Welcome Home Elder Gish

Shannon here:

Our family cannot begin to express the gratitude we feel for so many of our friends and family who supported Sam while he served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As it can be imagined, we are so incredibly joyful to have him home. While he misses the people of Taiwan whom he grew to love, as well as the work of the mission, he is doing well back home and is preparing for his next season of life at Brigham Young University in Provo Utah. He’ll return to school there this January.

 

Taiwan Taichung Mission. November 2012- November 2014.

Last Email from Taiwan

 

This is my last email home from Taiwan. I'll see yall in a couple days ;)

 

This week I worked my tail off and I will come home exhausted knowing that I did what I was called here to do. I feel comfortable about coming home, I know I did what the Lord expected of me.

We baptized again on my last week :) woooooohooo! And more coming next week! I'll be skyping in for that!

I had a ton of friends come to visit and it was super fun but sad. I will miss this place. I'll have more stories for everyone when I get home.

 

I love this work. I love the Lord. I know it is all true. It is.

Last invite: Get a good nights rest cause we are gonna party soon ;). Don't forget to pray before you sleep though! :) Love you all!

Shine Bright!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-

Ge Sheng Long ZhangLao

葛勝龍長老

The Last Hope + Reflection

{Shannon here: This post includes Sam’s regular weekly email letter plus his final talk to the missionarie – his Reflection.}

Weekly Email

Any starwars fans? yeah....you will know what that title means!....It means I am takin out the Sith aka Satan with my super crazy strong force power aka the Priesthood....its a good thing I have so many midochlorians aka faith! (spelling)? haha

Alright well lets get down to business for this week! Oh actually, sorry I didn't email last week! Like I said these last few weeks will be super busy! I don't know if I will be emailing next week or not (since I will see everyone next week anyways), but if I have time I will shoot over a little email :)

Well last week I went up to an amusment park with Ali and zhong and Ryan!! Oh man it was sooooo flippin fun! I got a picture or two...a lot was closed though cause most things are closed on Monday and our Pday is on Monday...bummer haha.

This week is my last week so I taught my last English class last week (this week is our party). That was pretty sad!

Okay my thoughts are so scattared right now, I'm super sorry. I still have a lot to take care of. I'll shoot out a little list! 

A dog bit my bum as I ran by him in the morning...hurt super bad!!

We found some sweeeeeet New investigators and we are going to be baptizing this week and next week and the week after! As my boy Michael Jackson likes to say....dont stop till you get enough!!

I cried for the first time in quite awhile at my last mission leadership council. It was super Sad but also super cool how much I am still able to learn. That is one of the best things about the gospel, no matter how much you know you can always keep learning and progressing. I'm not saying that I know a lot but after two years of being totally involved in nothing but the gospel I still learn new things every day!

I'll send over my reflection in a sec.

I have a lot more to say but I lost my planner so I Cant remember anything....oh man I'm so dead back in America when I dont have a planner.....uh oh.

I'll see if I can get an email off next week maybe.... Love you all!! 

This week I want to invite everyone to prepare a testimony to share with me :):) haha. Love ya!!

Elder Gish

-

Ge Sheng Long ZhangLao

葛勝龍長老

REFLECTION by Elder Samuel Gish

Taiwan Taichung Mission

11/07/2012 ~ 11/12/2014

 

I am truly humbled to be at the point in my mission where I am expected to share some of the insight that I have gained over these last two years. I know that this may be my last chance to no stand before a group of missionaries like this and speak, so I hope that something I say will affect someone here today.

What We Have Become
We can become like Christ.  Being selfish or disobedient are attributes inconsistent with the requirements of God and will not magically go away by acquiring knowledge or even accepting higher callings.  The only thing that changes our state or words, work or thoughts is the atonement of Jesus Christ coupled by the conscience effort and sincere desire to change and become a true disciple of Christ.
What matters is not what we’ve done but who we become... But I promise you that when you become something you will do what is required... you will do what is best. In the parable of the talents Jesus does not tell the good servant that he did slothful he referred to them by their state of being good and faithful servant or slothful servant. I will never forget my first interview with President. He told me of a story about Arabian horses. They are trained with blinders on so that they don't look at other horses... This is how champions are bread. You put your blinders on focuses on your purpose and go go go. You be obedient because you want to be you contact everyone because you want to you wake up on time because you want to you hit the standards because you want to not because of who your companion is or because of the district or zone leaders. We aren't two faced servants of God.

