Elder Brenchley is not so sure about the hot pot and 1,000 year old eggs, but he loves the all you can eat ice cream

Hello!

This week was pretty good. We're in the Yuanlin 1st Ward which covers the north end of the city and secondary areas of Dacun Township, Puxin Township, and Yongjing Township.  The ward members are really nice and supportive. We also got our bikes. We spent most of the week finding and looking for more people to teach. Unfortunately, we didn't really find anybody. The investigators the sisters gave us at the beginning of the transfer when we whitewashed in are still not answering their phones and not really meeting with us. It's been pretty hard for my trainee. He got pretty frustrated and upset this week due to the lack of investigators and lessons, but as for me... I'm just kind of used to it... Hahaha! Oh well. We're still trying to find those people. On the other hand, we got some part member families that we're going to visit this week. We're hoping that we can find our next baptism there. I have high hopes for that. 

It seems the pattern with all of our lessons and set ups is that we can find people and set them up to meet with us but then they "放" us. Which means to stand us up. I'm used to it, but I just mostly feel bad for trainee who just really wants to teach people and watch them progress. 

Another thing that seems to be happening is that we have these secondary areas that are apparently really golden and that's where we could find people (apparently.) But, every time we make plans to go to these area we get a call from a member that wants to feed us food or something. It's not the worst thing that could happen obviously, but it's still super hard to get to the secondary areas. They are super big and far away, too. 

This week we had a lot of members feed us. So they took us out to 火鍋 hot pot and it was really good. I love hot pot火鍋 so much. My companion was very new to the idea of 火鍋, but it was really fun. I almost ordered the spiciest 火鍋 hot pot, but I decided not to at the last second. I think it was a good idea, because the member that went with us ordered that and he was almost in tears from how hot it was. He kept asking me if I wanted to try some but I rejected. Then out of nowhere I see my companion start scooping ice cream, because at 火鍋 hot pot they have all you can eat ice cream. My companion upon discovering the all you can eat ice cream immediately went into a frenzy and just had scoop after scoop of ice cream --literally so much ice cream. The members started to get concerned that he was eating so much ice cream. I watched in horror as he ate pretty much a whole gallon of ice cream. Unfazed, we finished up and went to the church. I'm not sure what it is about Elder Brenchley, but man he can eat. He ate and entire loaf of bread one night. He tells me he's always hungry. When I got to Taiwan I wasn't hungry at all. I was too nervous.

On Monday, after I emailed you, we went to a fried rice place and were eating fried rice with the other elders. Then we saw they had the 1,000 year old egg. So we ordered it for my trainee. He was immediately horrified at the sight of the 1,000 year old egg and I had flashbacks of when I ate that in my first area when I was being trained. He obviously gagged a ton when he ate it. He hated the whole thing, but we were all in tears laughing. I have some pictures.

I honestly don't have much to write about this week.  Next week we should be able to start finding people hopefully.

Today we're going to a very expensive buffet called 石頭 it should be pretty yummy and they have all you can eat ice cream.

I love you all so very much!

As for pictures actually.. I'm still missing my cable to hook it into the computer, so I don't know what to do about that.... 

I might just have to have my companion send me pictures.

The Bo Zhang Laos

Me and my new companion have the same name in Chinese

Hello!

I am pleased to announce that I'm still alive. Sort of. I have a new trainee. My son, Elder Brenchley! He's from Logan UT. To introduce him, he was Mr. Basketball and he is pretty famous in UT for being just an overall good basketball player. He also played tennis. He's really awesome though and he's pretty fun and relaxed, which to be honest is a good blessing. The week started off with me and Elder Farnsworth in FengShan 鳳山 We had a really good time and became good friends over the couple of days we were together. We would stay up really late just talking about mission life and our trainees. He's super funny so we laughed a lot. I'll definitely be in contact with him after the mission. We talked a lot about how nervous we both were to train. He is training too. During those couple of days we taught a couple of lessons and did lots of finding on little to no sleep, but it was super fun and I laughed so much. Then the power went out all across Taiwan, so we had to do all of our contacting in the dark. There was no street lights or traffic lights or anything. It was pretty fun. Then on Thursday morning we made our way to Taizhong. It was super weird being back in Taizhong --being back really close to one of my former areas and being in the same chapel I used for Church for 6 months. I was kind of..... shocked to be back. I was thinking about all the good times I had with Elder Hatch in Beitun. Then we sat through a really boring meeting in which our mission president told us all about how to be a good trainer. Then the trainee's came in and we took one and sat with them. I sat with an elder that was literally doing language study while we were walking back to our seats and he continued to flip through a stack of cards that he made himself. I just stared at him like... "What are you doing? Stop." Then he proceeded to speak in his MTC Mandarin to me.... which was not good and hard to understand. He didn't speak one word of English. So the whole time I was just hoping that wasn't my trainee. Then we sat anxiously while they called up each trainee and gave them their new area and companion. I had to wait quite awhile before I was called up. Then I met him. I saw him. He looks like Hercules. Elder Brenchley called my name and Yuan Lin 員林 I stood up and gave him a hug and we sat down. He was a lot cooler than the first guy I sat next to-- that's for sure.

