Trip to Ninja Village

Wow, that's pretty fun that Kayleigh is going to go to college with me. Now we can suffer together. Yay.

This week was pretty much a normal week. For P-Day we took a train to Taizhong and went to the mall. It was pretty fun.. I just love being in Taizhong now. It's very nostalgic for me. All I think about is the good times I had with Elder Hatch. We went to a mall in Xitun and it was really fun. We looked at some crazy expensive stuff and then we.....looked at some more stuff... We also ate some noodles to celebrate Elder Sano's birthday. Me and him were just talking about military stuff (of course) the entire time. He makes me military trunky.

Everything was normal I guess up until Wednesday. We got to the church early for DTM and the Sisters from a different area were there, too. They ended up hiding our stuff, but we didn't really care when we walked in.. Oh yeah, and for the record, these sisters hate me and my companion, like literally hate us, especially my companion..So, they hid our stuff and we started DTM, but I didn't care. So then about halfway through my companion says, in the middle of DTM, "Hey Sister (Blank) Where is my companion's stuff?" Then she said, "I don't know.  Is it right there?" And then she pointed to a bookshelf in the room, and all of our stuff was in the bookshelf. To be honest, my companion just started wrecking her and telling her that she's being stupid. Everyone in the district was just kind of looking at them like..."what are you doing?" It was pretty funny actually... Then my district leader was asking me all these questions, and he was pretty mad that they were being like this... They just really have an issue with me and my companion, and I have no idea what we have done......... 太帥

We've been tracting a lot this week, and we actually had a decent amount of success. It was really good, and I think we'll be doing a lot more tracting. We also learned that we hate small dogs. Small dogs are the worst and are so annoying and loud. We have a lesson tonight that we hope will go through with a family.

Then we came across the guy from Europe that we ran into a little while ago. He was having a hard time with his wife.. She cheated on him and stuff. He filled us in on a lot of stuff, and then said he was going to get revenge on the guy by sending some papers to a company and getting him fired and all of this stuff. Then me and comp upon hearing this jumped into missionary mode, and were like, "(Name) I don't think this is a good idea... You should just forgive him." We went off about Jesus Christ and forgiveness, but he wasn't having it, so off he went.

Our investigators are doing alright. We were able to set a goal with one of them for 11/18, but he's pretty....eh.. about it. We don't know if he's willing to get baptized yet.

On the bright side, Brother Chen (my RC) is doing really good. He passed the sacrament yesterday and he did a great job. He's on his way to ascending to apostle.

Yesterday night we also ate with the other elders on the roof of our apartment. That was pretty fun but they all were just trying to get me trunky. They were asking me questions like, "What's the first thing you are going to do when you get home?" .........It worked. I progressively just get trunkier and trunkier.

As for funny stories this week, we decided to go to a small village in the mountains for some contacting. So, we had to ride our bikes up an old Chinese mountain. So, we get up there and feel pretty tired, and there's a decent amount of people walking around and stuff. Then we spot this guy chilling outside a shop.  He's like 900 years old and we're like, why not.. So, we bike up to him and he tells us that he's Catholic and he's busy. So, we continue to talk to him and he kind of figures out that we're missionaries, and he starts giving us the usual talk. Then he randomly goes,

Him:"How old do I look?"

Me:"Uh, probably like 25 right?"

Him:"NO! I'm 67."

Then like every other missionary, I reached for his muscles and said, "Oh wow, you're a strong guy." And then he began to tell me his workouts. So I listened....intently. Then he starts doing push ups in front of me and telling me that he can lift me up. So, of course like every good elder should do, I told him, "Alright, lift me up." So he does. He wraps his hands around me... no not horizontal, but vertically if that makes sense... (yes I was in pain.) and then he lifted me up while my companion took millions of pictures. Then he's all excited, so he starts saying how he's traveled the world and has participated in many martial arts torments. So what does he do? He starts beating me up. He starts telling me to go to punch him, so I do, and then he slaps my arms away and then slaps my face. The man just kept slapping my face. I literally got beat up by this 900 year old guy. Then to top everything off, we are like okay, I'm pretty dizzy so we're going to go. Then he goes, "Watch this!" He rips off his belt and then starts swinging it around, so I back up up and I'm like, "Alright this man is out of control." So I'm like, "Alright! Alright! We have to go." So I patted him on the back, shook his hand, and off we went. We started biking down this road.  It was pretty dark by now, and then this other guy starts honking at us from behind (which is normal in Taiwan.), and he just leans on his horn, so we pull over and he begins to tell my companion that he's a ninja, and that he's been training for many years. We just said, "Oh okay.. Okay.....Alright." Then we biked away laughing. We nicknamed that village, "Ninja Village." We don't want to go back.

