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!

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!