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January 3rd 2006

 Taipei, Taiwan

Elder Spencer Davies - Letter Highlights
Dear Family: (Dad's editorial input)

...I already bought a watch here. it was like 300 kuai. (Taiwan currency - apx $9.25 USD)) ...Dad the computer I am on is Windows 98, so when I hook my camera up to it it takes a long time for it to load. I just got back from going to a Daoist temple (Since his pics didn't work, click here to see what he is talking about... nice of someone else to take pictures for him!), I got some really good film of it. So I was all ready to show you some of it, but I would have to break mission rules and install software and stuff. I guess I'm just supposed to do really simple stuff.

Anyways, all that stuff that really doesn't matter is out of the way. I'm really enjoying it here. I'm not that good at speaking Chinese. President said that there are those missionaries that just don't speak well, they are not blessed with that gift, but they baptize much more consistently than some native speakers.

All these other Catholic and Protestant religions know their scriptures really well. I met a Pilipino this week and I thought of John Bytheway (a popular LDS youth speaker) serving the the Philippines and he spoke English... they (the Pilipino people in Taiwan) don't speak Chinese. The college he (the Pilipino) went to here they taught all the lectures in English, and his degree was in theology maybe 4 or 8 years. It was so cool to talk to him I really liked him. Really. You just don't point out their logical errors to them. It seemed like he wanted to argue, but we didn't.  We just agreed with him. He just stuck with the bible really hard. He had a Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants already. Everybody around the world knows about the Mormons, except for a few. He said he had scanned through them. He said that it made it very clear in Revelations that nothing more else can be said, and I've read it. The only problem is that it says the same type of thing in Deuteronomy... logically you cannot make sense of this type of stuff. I don't understand why it is so hard for people to accept the fact that there could be a prophet on the earth again. the prophets always keep coming, that's why there is more than one book in the bible. What I'm trying to say is that it really isn't about who is smarter than who. its all about the feeling.

I was teaching yesterday, and not to say that my Chinese is really good, but I think I can get my point across to the people. I tell them about experiences that I have with prayer and reading scriptures in my life. It invites the spirit, and then it doesn't really matter if this scripture in the bible doesn't go exactly with this scripture in the Book of Mormon. The bible really isn't enough though. He kept saying the bible is sufficient. "Silence speaks silence" something like that. He wanted to see in the bible where it talked about the Book of Mormon. It talks about Joseph Smith, Martin Harris I believe. I still love the guy though. His personality is so nice.

One of the most basic principles that it comes down to is revelation. The basic principle of our religion is that Christ came to this earth, accomplished the atonement, and that through him we can all be saved. Revelation is needed to understand why the atonement is important and why all the appendages to that truth are important. But it comes down to revelation. Bruce R. McConkie's son came to the MTC and told us that every anti mormon literature is based on the lie that revelation does not exist. feng Yesu jidu de ming, amen.
 

I'm going to send this and the last email because I have 5 minutes left. It logs me out 40 minutes into it, so I'm going to send it a few times. I want to hear from everybody else too!! Thanks for the letter mom.