Fog, rain, and root beer

Hey hello!

Yeah my birthday was pretty fun! We went to Pizza Rock. Scott Ji is a good guy.

We did a lot of contacting this week. We found an aboriginal kid about 19 years old to teach. We met with him and shared the first lesson during the contact. He seemed pretty interested, but he's recently fallen off the radar. It's been raining a ton this week, and it's really cold rain, too. So, it's been hard to contact people. You basically can't contact people in the rain here. They don't want anything to do with you when it rains, and they just tell you to go home. So, it's been a little bit tough to work hard.

For Thanksgiving, we went to the Ohms family's home. They invited us over for Thanksgiving. So I was lucky enough to have a normal American Thanksgiving. I had root beer for the first time in 10 months! It wasn't on Thanksgiving. It was just a different night. On the normal night of Thanksgiving we went to KFC hahaha. It was magical and regrettable.

Lately, we've been struggling to find people to teach, and investigators have dropped us a lot. It's been hard to stay positive and most people are not willing to meet with us after the 1st lesson.

It's getting cold, so there is a lot of fog because of the humidity. Our apartment, like all the apartments here have no heat. Fortunately, I have a nice black sweater I wear over my white shirt. Not only do I look good, but I'm also very warm. I have to wear a jacket to bed sometimes, because it's so cold. We have tricks like wearing socks on our hands. I wear my hoodie to bed most nights. Blankets are kind of expensive for us, and I don't need an extra one. I have a blanket and a sheet. I'm good hahaha...don't worry. Guo Nian, Chinese New Year is coming up, so the cold is only going to get worse...probably right around the time I become senior companion for the first time.

We don't really have plans for p-day, we're just going to get some hot pot with an investigator and then that's it... Should be fun..

I'm doing really well! I'm happy and working hard! I love you all so very much! It sounds like Thanksgiving was really fun.

Pizza and bowling for my birthday

生日快樂!! Thank you!

Foremost, I would like to thank Grandma and Grandpa Burge for the card and letter they sent me! I'm very thankful.

Yeah, I'm 20 now. Woo. So my birthday was yesterday. So for my birthday, I woke up and ate some rotten eggs for breakfast. Then I went to church. Then I came home and ate some ramen. Then I went tracting for the rest of the night. You could say it was beyond magical. Hahaha. Yeah it was alright though. Just another day. Today I'm celebrating with Scott. He's driving from my old area to meet me at a pizza place called Pizza Rock. Then afterwards we're going bowling. Should be pretty fun!

That mouse story is so sad. You should've just eaten him! What are you doing?! That's such a waste of food.

We found a ton of investigators this week actually! Our area is really growing. We're finding all these really cool people. We're pretty sure Brother Lin went to jail. We haven't been able to get a hold of him lately and his phone is turned off. So we can only assume. We're teaching a lot of young college guys and stuff so it's going really well. Many of them are really promising. So we're doing really good!

This week we've been having a lot of fun making calls in Starbucks. We like to get hot chocolate and make calls. The hot chocolate at Starbucks is pretty good. The reason why we make calls there is because 1. It's quiet. 2. Hot chocolate is good. 3.Christmas music

This week I also had the cool opportunity to meet a Taiwanese Special Forces guy.  He's super cool. I heard from the other elders that he was part of a group of aboriginals that have their own special forces group kind of like the Navy SEALS. What he used to do, is swim for a small island near China and then sneak into military bases and kill Chinese soldiers. He would bring back the heads of the soldiers because that's an aboriginal tradition. But then he started killing so many that he could only swim back with just the ears. He's super ripped.

For Thanksgiving the American family might be inviting us for a meal which is super nice. They're very nice to us!

I love you all so very much! Thank you for the birthday wishes! I got some birthday pictures from the QingShui Branch!

We have some really cool investigators now

Hello!

This week was super good! I love my companion. We we've been working hard and found some new investigators this week. It was weird.  All we had to do was go through our former investigators. There was a ton of nice people we met. Some were very interesting... like one of our investigators is Ex-Chinese-Mafia.... So that's pretty interesting.  Now he's in the military. He's really nice though and we taught him a little.