That's about it. I'm glad you all are still alive for now. I love you all and miss you very much!

XiZhou Adventure

Hello!

I don't know where to begin for this week....

To be honest, on Monday P-day was very boring. For the most part we just sat around and watched pretty much every Mormon message that was every created, but today should be pretty fun. Today we are going to Taizhong to go celebrate one of the other Elder's birthdays. Happy Birthday Elder Sano. It should be pretty fun and nostalgic. It's always weird for me to go back to Taizhong and to be there.. I served there for such a long time so it all just feels like I'm back in the middle of my mission with Elder Hatch.

This week it was really hard for us to find people to teach. Everyone that set up with us re-scheduled like 50 times and then some of them never set up again. But, we were able to have lots of time on the streets contacting... I don't know what it is, it's probably my increasing trunkiness, but it's been harder and harder for me to have motivation and get fired up to ride up to people on my bike and contact.

There were many fun parts of the week though. This Thursday, I was able to go on exchanges with Elder Sano from Farmington, Utah. It was super fun! I loved being on exchanges with him. Mostly, because we have very very similar interests. For example, we both love the military. So of course on exchanges we were just riding around contacting people and literally in between contacting we would just be talking about military stuff. We're both huge military geeks. He's a Navy man. Actually, in the mornings I think I've already mentioned this we run every morning. It's really fun and I love it. But yeah we talked about everything from Top Gun to Braveheart. Hahaha! Super fun. So now when we eat dinner together we just talk about military stuff. I think the other Elder's are probably sick of it.

After exchanges I was pretty tired. Mostly because I stayed up for most of the night talking about military stuff with Elder Sano. Then Friday was pretty usual...

Saturday on the other hand was not normal. We were scheduled to go out and find some less-active brothers and stuff. But! We were in an area called 溪洲 XiZhou. XiZhou is a really really really country place. There's nothing out there and it's pretty far away from our main area. It's literally the bottom of our area. So it's kind of a long ways a way. But this member told us that he would be willing to come get us from the chapel and drive us all the way down there. So Saturday we're waiting for him outside the chapel. All of the sudden this crappy van pulls up. Like the most 3rd world van. And he gets out, he's about 55 years old and he's like alright Elders hop in the back. He slides open the van door and in the back of the car is just tools and construction materials and then two little plastic stools for us to sit on. Then he told us to climb in. It was a tight little fit and we were hunched over. But it was so funny. Then he told us, "Sorry, you're going to have to be a little 辛苦 (tough, hard, that sucks)." So we start going and it's a stick shift van so we're flying around back there and he's honking his horn at every little thing and me and Elder Brenchley are just laughing our heads off. We drive for 45 minutes and then he stops and says, "We need to eat lunch." So we walk into this place and it's like a Chuck-a-Rama times 1000. So we ate for like 2 hours and then drove the rest of the way to XiZhou. Then we started visiting members and it was just all rice fields. There is nothing out there. We went to a couple houses and no one was there. Then this one time we pulled up to a family complex. Which is like a small court yard and then there's houses around it. We pull up and the member driving us wants to park so we start backing up. All of the sudden we hear a loud metal sound and then a bunch of Taiwanese being shouted at us we look back and our member has run someones motorcycle over. Then he was like, "Pai-Sai! Pai-Sai!" (Taiwanese for I'm sorry! I'm Sorry!) Then we just kind of.....drove off and we are all just dying laughing in the car. None of the people we visted were home so that kind of sucks. But it was really fun and he ended up buying a ton of food for us...

So yeah that was my fun week. It was really fun to see a different part of the area and stay up for all night talking about military stuff.

I love you all and I will sent pictures when I get them!

The work here in YuanLin has kind of slowed down a little bit

Hello, hello!

Sorry to hear you're all sick... again.. It seems like you guys get sick almost every week hahaha... Wow, a couple more week and I'll be getting sick with you.

On Monday, Scott came down with Elder Fuller and we went for a hike. Afterwards we went and ate hot pot at Shabu Shabu. We eat at Shabu Shabu almost every P-Day. It's so good, but it's killing us. We had a great time with Scott. We are able to go for a little hike and talk and catch up. Elder Fuller was there, too, and it was a good time of course.. He only openly peed in public once this time. haha

The work here in YuanLin has kind of slowed down a little bit and I don't really have a whole lot to write about his week. Most of our investigators are getting pretty flaky, which includes Mr. Liu. Lately, Mr. Liu has met with us, and we had our bishop help us teach. During the lesson, it seemed like everything went really well, and we helped him resolve some concerns about tithing and attending church. He told us he would change his breakfast shop's hours, so that he could come and attend church on Sunday. He was super willing and said he would do everything he could to get to church. After the lesson, we told him we would call him often and follow up with him. He was happy and smiley, and then he left and was on his way home... Then, this entire rest of the week he has not answered his phone, and we haven't been able to get into contact with him... He's such a strange investigator that I cannot figure out. I'm really worried that he feels like he can't do it, so he doesn't know how to tell us no, so his way of telling us no is not answering his phone.

