Christmas Miracles! Shengdanjie kuaile (Merry Christmas)

What a week!!! Starting off with the best Christmas Morning!! Jean was baptized! I had the opportunity to baptize her.  It was such a cool experience, she was so prepared and her testimony is soo strong.  I am so grateful for her and the chance to help her learn about the church.  It was definitely an experience I will never forget.

Having Christmas on a mission is definitely a different, but it really helped me to focus on what is more important.  Although presents and Santa are fun, the real reason we celebrate Christmas is to celebrate the birth of the most important man to ever live on Earth. Jesus Christ lived a perfect, humble, and selfless life, and died for all of our sins. It is the best gift that we could ever ask for and it is free, as long as we have faith in Him and show our love, as best we can. He knows we are not perfect and that is why He did this. So we can repent and become better people!

We had a wonderful dinner at a members home for Christmas and they so kindly let us call home! But, Still didn't feel like we had Christmas here!  Its 80° and the Taiwanese do not celebrate it! I am so grateful for this opportunity to serve and do the Lord's work!!!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and have a great New Year!! Love you all!!

Elder Henderson

 

Taiwan is Incredible!!

Taiwan is Incredible.  Every week I'm here I love it more and more!  Besides some of the food,  I could really go for not eating some of this ever again haha.  This week went to the Bishop's house for dinner.  And... for desert we got to eat, smashed up tree fungus in the texture of apple sauce in like this cold soup.  Yeah it's about as gross as it sounds! haha I also got to eat 1000 year old egg, it literally tastes a thousand years old.  But other than that we are doing awesome here!!

We had another great week. Funny story, We were contacting and some dude was walking at like the same pace as me like 10 ft away so I went up to him and starting talking to him. He ended up being awesome and we shared like the whole restoration with him and a ton of stuff. Right in the middle of us talking to him a random lady walks up and just gets in my comps face and is just staring at him.  She then hands her dogs leash to him and looks like she is absolutely crazy.  So after we were kinda just ignoring her and talking to the other guy, she just walked away. But kept coming back and just trying to look over our shoulders and stuff really awkward. hahah So then we finished talking to the dude and she came running up to us and said she wants to meet with us really bad hahah so we set up another time and hopefully will be meeting with her next week!

Jean passed her baptismal interview this week and it is for sure that she is getting baptized on Christmas!! We are sooo excited for her!! It has been a great week here in Taiwan! Love this place and the Gospel! Have a great week and Christmas!! It's still like 70 degrees here, which makes it so weird to think it's almost christmas! But remember the Lord and why we actually celebrate this holiday.  Jesus lives for each of Us and I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to testify of this happy and hopeful message.  Love you all!

I've seen this guy in a few pictures but not sure who he is! Buddies!!

Mikey said, some awesome Ward members brought them leftovers!! Such giving people!!

Mikey Loves Most of the Food!! He says this is Meat, rice and Veges!!

Many Miracles and Stinky Tofu

You can follow Elder Henderson's Instagram that is maintained by his mom. His handle is @eldermikeyhenderson

This has been an amazing week!  I want to start off with the biggest miracle of all:  Last night we met with a lady named Gina, that Elder Neuhaus met on exchanges on Tuesday.  He said she was super Christian and didn't know about it.  During our lesson last night we taught her about the plan of salvation and it went really well.  Afterwards we invited her to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it.  She told us a story,  When Elder Neuhaus first met her he gave her a pamphlet about the church,on the front of it is the picture of Jesus holding a lamb.  She told us that when she was a kid she had a dream and this picture was in it.  She has been Christian because she knew it was Christ, but had never been able to find the picture.  She said when she got the pamphlet she instantly remembered her experience and knew that the church was true.  She told us she had stayed up that whole night reading and praying and already knows it's true,  She will be getting baptized on January 21st! Heavenly Father prepares souls in many different ways.

Our Philippine investigator that is getting baptized on Christmas, came to church yesterday and loved it! It was awesome to see how the ward just accepted her and it strengthened her testimony even more. 

Like I said we went on exchanges this week,  I went with Elder Collett who is from Sandy and has been out for over a year.  I went to his area, Shizhong, which is the coastal area right next to Lingya.  We went contacting at a park and met a cool dude.  We shared all about the restoration and the Book of Mormon.  The spirit was soo strong and it was honestly probably the best Chinese I have ever spoken.  At the end, He told us he would never forget this experience, it had changed him.  That he had never felt something like this.  I then testified to him that it was the Spirit telling him that it was true.  I've never felt so comfortable speaking Chinese in my whole life haha Hopefully he meets with those Elders again!

Another cool experience.  Wednesday night we taught our usual English Class.  Afterwards we did our spiritual share and watched The Restoration, the movie about Joseph Smith's story. If you haven't seen it you should because it is powerful.  After we had a guy named Patrick come up and talk to us.  He has been coming to English class for a while and never wants to meet with the missionaries.  After watching the movie he came up to us and wanted to meet.  So, we met with him the following day.  We talked about the movie and he said he felt something special,  He said He feels like he has the same question as Joseph.  We shared about the restoration and it went awesome! The spirit was so strong and I know it testified to him. 

If you have a willing heart and a desire to know it's true.  The spirit will tell you it's true.    Through reading the Book of Mormon and prayer, it has changed my life, and I have the opportunity to see it change so many lives here.  This gospel is true and brings so much peace and happiness to those who seek it!

I love this church and I love this work! I'm so grateful for this opportunity. Love you all!

And good luck to Dalan Bailey and Charlie Baggett as they enter the MTC this week!

Love,

Elder Henderson

    Oh yeah and I tried Stinky Tofu and it is terrible I don't recommend it haha.

   

                                                  Mikey's silly personality....he's still got it!!

                                            The Man on the left is Elder Henderson's Great Uncle!!

                                                                     Goofy Boy!!

Elder Henderson has an instagram!!

Come follow Mikey on Instagram! Sharing his mission through pictures!!🇹🇼 Also making him chat books!!❤Man, I love technology!!!😍😍 eldermikeyhenderson

Awesome Week!!

This week has been awesome!  Starting off with the best news, we have an investigator from the Philippines that is here in Taiwan working.  (So our lessons are in English).  She has been an investigator for about 5 months now and is great!!! But, her job only lets her get like one day off a month.  So she has not been able to come to church.  A couple weeks ago we met with her and she decided that it would be easier to wait two years and get baptized when she got back to the Philippines.  After lots of prayer and thinking about it. This week Elder Neuhaus figured out a plan. So on Saturday we met with her and shared about Eternal families, it was one the most spiritual lessons I've ever been apart of. We testified of how important it was for her to get baptized to become that solid rock and example her family needs her to be. So she will have one Sunday and then Christmas off to come, she will be getting baptized right after church on Christmas morning!! As we talked about this I have never seen anyone so excited to get baptized. She knows it is true, but the circumstances have been tough. Now she can do it!! It is going to be awesome!

On the Other hand we had something sad happen.  We had a baptism planned for this next Saturday. Luo Jiemei,  She passed her baptismal interview and was all ready to go, but yesterday told us she is hesitant and needs more time.  We are praying very hard for her to feel of the importance of this!

I'm very grateful for the opportunity to be serving the Lord,  I see His hand in my life more than I ever have before.  I've started at night when I pray, to write in a prayer journal and try to remember where He has helped me through out the day.  As I have done this my eyes have been opened to the amount of things Heavenly Father does for us! It's truly incredible when we are open to it, it becomes a lot easier to see.

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

He received our Christmas Package, arrived in 2 weeks....Not Bad!!