We went to Costco on Monday last week. It was pretty American.  That same day we got a call from our zone leader's saying that a miracle just happened. So I asked, "What?" They told me that a man had walked into the church and said he met with BeiTun missionaries before and had lessons but lost communication with them. Now he want's to be baptized with his girlfriend. Like this week. So they were freaking out and telling us that this was the biggest miracle of our mission and stuff like that. Then they handed me the phone and I tried to set up a time to meet with him. While I was in the mists of setting up a time, the zone leaders took the phone away and started telling me that this a big miracle, so I never got to set up a time with him. Then they said that he had to go. He said the he was going to call us...... so the zone leaders gave him our number..................He never called us..............We freaking hate the zone leaders sometimes.

Oh goodness... Taiwan blew up when Donald Trump became president... Crap when down big time here. Everyone was like self-contacting us and talking to us about it. I got accused of running away from America....Which didn't make sense because the flight here is like 16 hours... It was so funny. Everyone here is obsessed with American politics and news. So of course, everyone here was freaking out and telling us that America is going to be destroyed. We couldn't even contact people...

We're meeting with a lot of military people now. I'm not sure why, lots of army guys and stuff. I don't know, we have some really cool investigators now. I prefer that over the streets so...

Yeah, my Chinese is still super bad. It's been so long since I've taught lessons, so I have to relearn my vocabulary for the lessons. I definitely want to study Chinese in college, except I read traditional and not simplified characters which is what they use on the mainland and in college, so I'm kind of discouraged.

Other than that, that was my week. It was just kind of the same thing...We're going to get some American pizza today from a guy that moved from Chicago to Taiwan. So Chicago pizza in Taiwan!

As for the birthday package... I don't know... Surprise me! Haha!

I love you all so very much! I'm sorry this email was not that good! I love you!

Elder Wilkinson is awesome and Canadian

大家好!

This week was pretty good. This week was my first official full week working with Elder Wilkinson. He's awesome and Canadian. Yeah, he was born in Canada. He's super funny and we get along pretty well. We also work really hard. We love talking about funny stuff and we're constantly laughing. It's funny because I can actually hear the Canadian in his English. "Owh yeah, that's what I'm talking aboat." But yeah, things are going really well here. We are learning to love our area and we've been exploring it a little more. We found a good fried rice place and it was awesome.

As for teaching investigators this week. Our investigator Lin 林 who had a baptismal goal, is going to jail this Christmas. Yeah, he told us that he can't get baptized because he'll be in jail. He's a very weird guy. Oh well, he said he was willing to continue to search for an answer and pray while he does his time in Taiwanese jail. He'll be in for 2-3 years he said. So that's fun... Then a couple days ago we came across an nice 50 year old man from mainland China. He's visiting Taiwan for a little. He had a really bad mainland Chinese accent and it was super hard for me to understand him sometimes. He was willing to come get a tour of the church and we taught him a little. Then we invited him to go to church and he never showed up and we don't have his phone number or address... So I guess he's gone?

This week we also scrubbed our apartment clean. We got obsessed with cleaning this week. It was super weird. We cleaned so much. The apartment looks fantastic now though.

This week we also helped the Ohm's family move into their new apartment. (They're the American/Taiwanese family.) It was really fun, but you could totally tell that they were very stressed so it was a little awkward for us. Then they made us Mexican food and it was SO good. They usually make Mexican food for us. It was really fun to hear about how they live their lives in Taiwan. Their new house was very nice. I would not mind living in a house like that if I had/or ever wanted to live in Taiwan. They have an elevator in their house and each floor is a different child's room. It's pretty cool.

Other than that, that was pretty much our week. We have a lot of potential investigators set up. I'm starting to feel bad about my Chinese.... again. I still feel like I don't know anything, because I forget stuff and I'm really bad at speaking... I can listen pretty well most of the time but I can't speak very well. Elder Wilkinson is really good at speaking it. Yeah, Chinese is freaking hard. I still do the language study program but now it's not gospel focused. It's just everyday whatever words. So it's hard to apply it.

I'm doing well though! I love you all so very much!