training and we will see where we go from there. But as for the rest of our district, every other companionship is changing. Yup, every single one.

So, Elder Chapman, one of the awesome Elders in our district is going to go be a zone leader in GaoXiong East. And Elder Zhu, our awesome native district leader, is going up to Taichung. Sister Kwong, from the MTC, will also be getting a new companion as her companion is going home. So, in exchange for these we will be getting 2 new elders and one new sister. One of the Elders I know. He was my "Dan Jones" companion, Elder Jenkins. This will be the last transfer of his mission and he will be our district leader here in JiaYi. I don't know who else is coming though.

So, we also did service this week. We went and helped Huang Di Xiong in our ward pull up some tarp stuff from his garden. And then he treated us to a huge KaoRou (Barbeque).

So, here is where it gets funny. Elder Watson told me that he and his last companion had gone and done service for him before. He said that they only did like 30 minutes of service and then ate for like 3 hours! That is the same thing that happened here. We pulled up the tarps and folded them up, which took like 20 minutes, and then he came back with this HUGE box full of food. We went back to his little "house" that he built by his garden, and barbequed for like 2 hours! It was ridiculous! It was soooo good though. We ate pork, fish, vegetables, some kind of soup stuff, and more meat, of all kinds!! So that was fun and I will send pictures.

So, on Saturday, we had a lesson with our recent convert Chen Jie Mei from my first weeks here. She is doing great. She loves the church. She is reading her scriptures and praying. So all is well. After the lesson, we had forgotten that the branch was putting on an activity for all of the sisters in the branch. The Relief Society President, Wu Jie Mei, was demonstrating how to cook a healthy meal. They invited us and our Peike, Ye Di Xiong, to sit in with them during the activity. At first we weren't going too, but then our less active friend Rafiki came to the activity to take pictures for the branches Facebook page. It's kind of like his calling to do that. So, yeah, we stayed and mingled and ate some really good food afterwards. So not too bad.

Well, this week, we had a really cool experience. We got in contact with a potential investigator that Elder Watson and Elder Davis had found back during Guo Nian. He finally was able to meet with us and we met with him yesterday night. He is a really dedicated Taoist, almost like a "monk-in-training" sort of thing. He travels around, going to different Miao's and things like that. But, when we met with him, he seemed to love everything we were teaching. He was putting so many of the dots together, more so than any other investigator I've met with on my mission. He was paying attention and really focusing on what we were saying. We were able to give him a Book of Mormon and challenge him to read and start praying. At the end of the lesson, he said a wonderful prayer, a sincere prayer. This experience testified to me that it really is not the missionaries or their skill that touch peoples' hearts, but the message itself. The Spirit will stir their hearts and help them to know that the message is true if they are but willing to plant that seed of faith.

Yeah, I got the jam (on my birthday!) (mom is happy to know that Habanero and Jalapeno jam will make it through customs!)Thank you so much! It is so good! It's funny. Elder Watson was so opposed to the idea of pepper jelly at first. But then he tried it and liked it. But he still thinks that spicy jelly is just weird.

My birthday was fun. Apparently, Elder Watson called the zone leaders the day before my birthday and simply said, "Elder Dawson, I need a cake." "I'm on it!" he replied. The next day, after our district meeting, the zone leaders brought up this delicious mango cake It is fairly similar to regular cake, and OH MY GOSH it was so good!!! and the whole district sang to me. It was fun, and definitely very memorable. (Good thing that Elder Millett is biking about 10 miles a day :)

Yeah, apparently Elder Watson felt the earthquake. I didn't. It was at night and he said I must have slept through it. (Taiwan had a 6.6 earthquake on April 20, 2015)

Well, that is about it for this email. I hope it satisfied. I love you all and I can't wait to hear from you guys very soon. Stay safe, have fun, and know that we are on the Lord's side!

God Bless,

Elder Chase Joseph Millett

雷長老