Headed Home!

Before we go home, the mission asks us to write up a "reflection" of our mission and one special experience.

Early on my mission I was paired up with a companion that had been out on his mission not much less than I had. It was my first time where I felt like I had to take full responsibility and control of our companionship. My companion and I got along fine, but we were always struggling a little bit, I spent a lot of time trying to boost his confidence and push him along through the everyday struggles of missionary work. 

One particular night we sat down for dinner at 八方. My companion and I had not talked much during the course of that day and dinner was basically silent. He didn't want to talk to me and I was fine sitting there in silence. (This had happened before) I could tell something was wrong but I was too worried about what we were going to be doing that night, I was worried about how I was going to help him have motivation to go out. He looked sad and depressed and had been like this most of the transfer. I thought we could just push hard through another night and he would tag along with what I was doing. As we started to leave I had a strong impression to stop what we were doing and to "not forget my comp." The thought came to me "He is way more imported than one night of proselyting." So I stopped us on the way out the door and we turned back around and sat back down at the table. We sat in silence for a minute before I asked him what was wrong. After some time he responded with tears in his eyes "I HATE IT HERE." Then explained to me the struggles he had been experiencing on the mission and what his family was going through back home. His family needed and in his opinion it would be better for him to fix the situation there rather stay out here. 

At first I was a little surprised to hear him share all this with me, but I just took it all in. I didn't know how to respond. I started thinking in my head, "Okay, if that's what you think is best than do it."

But as we sat there my heart began to soften. I began to have a desire to help.  The spirit hit me hard. HE NEEDS TO STAY OUT HERE. I could feel the love that God had for him and my love for him and my desire to help him fix this problem grew instantly. I had the thought "There is nothing more important He could be doing with his life than giving 100% of it to the Lord." 

Through this experience, as my companion grieved in pain and loneliness, I was oblivious to what he was going through. I was trying my best to work hard, to focus on investigators and the ward, and in the process I looked right passed my companion. Through the mercy of the Lord, my eyes were opened. I was given an opportunity to help a son of God trying his best to serve.  We went back to the chapel and this Elder and I had one of the most heart felt conversations of my life, I gave him a blessing and we were able to feel and know very clearly how important it was for him to stay out. We made some specific plans and goals to keep Him out here and to help him feel of the joy that comes from giving it all to the Lord.

As I sat in a room 7,000 miles away from both of our homes, I learned and felt just a little of how much love our Heavenly Father each of us. We were called by a prophet of God to teach the precious truths of how to meet God in this life and the knowledge of our after life. 

It is hard, but with the Lord it is possible. We can increase our capacity to love and give to the Lord and others by increasing our faith in Him. As I watched my companion struggle through the hard times. I watched him cling onto all the faith he had. He wanted to believe, he was trying, and the Lord did the rest. The Savior is the only one who completely understood completely what he was going through. 

He gave me an opportunity to be a tool in helping my companion, comfort him, and encourage him throughout this process. To this day this companion of mine still stands as a disciple and representative of Christ here in Taiwan. I love him, the Lord, and our Heavenly Father for the lessons I learned that day.

I learned the truth of Elder Dale G. Remind's word that day: "I now realize that in the Church, to effectively serve others we must see them through a parent’s eyes, through Heavenly Father’s eyes. Only then can we begin to comprehend the true worth of a soul. Only then can we sense the love that Heavenly Father has for all of His children. Only then can we sense the Savior’s caring concern for them. We cannot completely fulfill our covenant obligation to mourn with those who mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort unless we see them through God’s eyes. This expanded perspective will open our hearts to the disappointments, fears, and heartaches of others."

That day I began to understand just a little bit about how much our Heavenly Father loves each and everyone of us.

Our Savior teaches in Luke 32:22 "But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." Even though I felt not qualified to help him with such a serious problem, the Lord gave me the strength and capacity to love and strengthen. I am forever grateful for this experience.

Great Week!!

It has been a great week here! I have been so grateful and happy to be apart of the amazing things happening in Pingdong. I love it! This week we did not go on any exchanges which gave us a little bit  more time to work together as a companionship. We were able to meet a lot of really amazing people that are very prepared and willing to hear the gospel.

For example this past week we were able to meet with a less active brother in the ward. He hasn't been to church in a couple years and has picked up the habit of smoking again. As we met with him we were able to meet his two daughters, 8&10, and he expressed to us how much he desired to change and bring his family to church.  We were able to read with him in Ether 12:27, and discuss plans for how he can obtain his goals.  Seeing that humble and kind of a man so distraught because of the bad habits he has picked up influencing his children negatively and then looking for power through Jesus Christ to change was a testimony to me that he once felt the love and power of Christ, and now now our Heavenly Father is calling him back! No one is forgotten or left behind on this group effort to get home to our Heavenly Father.

