Well as my title probably implies, I have received my Visa and am off to Taiwan tomorrow morning. I don't actually know any details about my travel plans except that my flight is scheduled for 9:46 Wednesday morning. It's pretty exciting though!
This last week in the Washington Vancouver Mission has been an awesome one. Tonni got baptized last Saturday and Confirmed the following Sunday! It's so cool to the see the positive influence her baptism has had in her life. One member came up at one point on Sunday and told us he has never seen Tonni smile so much as this weekend, and it's true that she does seem a lot happier. But the most impressive impact has been on her husband John. We have been teaching them for about the same amount of time and all that, and we were hoping John would be ready to accept Baptism at the same time as Tonni but that didn't end up happening because he has various questions and concerns we still need to address. However he reads like crazy and has a really good undertaking of scripture and stuff because he studied as a rabbi for years, so he loves the Book of Mormon and other church literature like various "Teachings of the Prophet ______" books and even Jesus the Christ. He even requested we get him a copy of the Missionary Handbook! So anyways he is an interesting person to teach becuase he talks a ton and is really hard to keep on task. Especially when he drinks, and he has a little bit of a drinking problem. But this last weekend with Tonni's baptism and everything that has been going on, he is getting worked on hard by the Spirit.
Just yesterday, Elder St. Clair and I were stopping by the church real quick and saw a ton of cars which is unusual for a Monday night. We also saw Tonni and John's car which got us further confused until we realized tonight was the monthly empty nester's dinner that Tonni and John have been going to. So we run in to say hi and get talking to John. First of all, for the last 5 days or so, as far as we can tell, he has been sober and we were hyped to see that track record was holding as of last night. Then John goes on to basically self commit himself to everything we had wanted to get him to do this week during our weekly planning, including committing himself to prepare for baptism. He tried to put him on date, but he wanted to get baptised that day which wouldn't have worked. But hey, at least he is getting committed! He even asked for home teachers to be sent to Tonni and himself, and perhaps best of all has been actively trying to get Tonni (our recent convert) to read the Book of Mormon more often, even reading it to her in the morning to wake her up! He basically bore his testimony to her telling her she needs to get all the way through it and ponder on it to let the truths work into her heart. Then he bore his testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith to us, telling us he would stand up and defend that truth to anyone. It was a crazy experience and I'm 90% sure John is going to be baptized in the next transfer.
All in all, getting ready to leave to Taiwan is a very bittersweet experince. I hate saying goodbye to all the awesome members and people we are teaching. I do kind of wish I could get some more time but all good things must come to an end. On to the future!
Elder Neilson
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