Celebrating 60 years of Missionary work here!!!

Hello everyone,                                                                                                 June 2, 2016

Wow the last two weeks were so much fun. Last Saturday morning was one of the events for celebrating the 60th anniversary of missionary work in Taiwan. It was up at the Grand Hotel in DaZhi. That Friday night when we went to set up was crazy. The same day was the presidential inauguration of 蔡英文, and the dinner banquet was in the same part of town so traffic was nuts. But super fun to head up there with the Elders. The Grand Hotel is stunning at night. The big red pillars stretching up into the sky overlooking the HePing 和平公園 park and the rest of Taipei is absolutely majestic. It's a sight to behold, I love living in Taiwan with all of the Ancient Chinese structure.

Love spending time with this awesome family and I love these two boys!

Saturday morning we woke up early and went up to the Hotel and had a buffet breakfast, which was delicious :) The ceremony went really well! The Choir was incredible and loved hearing from all of the speakers. Afterward, we ate lunch with our Gospel Doctrine teacher Tan JM and then had a ward finding activity! This was the first time the ward has ever done a finding activity. (like MuZha) So we are working on get it up and running. It turned out to be a raining day which was a little disappointing because it made it so not as many members showed up. But it was still a huge success. Then that night our district/zone had so many baptisms! It was incredible! I had the privilege of baptizing Brother 陳建均 Which was a great experience. He will be a great member and is already a great Dad. Then we headed off to SongShan where Elder Liston got to baptize someone that he had taught just before he moved here with me. So overall it was a great night! 

I was so happy to baptize Brother C! He is an awesome Dad and will be a great member!

On Sunday we had a whomping 38 investigators at Church. It was an awesome day! We had invited a school hear in Taipei that studies religion to come and attend our Church meeting. So awesome! They are all Catholic, so it was  really cool to go into sacrament meeting and have 32 nuns and fathers sitting in the pews. After sacrament they split into classes, and then the last hour we had the Mission President with us, the Stake President, Temple President, and Bishop have a question/answer session. It was awesome! These people were really curious to learn more! How cool is that!

Then on Monday we were privileged to have our newest Senior Couple arrive, the Vatchers. Elder Liston and I got to take them out on Monday and help them buy all the things they needed for their home here. We had a great time getting to know them, they will be a great asset to our mission. We are so excited to have them! Then the rest of this week was busy while we have been filming for a English Class promoting thing and working on transfers etc. All good things, all good things.

We took a fun hike

I loved this cute Ama

 Lastly, this last Friday was MLC (Mission Leadership Conference). Yeah that sneaked up on us super duper fast! So we cranked out a plan super fast. President and Sister Jergensen focused/trained about Fear & Faith. It was incredible (as always) and then Elder Liston and I trained on working more with members. The key focus was how to teach and encourage members to talk with their friends about the gospel. I think it went well, I had never been trained on something like that before, so we didn't have much of a foundation to go off of, but I think in the end it turned out ok. Thank heavens I have Elder Liston who can carry me and make anything good, I love that guy!

Man, I love Elder Liston. He's a stellar companion!

Finishing out today we went to the last event of the Celebration here at the Chapel. It was really good and was very similar to last week. One of the greatest parts was to hear from Elder Kitchen, who was the first missionary to come to Taiwan. I had the honor of talking with him a lot as he as been here over the past week. He is truly inspirational and I'm so grateful for the faithful service he has given to Taiwan. If it weren't for him and his companions the Church would not be anywhere close to where it is today here in Taiwan. He took time out of his busy schedule to talk to our mission. It was nothing but inspirational. They suffered so many hardships while here. I can't imagine all they went through but I'm grateful that all of us that where in that room shared something in common: what it is like to be a missionary in Taiwan, and the incomprehensible love for the Taiwanese people.  

Hope all is well! Love  you all more than  you know! 

Elder Roe