Josephine and Sienna went to church in Italy! We will be pushing their baptism back a week. We feel it would make for a better experience for them.

I love the work that I have been able to participate in for the last 2 years of my life. I have been changed forever and I couldn't be more grateful for the experiences and people I have been able to meet out here. My time is not up and we will be giving 100% until it's over. Thank you for all of the support that I have received. 😁 I will be sending a little bit longer and more detailed email next Monday, but for now, I want you to know that this is the work of God. He loves us and has truly provided a way to partake of the blessings and happiness he wants for us. I love it all. 😁

Love  

Elder Henderson

Things are Good!!

Things are so good here. People are moving along and we're having some amazing experiences. 

J and S are doing great, we Skyped with them twice this week and started to share commandments and the basics things we can do to brig the happiness of the gospel into our lives.

Saturday the Young men's Presidency held a Missionary activity for the YM&YW in the ward. It turned out great! We had 8 YM and 4 YW  show up. The main purpose of this activity was to help these teenagers find a desire to serve a mission. We focused on the fact that before you decide whether or not you want to, you need to gain a testimony that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are there, and the things we learn at church are true. We invited them all to read the Book of Mormon a seek an answer of its truthfulness. We were also able to go out to a park in the area and share with some people the great message of the gospel 😁

We had a super amazing lesson with 何. 

We sat down, prayed, we talked about the things she was doing, like reading and prayer and how it was good. She is scared that God will punish her for previous mistakes she's made. We said "God gave you those weaknesses, how could he possibly judging you for messing up？"

Essentially her problem was that she believed that 

She acknowledged she doesn't have enough Faith, but couldn't figure out what she lacked. She'd done everything, except smoking and church.

Read Ether 12:27, she loved it. After she read it, the first thing I said was 「 何姐妹，你還沒到祂那裡去」, "you have gone unto him entirely yet." You haven't been there yet. He's waiting and you don't need to be afraid.

"Sister He, if you just go to church, you'll stop having the desire to smoke"

After I told her that, she just yells, "Well, what are we waiting for then?". She stands up and shuts down here entire store, locks up, and we go to the chapel on the spot to let her sit in it.

何姐妹，我們在等什麼呢？

Went to the chapel, talked, spread out, she prayed, cried, and turned around and said "who said that?" Who said "home"

Apparently while she was sitting there, she heard a voice tell her the English  word "Home" and she loved it and felt at home and said that she'd start coming to church. She's doing great. 

Sorry this story is all over the place, but very good. I'll tell you in person就好了 

haha

Love you all!

Elder Henderson

大家好!

I love serving in Pingdong! The people we have been meeting are amazing. Their desire to change is inspiring. Last week while biking back to the chapel we ran in to a nice woman from Hong Kong who now lives in Taiwan, with her little family. It was a quick conversation on the street but she was willing to come try out church. A couple days later we met at the chapel and gave her a tour. She seemed to like it fine. Afterwards, we walked out in front of the chapel to offer a closing prayer to end the tour. We taught her how to pray and invited her to give it. As she prayed she started to cry, it was honestly one of the most heartfelt prayers I have ever heard. She truly felt a connection to Heavenly Father in that prayer and really started to share her thoughts and concerns. It was a special experience none of us will forget. She has started to really make a lot of improvement in this short amount of time. She brought her daughter to church on Sunday and they loved it!

This was one of the coolest days I've had on my mission so far.  

Basically as the meeting started J and S walk in. They told us that this would be the last Sunday that they could attend for three weeks because they would be out of the country until the 25th, which is also their baptismal goal. So that will be interesting to see how this goes considering the back half of all the lessons will be taught over video chat while they are in a different country. 

Anyway, they came. As well as another one of our investigators named Y came with her 3 year old daughter as well. She's the one from earlier in the week that just cried after her lesson with us. 

Part of Elder Richards said:

"We had a feeling we needed to meet with one of our english students this past week. So we did and she came to church as well. She has this really weird thing of only coming to Gospel Principles class and nothing else. The topic was work and the Gospel or something like that, I don't remember exactly. Chapter 28 haha. J loved it and after the class that A had approached her and starting just going off on her own thoughts on the world and religion and stuff like that, and of course we're standing right there protecting our poor investigator from getting infected or something or hear something that she doesn't like. It was amazing to see how J reacted to A. She just sat and listened and crowd controlled her as if she was a member. Just listened and even tried to explain some Gospel principles to her and stuff like that. It was super cool. She even invited A to stay for Relief Society and she did.

We went to Priesthood and it was pretty normal, nothing to crazy. An investigator named F came to church finally even thought it was half way through the 3rd hour. He's the investigator we've been working with that is covered in tattoos, chews betel nut, and pretty much if God has a commandment, he was not keeping any of them before. Now he prays at least. His attitude is so positive and willing to change I just think it's going to be a very hard chance for him to actually dedicate to.  