Repent
Now of course we are going to make mistakes, sometimes do wicked, slothful prideful and even disobedient things. The things we have done cannot be changed, yet who we have become and who we have power to help can always change through the atonement of Jesus Christ. Joseph Smith in regards to giving Martin Harris the 116 pages made a mistake that he could not fix. The Lord was angry and lessons were learned. I am also a living testimony of the changing and enabling power of Jesus Christ and I know that he lives and is all of our savior. I have made mistakes even on my mission that can be taken back, but just as Joseph Smith after repenting was, we can still come off conquer and not be afraid for we are still chosen. We are servants of the Lord Jesus Christ our master and we cannot be afraid and we cannot fail him. No mistake is too big, if we repent we can still be chosen and be the means of working great miracles among all the children of men, including companions ward member’s investigators and all others.
The father desires to give us all he has. Are we willing to put in the effort to deserve the blessings and the miracles? We can qualify by conversion and hard work. The time and effort we put into anything is how much we get out. We will get exactly what it is we want. So what do we want? The reason I play lacrosse at the level that I do now is because I would never cut practice time short, I would never waste that precious time, and in fact I would after to shoot or do other practice. So I ask, so we take that extra two minutes before personal study to be on our knees or in the scriptures? During our down time what is it we think about or talk about?
If we are losing our disposition to do evil then we are progressing toward our heavenly goal. I will never forget early in my mission the first time I felt that the spirit had been offended by my actions as a missionary, and the overwhelming desire I had to change and to get the spirit back as soon as possible! I will now always do everything within my power to always have the spirit with me.

What We Can Do Now
I know of two sure fire ways to keep the spirit with you at all times. 1 realize that your purpose is paramount and be resilient in your purpose. 2 be in the book of Mormon and preach my gospel each and every day.
When you are on the street contacting be 100% resilient in your purpose. Don’t forget who you are, why you are here, and what you are doing! One of my role models…you may know him as Obi Wan Kenobi once said, “Your eyes can play tricks on you, don’t trust them.” When we are out on the street don’t listen to your eyes saying don’t talk to him or her and they won’t accept me. Use the force, listen to the spirit and go talk to them! You could save someone’s soul! People all around us are in despite need for what we have. They are weak and calling out, we MUST be ready and willing.

The way we stay ready is be being daily in the Book of Mormon and the Preach my Gospel. I have a small story I want to share about another man I love. I call him Papa Jim. My Grandfather was not a ‘religious man’ in fact I might go as far as to say he denied to existence of a God. However after the invite from a Prophet to read the Book of Mormon and because of my ever so brave Mother’s invite he started to read the Book. He did not live much longer past that but by the end of his life he was so weak from the chemotherapy that he could not gather the strength to life the Book of Mormon, so what did he do? He would set his hand on it for strength to make it through his trials. He realized the power of that book as have I.

My last story before I close is one very personal to me. When I was in 東港 I went through a really rough time in regards to my personal testimony. I decided that I was going to do what every other investigator does and that is take the lessons. Over the next few weeks I studied and taught myself the lessons in Preach my Gospel. I would ask questions and then answer them using doctrine and the scriptures provided in Preach My Gospel. I then followed the commitments given at the end of each section. I stand here now and tell you with all of my heart that I KNOW this church is true and that that book was inspired of God. Please read it daily.

