New Pics from Elder Weinberger inTaiwan! - March of 2009

Letter # 3

Ni hao,
YAY! Its pday again and I get to write my family. How is everyone doing I want to hear news on everyone. Especially the little boys. I want to know how much they have grown up? Are they CRAZY? Madeline Hannah? Is Lauren engaged? I gotta know!
Anyway, things are going so good over here. We have found this new awesome family to teach with two little boys. My companion and I are going to make them all cookies and bring it over to them. It was awesome how we met them. I think I explained that in my last email. But it is awesome. I am super excited to go back and teach them again. As far as the rest of our investigators the work is going well. So much of what we teach is way way far away from anything they have ever heard. It makes the process a lot slower for our investigators.
I'm worried that its just going to take some more time. Hopefully not too long. Well we did have a
baptism last sunday. It went great but was super hectic! We almost weren't able to have it. Things were just kinda falling apart. People were calling and canceling. The Boy was having trouble getting his parents to sign his permission slip since he was under 20 and all. But it all ended up working out great. Big sigh of relief.....
Okay so we found out that Elder Bednar is coming to our mission to visit us. That means that while I have been on my mission I have seen Elder Holland twice and now Elder Bednar twice. I feel so blessed. Those two are my favorite. Right behind the German of course. (Ha ha)
He is coming for a 3 hour questioning session so each missionary can have the chance to ask him any question they want. Im excited to hear some of the questions the missionaries are going to ask (ha ha ha!)
Well last week for p-day we went up to this little town in the mountains and there is markets up
there where you can just get stuff for super cheep. The girls in our family would have a Hay Day up there. Seriously and its right by the coast so its like the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. My companion and I then went hiking on this mountain right next to it. It was one of the coolest things I have ever done. I dont think I have ever seen anything so awesome. It was all the ocean on my right and left, and then behind us were just these green mountain ranges with little towns
tucked away in them. Whoever decides to come. We are going there.
Anyway, here is the spiritual thought for the week and a scripture.
Alma 37:37 - The thought is "Always lay your heart down at night with the lord, Keep him in our every decision, I know that if we do our lives will be blessed more then we could ever imagine. I know because I have felt it in my life" Everyone read that Scripture.

Love you all so much!
Your Missionary,
Wei Zhang Lao Wu ai nimen, Shen hui yizhi zai ni shenbian

NEW PICTURES FROM THE M.T.C. !!!

Letter # 2

Well hello Family!

Well guess what? Its finally Sunny! After raining for two weeks straight its starting to get nice. Either we come home soaking wet or we come home sweating! Either way we are wet!
So some good things have been happening with our investigators. We have a BAPTISM this sunday! We are so excited! My companion has been working with this 18 year old kid for a couple months after baptizing his older brother and now the younger one is getting baptized by the older brother. Such a cool story. So this will be my first baptism with my companion! We also have 4 other people with baptism dates so we are really working hard with them trying to get them ready.
Well my companion has to do most of the talking. My Chinese is a little lacking as you can imagine. But things are really progressing with that. This last week we saw some awesome things happen. We ran into a family while tracting. We bore our testimonies and talked about families. She knew that the "Mormon" church was from Utah. She said, "Oh ya I knew that people in Utah are big on family". I kinda laughed. But after we bore our testimonies and the Mom told us that she was touched! She used a word I have never heard before to describe how she felt. But my companion told me that he had never heard a person say that before at the door! So we have a lot of hopes for this Family!
Another story that I consider a miracle... We ran into this kinda half crazy guy out tracting and he set up a time to meet with us. He said he was christian and he wanted to know what the difference was between his church and ours? (Pretty much the perfect question.) So he didn't show up to the first appointment. So we set up another, and not showing up to that one either, we started to think this lesson wasn't going to happen. But then surprisingly he called us and told us to meet him at the church. Now this guy is not very well bathed person. He actually looked kinda homeless. So when he showed up to the church the other missionaries in our district were kinda like what are you guys thinking? (Haha) We of course sat down with the guy in a room and started teaching him. The guy just kinda started going off on a bunch of random stuff so my companion was like "this guy is crazy". But we still continued with the lesson. Long story short... As soon as we got to the restoration and Joseph Smith the guy was dead silent and didn't say a word. When we finished he turned into some normal person. Seriously it was like the craziest thing I have ever seen. But he is coming to Church this Sunday. I am excited to see how that goes.
Well I gotta run Its our P day and we are taking a bus up to the mountains to go hiking. Love you all so so so so much,

