My new companion is Elder Wilkinson

Hello! Happy Halloween!!

Sounds like you guys had an interesting week!

I liked the pictures you sent me! Mom's, Ale's and Ben's costumes look cool! People wear those normally here regardless of seasons/holidays.

This week was super weird for me! Elder Hatch is moving across town to DongFeng and I'm staying in BeiTun. My new companion is Elder Wilkinson. He just got done training a new missionary at the south end of the mission.

This week was pretty busy. We went and helped the new missionaries out for a night and it was super fun! I love it. It was super fun taking a new missionary out and hitting the streets. It was funny to watch my "at the time" trainee try to contact people... I'll admit his Chinese was SUPER bad. That's alright I was probably worse. It was like a deer in headlights though. It was weird being able to understand what was going on and basically contacting by myself. It felt like not too long ago that I didn't know what was going on. Eh, sometimes I don't know what's going on still. Nonetheless, it wassuper fun and I enjoyed it. I think he had fun too.

Then one of the companionships that live down the street from me called us and told us that we would have to be in a trio because one of them is training. So for the rest of the week we had..... ELDER HUANG from GaoXiong be in our trio. He's going to Eugene Oregon soon. It was super fun! We used only Chinese for the rest of the week. It was weird to make jokes and stuff. He speaks a little English but not too much. We had fun telling him about America and teaching him American slang. I mean, he is going to Oregon so we figured we'd get him in the loop now. On the flip side he taught us some Chinese and Taiwanese so we can understand the older folk here when they call us names. We ate a lot of Taiwanese food for Elder Huang. He's really nervous. He wanted to eat rice all week so we did that. There's some noodle shops here that are super sketchy. So... Sometimes I'd be eating noodles and they'd taste like poo--or my favorite chlorine. He also showed us all of his Chinese EFY music. We were laughing pretty hard. It was fun for the 4 days I was with him and I'll miss him a lot.

Last night, the Ohms family gave us an American dinner. They're an American/Chinese family living in Taiwan. They're a super cool family and the dad is American and served in Vancouver, Canada. He speaks fluent Chinese and his wife is Taiwanese. They have 5? kids and they're all super talented and awesome. It was fun to listen to his mission stories and stuff. He has some good ones.

That's pretty much it. We have some potential investigators lined up. We might be teaching an RC's brother. Tonight we a teaching the Bishop's son's friend a first lesson at McDonalds. Hope it's a great first McDiscussion.

I know that church is true. I didn't really believe it before my mission but now I know. There's a lot of simple truths in the Gospel that really solidify my testimony of the Gospel. No other church really believes in us being together forever as eternal families. I've seen the change of heart that comes from the Atonement of Jesus Christ in many people. My investigators and recent converts and myself. The Gospel is true! .......Yeah! In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I love you all so very much!!

約瑟斯密 (Yuēsè Sīmì/Joseph Smith) is taking our English class

Hello!

Krista sent me photos of Sam's haircut.  It looks really good.... Those are free right? Kayleigh is so talented. State cosmetology competition? That's pretty cool. What does that entail?

I'll be hosting some new missionaries on Thursday for their first night on island. So I'll be taking around a new missionary for a little bit. That should be fun. I remember my first night on island.... It was pretty terrible. It's also very possible that I could be training in a couple weeks. Or Elder Hatch is training...So we're not really sure what's going to happen. 3 things:

1. He's training. 

2. I'm training. 

3.We're together another transfer.

Sorry to hear about Grandpa Burge. What the heck is going on?

As for this week we didn't really find any new investigators. Lots of close potentials, but they all fell through. So we see this 12 year old kid all the time. He has tattoos and he smokes and chews beetle nut. We found him watching porn with his little 7 year old brother in a 7/11 once. It was awkward, but we never had talked to him. Then one day we saw him outside a school and we talked to him. His English was alright and he was pretty cool. He set up a time for us to meet with him and stuff but it didn't work out.

I got your package this week. American candy is very different than candy here. Like a Snickers vs. a Snickers from Taiwan. Super different. The package was tasty. American cereal. That was good. The music is great though. It's better than MoTab.  Me and my companion were listening to Sons of Provo all week. We were laughing pretty hard.

Yeah, I also got a flat tire this week.

Some day's are better when we work. Some days we can't understand anything anyone is saying. Some days we feel fluent. Some days people want to talk to us. Some days people tell us to go eat poop.

There's this old guy at our English class. We call him 約瑟斯密 (Yuēsè Sīmì/ Joseph Smith). Basically, he just walks around our English class telling everybody in broken English that he's your grand dad. He also tells everyone that he's 約瑟斯密. So he'll be like, "HEY. I.......Am..... Yuēsè Sīmì!!" Then he'll laugh really hard. It's so funny. If you mention anything to him about Joseph Smith he just laughs. He's not a member. He thinks its hilarious.

On Sunday we had to teach our Gospel Principles class very last minute. Fortunately we had good class participation and didn't have to talk too much.

Oh yeah, while contacting through a park we found our investigator Lin sleeping on a bench. It was awkward. So we snagged some pictures of him and then felt too bad to wake him up, so we left him alone. That was pretty funny. He's a snorer.

I love you all so very much and I'm grateful for your package that you sent me. We love it all and we were so pumped! I'm happy healthy and well! Love you!

In hot water with the mission prez...fun at the cultural celebration

Hello!