Close

In closing I would like to leave my testimony that I know that Jesus Christ is our savior and all that accept him will enter into his rest and receive eternal life. In the sacred name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

The Empire Strikes Back

The subject is just a shout out for my Mom and Dad! :)

So last week I said that tony had something fun planned, well we all went and played in this little ally where there is this guy that does graffiti of cartoon stuff here! It was pretty funny and fun! :) we also had some super tasty ice cream afterwards! I am super excited about this last movecall! A bunch of my good friends are in this zone and so it is going to be a really fun last 6 weeks! another super cool thing is my new comp! My last comp....aye ya!!!! (Chinese way to say WHAT THE HECK) hahaha. He is from Tennessee and is a collegiate wrestler! About my size....this is gonna be an exciting 6 weeks...pictures of the burns and bruises will follow ;) it is sad to see elder Baker take off...he is also heading to his last area and very possibly his last companion! exciting....but scary. really it is just a big mix of a million emotions! oh while on the subject though...for those of you that love us missionaries....if you want to send a package or letters....time is getting short...so if you are going to do it do it fast ;) #imnotbegging.

So last week i got to go on exchanges with elder Ng! It is the first time I have been able to go on a missionary from my generation MY WHOLE MISSION!!! how wild is that? we did some good work and i really miss that kid! It made me think back to the MTC and how much I miss that time and those friends! speaking ALSO of friends that I miss...SISTER HANSEN!!! i met your asian-self yesterday! It was so crazy! I saw her and heard her speak and i thought....no way! I am back in seminary again ;). so I thought about you! :)

This week my older bro Leon came and found me! It was way fun! He and I and tony and elder baker had a lot of fun and taught some awesome lessons!!! It is pretty cool how when you are happy and with people that you know well the spirit flows so much smoother....that is probably why my Mom and Dad were able to teach us so well! They are the best of friends and so connected and...well...i learned a TON from them and that is exactly what I want my future relationship to be like....with my best friend! #itsnottrunky #itscalledpreperation :) Just doing what Preach My Gospel says to do :)

With these last 6 weeks i hope to be able to report a ton of miracles! I know that working hard and praying hard is going to make a lot of great things happen! Please help pray for me over these next 6 weeks! Gotta finish strong and not stop till the whistle blows! :)

Hopefully I will have a little more fun things to talk about next week.

Quick rundown of our investigators:

We are teaching two families so please keep them in your prayers! the Lin family and the Liao family! :) I will do a better update next week.

We also have some really good friends #Bros that we are teaching. Joe and Luke are my really good friends. Please pray for them too.

Love you all! Shine Bright!

I hope that everyone this week can make WITH ME some goals that they want to accomplish in the month of October! I would love to hear about them! It can be anything from share the gospel to get ripped like Goku (aka Gage Gish).

The pics are of the graffiti group.

our pokemon themed english party....soooo baller!

The last pic with Elder Baker! The sisters are sister anderson (from before in taiping!) ans sister Chen (who will be coming home with me!)

-

Ge Sheng Long ZhangLao

葛勝龍長老

愛你

 

This title of this (hope you can all see it....says "eye knee" which means love you) it is a super popular song here that we hear ALL THE TIME. So obviously we can't listen to it naturally so what do we do? Take it and re-write all the words to fit with our missionary purpose! :) #WroteMyFirstChineseSongToday. We are going to present it to the zone as a fun surprise tomorrow during ZTM. It is going to be so fun! I will let you know about how it goes!

Okay before I really get into this letter I have a few shout-outs!

Vash-spice! Happy Birthday! You have for sure made my time out here so much more fun as you write every week without fail...thank you so much!

GRAMMY!!! Happy B-day! I hope you have an amazing 40th birthday! ;) You have always been there for us when we are spiritually or physically down. Love you so so so so much! Thank you so much for your example!

Last but for SURE not least, Mom and Dad...... HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! What is this 25 years!?!?!? Thats weird....Mom....aren't you only like 30 something? ;) hahaha just kidding. You two are such amazing examples of what I want my life to be like. #GoodLuckFutureGirlFriends hahahahha just kidding again! (Man I am such a jokester...just like Dad) And I am so glad that God lead you to eachother so that we could have our AMAZING BEST FAMILY EVER...don't wanna brag but...for real....its the best #DontEvenTryToCompete. I love you two so much! I hope this next year is just as good and just as awesome! Keep taking time to go to the temple often together! I want this family to last for ALL OF ETERNITY!!! :)

