August 13, 2012 Email

Dear Mom and Dad,

I was terribly wrong.

On saturday night, I called one of the Elders in my district to do follow ups.  When I called, he said, "Hey, I heard you were going Zone Leader.  Elder Mohr told me.  Where are you going?"  I thought he was messing around with me, because it was way too early in the night to be getting a call.  So I called Elder Mohr, and sure enough, I've been called to be Zone Leader for the North Taizhong Zone.  So I only spent 3 months in Gangshan, and I'll spend my last 3 here in Bei Taizhong.  My area is called Daya.  Yeah, I'm suprised to be called to be a zone leader, and its even funnier that I was called to a place so far away from my last area.  North Taizhong is the farthest northern zone in the mission, we border the Taibei mission.

My new companion is Elder Chen Yu-Cheng, he's from Taibei, he said he lives really close to the Taibei temple.  His parents and grandparents are members of the church, although I think only his sister and him are active.  He's also a head taller than me, which may be kind of funny.  He's seems like a really good missionary.  I presume so, this is his 12th move call, and he's already trained twice and has been Zone Leader for 2 and a half.  I think we'll get along great, I'm excited to have another Taiwanese companion.  He's my third one, unless you count short term missionaries, than he is my fifth Taiwanese companion.  We both have a feeling that he'll be moving soon, he'll probably be moving to the office.  We'll see.  I'll just be all cozy-like here in Taizhong until the end of my mission.

In other news, we had a double baptism and confirmation.  That was the first time I've had that happen to my companionship my entire mission, so I was pretty excited.  Brother Zhang's daughter came to the baptism, and she attended sacrement meeting the next day.  It was nice to have his family there to support him.  We also were pleased to have Bro. Fu there to be baptized.  He is by far the oldest person I have ever baptized, he's at least 82 years old.  He was a very difficult baptism, because he's not as physically convenient as a younger person.  He also became very nervous when he got into the water.  My companion and another brethren had to enter the font together and hold him so they could help him get baptized.  He was shaking like crazy.  After the baptism, he was a lot happier.  He had a big smile on his face.

I'll miss you guys.  Have a fun time while you're in Alaska.  Send me some fun pictures or something.  I love you!

-Elder Travis Leatham