After the church meeting, we kinda escort all of our investigators to some members and see some our the door and we walk back to the main court hall part and see poor J just being jabbered at by A again haha. I walk over and kinda bat the fire and tell her not to come here and preach her thoughts in a chapel. Not really appropriate or respectful. She left and we asked J what she thought of the meeting and she said "還可以” which is kinda like, "Oh I mean, pretty good". We asked her if there was anything special about it and she just said that she heard some interesting thoughts today and we agreed with her haha, we did too. We explained that sometimes is like that and she said, "Oh, I understand."

I then said to her, "I don't come here for the people but to build my relationship with God, so no matter what anybody does, I'll come. It's a perfect church full of nothing but imperfect people". Now I was quoting some sort of prophet that I heard before but can't seem to remember right now. She kinda sat there for a sec and it seemed like that sentence really sunk in. She agreed, we continued to talk and saw them off to there 3 week vacation.

We had a littler meeting with a member about an upcoming missionary activity with the youth and decided to stay at the chapel cause we just had enough time for like half a study before we had to give a tour to somebody named H. He came and he and his friends that accompanied him were both dressed like butlers because apparently they had to go work at their family bar afterward the tour. Haha, seems like a good start. They were really cool but don't actually even live in our area. 

We head back downstairs to start our studies and we text  J to wish her happy travels while she's on the train heading to the GaoXiong XinZuoYing 新左營火車站 to ride the High Speed Rail to 台北 Taipei.

She replies, 

"Thanks

Hope see you soon

And I will receive baptism" 

I was listening to a conference talk in Chinese when she sent it so I didn't see and Elder Henderson slaps the table in front of us and yells," WHOA, look was J said!"

I looked and we were both just surprised and ecstatic that she made this decision now right before she wasn't going to be with us for 3 weeks. We asked her what helped her make her decision and she just said, "You two, today, and God."

We were so happy. The joy of sharing the Gospel is really something special. And now that I get to see them make the decision to get baptized really is just so life changing to me. 

After we finally left the chapel, we headed over to W work to see if she was doing alright. She told us, coincidentally at the same time J was having a great time, that she was having a terrible day, haha. We biked over to her work and paid her a visit, bringing her treats that a member had given us that day and talking though some of her questions in the Book of Mormon. She apparently had fought with her boyfriend about something and told us "I just want my boyfriend to be a Mormon like us!"

Kinda a cool thing to hear an investigator say haha.

I love this work and couldn't be more happy! 

I love you all!

I know it is personal, but I am going to share the letter that Elder Henderson sent to his Brother Sam who enters the MTC tomorrow. It was very touching to me, as their Mother.

Elder Henderson,

I can't believe it's here. Live up these next 24 hours and express your love for the family. 

I can't tell you how much our friendship means to me.  I didn't realize how much i love ya and how grateful I am for you as my brother, until I got out on my mission. You definitely are my best friend and I cherish our relationship.  I know I wasn't the best brother and caused you a lot of grief. But I have changed, I have become a new person with the help of God. I hope you can forgive me :) 

Sam, i can't tell how your mission is going to go, what kind of trials and heartaches you'll go through, what kind of happy experiences you'll have. But one thing i can tell you is that if you put it all out on the line, you give it all to the Lord, rely on him for everything, and give it your best effort. You will have a life changing experience. Every thing will be for your benefit.

My mission has been the hardest/most rewarding experience of my life and i can't even begin to put it into words.  You will understand that feeling as you start. hahha 

I am really sorry I wasn't able to make it to any of these big stepping stones in your life and wasn't by your side through the proccess. From the first time I heard about your call, I knew it would be unfair for me to cut the Lord short. I hope you can understand.

My devotion and commitment to the Lord is something I owe him. I have been blessed so much, I have been given a testimony of God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Through dedicated study, service, and prayer I can tell you that I have personally felt of the truthfulness of the work and the plan of salvation. I know this is true.  The Book of Mormon is the WORD OF GOD. Use at all costs to share the Gospel with these people.  I have dedicated two years to the Lord and he has given me the best gift I can think of: A testimony that I can be with our family and my future family forever. I could not cut him short, it would not be fair. 2 years is a short time.  It goes by so fast.  Know that I am dedicated to this work, and I hope you start as well. :) Be the missionary the Lord needs you to be. I am far from perfect, but i am trying my best. This is how the our Heavenly Father sees it best fit.

When things are going great out there, rely on God. When things are rough, rely on God.  

I love you Elder Henderson.  Know that I am always praying for you and will be emailing you every single week. 

See you in 2 (more haha)! God Speed. Good luck on the journey of a life time! Love you my Brother!

Elder Henderson