First I would like to apologize for last week. We went to an amusement park and got home at like 7:00 PM so we had to rush through our emails and we forgot to write our mission president... So he called us this week and we had to explain what happened. It was pretty bad. We also had to do our weekly planning meeting with him.  That was pretty stressful, because he's our mission president and a General Authority.  The amusement park was pretty good though, it was totally ripping off Disneyland though. They had a ride called 太空山, which means Space Mountain. All excited, we got on the ride and it was a total let down. It was like a 6th grader was given the project to construct Space Mountain. It was dark inside the ride but you could still kind of see where you were going and there was like cardboard covering the outside light and stuff. It was fun to experience. Most of the rides were rip off's of Disneyland rides. They were fun but it was like a super ghetto theme park. I mean, it is 原住民 running the thing so of course it's a little ghetto.

Wow, things sound pretty crazy in the house right now. So how thick is the lawn? I haven't seen a nice patch of grass in a long time. We don't really have grass in Taiwan. It's all dirt and weird bugs. I totally forgot that Halloween was this month. Taiwan doesn't celebrate that, so I totally forgot about that.

What the heck is Mutual (a LDS singles app)? Before the mission, my companion used to get on anime sites and bully kids on there. He has some hilarious stories. Speaking of which, he has appreciated the emails. He was so happy to be getting emails! I've told him some stories about you guys. He thinks you guys are so awesome.

This week was pretty much the same. We just went about contacting for most of it. Then on Saturday, we had a cultural celebration. That was pretty fun. It was in this really nice area of TaiZhong, it had all these cool skyscrapers and we stopped by the Taichung Theater for a little tour. It was really cool because it had a garden on the roof so we walked around up there.  

Then we did a small parade to the theater where we watched the celebration. It was weird because there was some members from QingShui that were helping in the play, but they didn't see me or get a chance to talk to me. Then us missionaries got a small part in the play. We had to rush out on stage and help some earthquake victims. It was....eh... kind of dumb. But, the rest of the play was really good.

Then afterwards we stopped at an IKEA and ate some SUPER cheap ice cream. It was pretty much free. It was 10NT. So that was pretty fun... 

Other than that, that's basically my week. Right now we're teaching Lin. He's about 51 and he lives alone and stuff. He's pretty fun to talk to and he likes to joke around with us. He's doing pretty good, he's set up for tonight. So we'll be teaching him the Plan of Salvation.

We got Qing-ed (fed) some Sushi today by our Bishop. We're trying to convert this hermit guy that plays Skyrim all day in his parent's apartment.  He's 35.... I got to go. Love you!

Hard week, but unexpected trip to Sun Moon Lake was fun

Hello!

I don't have much time today!! I'm so sorry.

Today we went to an amusement park very last minute. We got a call from some other missionaries at 7:00 AM saying that a spot opened up for us to go with them to the famous Sun Moon Lake. It was really pretty and a lot of fun. It also had a whole thing about the aboriginal people that live in Taiwan. It was really fun, we had a group of Taiwanese/Japanese/Finnish people with us. It was fun to talk to all of them. I talked to a Japanese guy from Tokyo using Mandarin. It was weird to hear the accent difference.

This week was kind of hard. I was very discouraged this entire week and was kind of sad. It was hard for me to be happy about doing the work. We had zone conference but, it really didn't help. I'm okay now though. I'm back to normal so don't worry.

Glad to hear the package is sent and that our family is not dead/missing. I really love you guys and I'm sorry this email was crap.. It's freakin' 7:00 over here -- 7:00 PM.

I'll write more next week! I'm alive and well.

Love you!

Typhoon FAIL

Hello!

Mom's door looks really good!!

Sounds like you're both enjoying being empty nesters. That's got to be nice to just not have to worry about kids anymore and do whatever.

Happy to hear Kayleigh is doing well in tennis. So what is everyone up to?

Yeah this week we had a typhoon. So I had heard from a few people that there was going to be a Typhoon but usually people WAY over exaggerate these Typhoons and treat it like everything is going to get smashed. So me and my companion basically said "不用，谢谢!" So the next morning we woke up did some studies and were hearing all these weird noises outside. But it didn't really click for us. So then we're like, "alright let's go out and work." We get all the way downstairs and it's just raining really hard. So we're like whatever. Then we get on our bikes and start riding down our street. We didn't even have to peddle. We were flying down the street super fast. Then we turned down a street and got rekt. It was a straight up wind tunnel. We couldn't peddle our bikes our anything. It was honestly kind of scary. I was laughing so hard the entire time. We had all these Taiwanese people telling us to go home and stop trying, which made me laugh even more. It was really fun. Then we went home and spent the day cleaning and laying around. It was pretty nice. It was like 2 P-Day's in a row. At night the typhoon had passed so we went out and worked. No one was out and it was very unproductive. We just ran around looking at all the broken stuff. There was buildings that had their giant signs slammed into them and smashed cars from branches. It was pretty bad. But yeah, that's basically it for the typhoon. I enjoyed it.

Basically all we did this week was contact. Most of our investigators have dropped us and disappeared. So we hit the streets everyday for like 7-8 hours looking for people and getting rejected. All admit it's very discouraging sometimes. Most people won't even talk to us. So you'll ride up to someone and it'll go like this:

Me: "Hey hello."
Them: "......Hey."
Me: "Where are you going?"
Them:"......Home."
Me: "Awesome, do you live arou-"
Them:".....不用，谢谢."

That's pretty much how 90% of my contacts go. It's really hard. We've been struggling to find people but we've had some good times. We both get along pretty well and like to laugh a lot. Elder Hatch is pretty cool.

We also had stake conference this week. It was alright.  We don't get to see General Conference until the week after.  They have to dub it into Chinese first.

That's all I've really got for this week.

It's weird to think I've been out on my mission for 8 months. Tyson in Jakarata Indonesia only has 8 months left on his mission then he'll be home.. That's so crazy.

As for the package... American cereal would be good, candy in general would be good. I can probably buy the speakers here. Anything electronic is really cheap here. So don't worry about it. I'll get it figured out.

I love you all so very much!