Wu ai nimen

Wei Zhong Lao's first letter from Taiwan!

Hey my family,

So I am finally here in Taiwan!
The flight was long but we got alot of stuff done.
I was able to place a book of mormon on the plane.
I had a long conversation with this guy.
Hopefully something can come from it.

So we first flew into Japan and then into Taiwan.
I had a really safe feeling when I got to Taiwan it was awesome. When we got to the airport the mission president picked us up and we got on this bus and headed towards the center of the city.
He explained some things about Taiwan.
It was pretty cool. Then we got to the mission home where we slept for a couple of days. That was cool cause the temple was right across the street.

Our first morning waking up we took a jog to the center of the city which is cheng kai shek square. The buildings there would blow you away ...seriously.

It was overcast with a little rain but it was beautiful. Then they took us to a real Chinese breakfest which was good. It was a little interesting. We had these huge deep fryed oil sticks
and you dip them in hot soy milk. Ya interesting.
I was able to place my first tract (in my terrible chinese). It was kinda funny, I said to the guy "Jintian hao ma" (this is like how is your day) and he said, "hao chi" (which is like good eat). Ha! The guy loved his breakfast. So then I asked him if he had a family or anything and he said ya and I talked a little about our church and things like that and gave him the pamphlet. It was pretty cool.

The next day we went to the grand hotel and dedicated ourselves. I am sending pictures next week over email It is the most amazing thing you will every see that I promise. So that's where you need to stay. Its actually really not expensive at all from what I heard. But thats where the island was originally dedicated so we had the oppurtunity to dedicate ourselves. Cool experience. So later that day we met out trainers and found out where our first area was going to be.

My first area I have been sent to BAN JIAO. It is in Taipei county but it is a little ways away from the main city. I am not going to lie there are some scary looking areas and I have never smelt so many different kinds of things in my life. Ha the Chinese culture is a lot different. But my trainer is awesome and it is going to be a great change from the MTC. My comp was super different then I was in the MTC. ...Good learning experience, but it was hard. This guy is exactly what I need.
His name is Elder Fackrell. He has only been out in the field 7 months which is super rare here (to be a trainer so soon). Which proves inspiration that he was for me.

So on to the streets of Taiwan. The place is out of control. There are like thousands of scooters
everywhere..... like everywhere. Everyone has one and they drive like maniacs! But they never seem to get into wrecks. I don't get it. My first night tracting, I was scared for my life. There were cars and scooters flying by me left and right. I almost got hit twice! ha ha.
Mom don't be mad. I was wearing a helmet. So that's always fun when we have to get on our
bikes. Oh something else comforting... My companion told me that pretty much everyone will get into a wreck. Hopefully its not too bad! ha ha ha.

So trackting here is super interesting my Chinese has progessed so much in the last couple days its awesome. But I still cant understand what they are saying. I can just listen for words and then put the sentence together. It gets a little irritating sometimes. But I have been working my trash off trying to talk to everyone. I know it will pay off. You never know what seeds you plant. Plus the more I talk the better my Chinese will get. Its hard But you gotta just keep going. Ha

Oh ya, I had to bear my testimony to the ward yesterday ha they were all smiling the whole time cause I think they could barely understand me. Next week I will have alot more information for you all. - Love you all,

Wu ai nimen zaijian