Okay real quick some funny stories...I know this is the real reason you come to read this! Make sure you take time to read the real good part after though! Elder Ward and I were calling some people that we had contacted and I saw him with his doing something really focused with his pen....so I took a sec to sneak over and see what he was doing and then BAM i saw it....he was drawing a face on his wart hahahaha. This kid and I are getting along so well and will for sure be such an amazing companionship!  Another example of why...SO we have an amazing investigator that owns an Italian noodle place with these amazing milkshakes and so we decided to go there to eat. I told him about how one time we came here and got free milkshakes. So when we go in we sit down and get ready to order and Elder Ward asked for a free milkshake! hahaha I immediately threw my head into my hands. Oh my gosh it was so embarrassing! But realllllllyyyyy funny! We laughed forever and the poor waitress was so nervous! The boss wasn't there that day and so she said no. But then they gave us a free salad haha....i think they just felt bad for us!

LOOK AT THESE AWESOME COOKIES! Ali down in Tungkang made them for us! Oh man they were so so so so amazingly good!!!!!! I miss that place! :(

The bikes....this is what I found after finishing my exchanges with Taiping.....remember 1 year ago when we started that dumb game? well i guess it stuck haha.

I am almost out of time so I just wanna tell everyone that I am now working the hardest I have yet and I LOVE IT!!!!!!! These are gonna be the best 5 weeks yet! Everything is better when you put everything you got into! Especially the Lords work since he blesses you a million fold!

I know this gospel is true. I know that Jesus Christ lives and he loves us. I invite everyone today to watch something from general conference! :) You can put your money on the prophet.

Oh and the new comp....he really is a boss :)

love you all

shine bright!

-

Ge Sheng Long ZhangLao

葛勝龍長老

{Shannon here: Sam didn’t explain the cause of the tree carnage below. But everyone seems to be fine.}

When was the last time you saw a miracle?

When was the last time you saw a miracle? This week keep a small record daily of the miracles you saw that day! I bet you will be surprised how much God's hand really is in your life! #EarlyInvites #PreachMyGospelMissionary

Well a ton happened this week....but first I want to explain something from last week! So I sent a picture of a whiteboard with a huge drawing on it! So that drawing is a challenge that I gave my English Students! It was a long story that I made about a brave and valiant and probably pretty good looking and buff knight (can you see his name ;) heheheh) going out through a forest of giants and a cave with a giant spider and a river of sirens and a wall and a castle of warriors and a dragon and at the end I gave them the two doors riddle. Well the fun part was that I gave them an inventory of items that they had and they had to think of creative ways to get through everything safely and go rescue the beautiful princess!! It was absolutely hilarious hearing their answers for some of the things! I kept thinking...wait....are we both from the safe planet earth?....that doesn't work on my planet earth haha. Oh well, it was still hilarious and fun! Peja also came down to help with a group of old ladies that were there...oh my gosh that was good to watch! :)

Okay, now that I cleared that little thing up let me share with you some of the experiences that I had this past week!

So Monday after emailing we went out to go try to find some pokemon cards (yeah....im still 12 in my heart...) but we went on this huge adventure and found nothing.....so that was lame. But you live and you learn right? ;) what WAS cool is that the MaGong 馬公 Elders (the small island outside of Taiwan) came down to stay with us because the next day was going to be zone conference. So we got to see them and play around a bit!

Well Tuesday comes around and that awesome kid Tony comes down to help us teach some lessons and do some missionary work (he is preparing for a mission right now and we are SOOOO EXCITED. Please pray for him!!!). But we were walking down the street and a member drove by that is usually super happy and bubbly and he when he saw us he just nodded and drove by looking really angry....which was a little confusing, but we kinda ignored it and kept walking. Well 剛剛好 (I don't know how to say that anymore in English...sorry...) the path we were taking would take us by the hospital and that same member was parking in the hospital. Well it turns out that that morning our ward mission leader had a really bad heart attack. he was unconscious but we went up to see him anyways. It was looking bad. So bad that President came down. Well...Brother Chen never woke up. This last Friday we held his funeral service. i wanna take a sec to just give him a shout out...he was a great leader and such a hard worker and i am so happy that I got to serve with him while i did! What was cool was that the day before we went on the hike we went on a hike (I think I mentioned this all before) but he bought us mangos and we had such a good time and he was doing so well in his calling and as a member...it was a good time to go. I love him and will miss him but I also know that this church is true and that because of Jesus Christ and his atonement I will be able to see him again! :)

This week was also our Zone Conference and Elder Noll (the elder that was above me in the mtc) gave his reflection (going home talk) oh my gosh it was scary! I will miss that kid! But no worries....i will see him soon ;). It was cool to see lots of old friends also at the conference!