This week since we've been having trouble finding investigators,we decided to go to one of our secondary areas. So we decided to go a different way, which is to take the train and then take our bikes on the train to our secondary area. Well, everything was okay, and we boarded the train with our bikes, and we waited to leave the train station in YuanLin.. Then we waited......and waited......and waited..... and waited.... And then 30 minutes had gone by, and it would have been faster to ride our bikes to the secondary area... So, we took the 10 minute train ride, and by the time we got there we basically had to go home. So, we just made the really long bike ride home, since we didn't want to risk sitting on the train for no reason for 30 minutes again. On the way home, we got some delicious tea, and then we were pretty tired when we got back...

Lately on the streets people have not been too friendly....

But, we came across a white man one night walking on the streets. Normally when I see white people in Taiwan I do not talk to them. Mostly because they are either really weird or really terrible to talk to, and ask you how many wives you have. But, my companion wanted to talk to him, so we did. He was actually from Canada, and he was a really nice guy - fun to talk to. But, he told us that his wife had recently cheated on him, and he was just complaining that he was super skinny, and told us he eats one meal a day, because of the ulcers in his stomach. We talked with him about a bunch of stuff and then told him about how much God loves him. I didn't really say a whole lot to him. It was mostly my companion. Then, we invited him to hear the message, and he told us that he has come across missionaries in Taiwan, but hasn't really had time. Then he told us that he would be willing to meet with us, and he would give us a call. He never did.. Oh well.

The ward has asked us to dedicate two hours every day trying to visit every single member in the ward.  I guess we'll see if that helps.

That's about it for the week.

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

This week was Mid-Autumn Festival

Hello!

This week started out with the usual ChiDaoBao of course. So, we didn't really know what to do last P-Day.  Stumped, we all sat around with the other elders and then we just shrugged our shoulders and off we went to a ChiDaoBao. Hahaha  It was pretty good. I was talking with the new elder in the district and he wants to join the Navy, so we just talked about military stuff the whole time. It was really fun and got me excited to join the military. I love military stuff. This week for P-Day we are going on a hike with Scott and Elder Fuller. They're going to drive all the way down to YuanLin in about an hour. Then we're going to go for a hike. The whole weird thing about this is last night I got a call from Scott and he told me that Elder Fuller was in the ER. Apparently, he had eaten some bad Mexican food and he got really sick.. Like REALLY sick. He told me yesterday he had diarrhea 14 times. He said that his body is drained, but, I still think he might show up to the hike. He was enthusiastic about hiking with me and said he would try his best to make it. So we will see....

Tuesday was pretty weird because this week was Mid-Autumn Festival. There's tons of parties and parades and stuff, so there's not a whole lot of proselyting to do... It's hard to find people that would even be willing to say hi to you, that is if you can yell it loud enough over the never ending drums and Justin Bieber music. But, it was pretty fun, because our bishop took us to hot pot and that was good... We eat so much here...

Wednesday was great.  We got invited over to one of our secondary areas to go eat barbecue with some members. The barbecue was delicious, but the bike ride over there, on the other hand, was not fun. It took forever and I always forget how long it takes to get out there, but it was pretty fun. Then we looked at our watches and realized that English class was starting in 30 minutes, so we jumped up and got on our bikes and started biking super fast on the way to start our English class. It was a very fast pace and I felt bad because in the mists of the darkness I looked back to see a small little bike light waaaaay behind which was my trainee Elder Brenchley. We made it back 5 minutes late. We walked in covered in sweat and our faces were red, but English class was pretty good.

Then we were able to meet with our leading investigator right now, Mr. Liu. He's great.  He owns a breakfast shop in our secondary area and we went one time and it was... alright! He's a really nice guy and we've been meeting with him for quite some time.  His biggest problem is that he can't come to church because he needs to manage his shop, so we're trying to work it out. So is he. He has a strong desire to be baptized, but he has some things that are in the way like his extremely "Buddhist" wife. Another thing that's hard is he's sometimes really strange in lessons. He'll ignore our questions and then just pull the Book of Mormon in front of his face and pretend to be reading it.... It's the strangest thing, but he's really cool though.