Today Tony has something super cool planned for us to do so I will take pics and tell you all about it next week! He and I have known each other for a whole year now!!! cool eh!? But so sad that a missionaries life is so short... :(...I will for sure keep in touch with all these amazing friends my whole life!

I am out of time! love you all!

shine bright!!!!!!!!!!! 

-

Ge Sheng Long ZhangLao

葛勝龍長老

Witty

Wasn't the subject to this email super witty? i thought so....

Alright so obviously because of the super lame title of this email and the dumb mistakes of sending emails off too early and stuff you can tell that i am SUPER tired. If you couldn't tell...well, now you know.

This morning we woke up at about 5 o clock to go out with our ward mission leader on a hike! It was pretty dang fun! We saw these HUGE spiders, I mean...HUGGGGEEEE and they were fast as lightning! (kinda like my dad huge and fast as lightning!) It was sweet. we also talked to him a lot about buddhist beliefs since he used to be a super devote buddhist. I'll be totally honest...it makes no sense. On top of that it is just a little depressing...#SOgratefulforthePlanOfHappiness! we also got to watch him do tai chi (is that how its spelled in english? the martial art, tai chi). It was really funny because there were all these people around and they were soooo impressed and asked him all these questions and he felt like a super star and it was awesome! :) The top was also so beautiful! i tried to take pictures but none of them did the scenery justice so i just deleted them...haha...I guess i will just have to take you all up to Taiwan at some point in your life! :)

Other than waking up that early today I am just exhausted from the work this week! it was a bit of a slow week and man-oh-man did we get put to work mentally physically and spiritually! It took its toll talking to so many people and trying to focus on so many people with so many problems and stuff. But these are the kinds of problems that I love...too many people with too many problems that the gospel can fix :). #IwantMoreProblems.

Elder Flint gave an awesome DTM this last week (Shannon here: District Training Meeting)....I don't really know what i can say that would relate the awesomeness of it...just know that i got pumped from it and i hope the rest of the district did too! Our zone could use a boost...we put a lot of stress on the District Leaders since they have so much more contact with the missionaries than we do....they are all super good missionaries and i am so happy to be able to work with so many! Chase...that’s you too man! Do work son!

Last monday we went out to shi tou kao rou! Its a place where you can cook your own food and stuff! I kinda forget how to say it all in english...but long story short it was SUPER good and super fun! Ali came up from donggang Ryan came up from gaoxiong and Tony and Alexis came up from Taiping! It was a super party and i love all of them so much! I am so grateful for the amazing friends that the Lord has given me out here! Afterwards we went up to a mall in this arcade area and watched our friends play games...missionaries can't play....lameeeee haha. But it was still fun to be with them and watch them and laugh with them!

Another super cool thing is that we have a deaf investigator! I think i talked a little about him before..maybe. But anyways he is totally deaf so in a lesson I wrote everything we wanted to say and he would write and use sign to communicate with me! It was super awesome and luckily in our ward is a deaf family and a woman that translates so he was able to come to church and get fellowshipped like any other investigator and receive revelation and love just like anyone else! I will keep you updated on him! I am learning some fun chinese sign language because of it :)....its pretty dang different from ASL apparently...either that or I forgot everything I learned in college haha (i might have just forgot everything...).

Tomorrow is going to be our zone conference so I will let yall know how that goes next week!

I think thats really it for this week! we met cool people, taught awesome families, felt loved, loved back, people gave us fruit, it was a wonderful week in the small little paradise we call taiwan! oh yeah! and an invite.....this week....give someone some fruit :) It really is an awesome gift :) haha.

Love you all!

Shine bright!

Elder Gish