Then we had zone conference and were able to eat some Mexican food (No I didn't get sick.). It was really good, but I forgot my scriptures, specifically I forgot my Bible. So, the entire zone conference was based out of the Bible, and the scriptures were all Bible scriptures.. So I got wrecked. So, I kind of was like, "whatever" about it, but the next night I got a call from President Teh telling me that he was worried about me and how he felt impressed to call me, because he felt like something was off. I told him that I was okay. Then he questioned why I didn't have my scriptures out and I just basically told him, "because I'm an idiot and forgot my Bible." It was a very strange call and very random... For the record, I'm doing great.

Last night we were invited to a member's house in a even further area than Wednesday, an Area I had never been to. We got a ride there and we had a delicious dinner. I was eating so much HongDou, which is red bean. It's so freaking good. We dedicated this sister's house and then we came back.. It was really fun and really good.

Brother Chen got baptized by our Tai Chi Master!!!!

Wow!

I'm really excited to watch General Conference this week. I love General Conference, I don't have to be out in the sun getting sunburned. I can stay inside, listen to English, and eat junk food with the other elders. That should be really fun, but the way our ward scheduled it up, we are watching general conference from 2:00-6:00 PM, 7:00-9:00 PM, and then 8:30-12:30 PM .... I don't know why that is the schedule, but it seems like we're not really going to have a break for anything, which I don't think a ton of people are happy about. There was much complaining in church, but nonetheless I'm excited to watch General Conference.

On Monday, we spent the day moving elders around. When we were at the train station saying goodbye to Elder Rust, he had gone through the ticket gate, and was getting ready to get on a train. We watched from the lobby as he was waiting for the elevator. We waved to him, and then he did something. He blew a kiss to us, but there was a girl working the ticket station standing between us and Elder Rust, so it looked like he blew the kiss to her. She started to freak out and look around. Then she looked back right as Elder Brenchley pretended to catch the kiss in his hand, and put it to his heart. We all made eye contact with her, and then we all just started laughing so hard. She was really confused and really creeped out. Then, Elder Rust boarded the elevator, and away he was. What a great last memory of Elder Rust. We had Elder Chang, his companion with us for a couple of days while we waited to go get his trainee on Thursday.

From there on out the week was just kind of normal. We were a little bit bummed out that we wouldn't be able to baptize Brother Chen that week. He told us that he forgot and all he remembers is setting up Tuesday. We met with him a told him that because he wasn't able to have his interview last week, we weren't really sure if he could get baptized this week, and that we might have to change it. A little disappointed,  we had Elder Chang give him a baptismal interview that night and we told him we would let him know when we could baptize him.

We got new sisters in our district.  They're white wash training, too, so everyone in our district is pretty much training.

On Thursday, we were able to go up to Taizhong for a little bit to drop off Elder Chang. When I got up there it was pretty nostalgic. I remembered all the good times I had with Elder Hatch and my other companions. I was remembering all the fun times and all the fun things we did. To be honest, it kind of made me a little sad, because I knew that in not too long I'll be on a plane home and all of those fun things will just kind of be good memories. But, upon walking into my old chapel I came across Elder Miller my former companion. Turns out, he's white wash training in Gaoxiong. I was really happy to see him. Then me and Elder Brenchley boarded the next train back to YuanLin. When we got back a couple hours later, we had Brother Zhang come to visit us. He got back from America a couple weeks ago and brought back some American candy for me, so I was able to have a nice visit with him and catch up a little bit and talk about good old Daliao. Then, I was able to enjoy delicious American candy. I'm really grateful for Brother Zhang!

Then, we called our zone leaders and asked if Brother Chen could get baptized on Saturday. They told us that would be fine, so after arranging some stuff, we set up the baptismal time. It wasn't announced in church, so we were kind of worried that there wasn't going to be a ton of people there, so we had the baptism scheduled for 7:00 PM. Everything was working out and he showed up at 6:30, got dressed, and we practiced and waited.  Then, 7:00 comes around and no one is there, so I start thinking okay, well I guess I run the show then. Then people started showing up, so we waited a little longer and sung 40 hymns.  Then by 7:30 the whole room was packed with people. Then everything was normal, Tai Chi Master (Brother Jang) baptized him and it was great. Brother Chen gave a really powerful testimony where he talked about the love he felt from Tai Chi Master and us (the missionaries.) He talked about how he wondered what kind of church would have this type of people in it and wanted to know more about it. Then he said everything we taught just kind of made sense. He was literally one of the easiest baptisms I have ever had.

The following Sunday, he was confirmed ordained a priest.  Shortly after ordained another priest, and then left with a ton of church textbooks to go study up. I think he's going to be made a Gospel Principals teacher or something. He's so freaking smart about the Bible and stuff.

Then that leads me today. Today we're just hanging out in YuanLin. I think we're going to go eat tons of mango ice. Yeah, pretty much it was a good week!

I'm glad mom is feeling better and everyone is doing pretty good for the most part.

I love you all.