Then later that day we took a sketchy taxi all the way from Taizhong 台中 to YuanLin 員林. I talked to the taxi driver the whole time in Chinese. I glanced over a couple times to see a look of shock and horror on my companion's face.  I felt bad about that, but eventually we ended up at our "new" apartment in 員林. I was surprised that it was a decent city, not super decent, just a little. It's got really really really narrow streets that are just packed with people. We walked into our apartment which was just straight up wrecked. I found myself wondering if someone had literally broken into the apartment and wrecked it before we got there. It was a very scary place with lots of webs and spiders. I did a quick look through the apartment and tried to find an area book, which I couldn't find, so I gave up. We did a quick companionship study and then we were on our way to go find some food.....somewhere. We walked literally in a random direction. Then took some turns. We contacted along the way and ran across two pretty alright guys, but not much interest. Then we somehow found our way to down this road with lots of food and found a 八方. Which is something all missionaries are familiar with. We ate some dinner and then continued to wander around. When all of the sudden our sisters in our area call us. They ask us where we are and I explained in Chinese where we were. They found us and then led us to the church. Where we talked with a couple of members and then we walked all the way back to our Apartment which we somehow found.

The next day we woke up and a had a zone conference for some reason. I had to translate half of it into Chinese. The translation was not that great... I did not do a good job. I looked over at the sister I was translating for and she looked very confused and bored half to death.... Oh well. I tried. Then we made our way home and then we got some spare bikes from the sisters, which was nice! So we did some riding around the area only to figure out later on that we weren't even in our area.. We were in the other elders' area. So after looking at some maps and lots of confusion, I finally figured it out..... Yesterday.

We've been having some trouble finding people. We're doing all that we can. Fortunately the sisters gave us some investigators to work with so we have something to do. Our area is super big and has a lot of secondary areas. So we have to travel great distances to get to anywhere good.

Oh yeah, both me and my trainee have the same last name in Chinese. He is also Bo Zhang Lao, but the character is different. 伯 is mine.  His is 博, but are pronounced exactly the same, so we both turn our heads when someone says "Hey, Bo Zhang Lao!" It's kind of awkward, so it was announced in sacrament meeting that I will be known as 大伯 and he will be known as 小博. Which means Big Bo and Small Bo.  I'm Big Bo because I'm the senior companion, but he it way taller than me. haha.

This week as been really crazy. Today we're doing a mass cleanup of our apartment. Which is much needed....

I also have to figure out how to get my bike shipped from Daliao to here.

I hope next week goes well. It's been really hard. This is honestly the hardest thing I've done on my mission. It's very stressful, but I'm relatively happy still!

Glad to hear Scott was able to visit you!

I love you all so very much!

I'll be white wash training in YuanLin...its bittersweet leaving Daliao

Hello!

Yes, I got the news that I'll be white wash training in YuanLin 員林 (YuanLin 1st Ward). I'm pretty excited that I'll finally be able to train a missionary. Although the white wash part I'm a little nervous about to be honest. I think it's going to be a little rough not knowing where to go or pretty much anything about the area. But, I got some tips from Elder Hansen who has white washed twice on his mission. I think it'll be quite the adventure though. On top of that, It's very possible that I could be training Elder Layton who went home A REALLY long time ago. He comes back to Taiwan in a couple of months. But, I don't know if he needs to be retrained or how that's all going to work. But I hope to see him at the Mission Office.

As for now, this afternoon I will move all of my stuff to the neighboring area which is FengShan 鳳山 and I'll be staying with a missionary that will be training too. And then I'll take all of my stuff on Thursday morning and throw it on a train. I'll go up to the Mission Office and grab my trainee. Then throw all of our stuff on a train and make our way down to YuanLin 員林. So that should be interesting....

As for my week. We honestly had a ton of people cancel on us and overall are just not that great at meeting with us. On Wednesday we had a good time though. During English class we had two girls walk in and they just start talking with Elder Hansen in perfect English. They start telling him that one of the girls lived in Utah for a little bit and was with a Mormon family. She really liked the family a lot and became fascinated with their lives and their religion. She told us that she had a ton of interest in learning more. The reason why she didn't investigate in Utah is because she felt pressured and felt that if she sincerely wanted to investigate everyone would be freaking out and trying to get her dunked super quick. We met with them a couple days later and they were super awesome! The lesson went over by a lot......

It was a really bittersweet week knowing that I was leaving Daliao. I'm honestly kind of bummed out to be leaving such a fun area with such great members. Yesterday, Sunday, we went and ate dinner at Mr. Gorgeous' house. It was so fun.  But the whole time I was thinking, oh man... I'm going to be leaving these guys behind. I was really sad to say some of the goodbyes at church. But, I have plans of coming back to visit.

I'm really excited to hear that Scott will be visiting you really soon. He gave me a call and told me all about it last night. That's going to be so cool. I'm glad to hear that you'll be learning how to make real fried rice and hot pot. We actually ate hot pot with the YuanShan 圓山 Elders that was super good. I just love hot pot but it gives me the strangest dreams. One time I ate hot pot in Beitun 北屯 and I had a dream our Zone Leader was chasing me around naked trying to...... assault me.

I had a really good week and I love you all so very much!

Last Monday we went to the Air Force Museum it was really fun and pretty cool. It reminded me of going to Hill Air Force Base with Dad.

I actually lost my camera cord a couple of days ago and I bought a new cord so I can charge it.. But for some reason I can't get the photos off the camera or it won't even register into the computer... But fortunately people can send me photos and stuff.​​​​​​​​​​

This guy invited us in to drink some beer, so naturally like all missionaries, we went right in.

Hello!

Well for starters, I'm not sure if I ever told Dad Happy Father's Day... In Taiwan it's almost Father's Day.  August 8th (8/8) is Father's Day in Taiwan.  The Chinese word for 8 is Ba, so 8/8 is Ba/Ba which means Dad, so 8/8 is literally Baba's (Father's) Day in Taiwan. So happy father's day Dad!!!!

This week was honestly not that eventful for me. On Monday we went to the mall. It was pretty eh... We couldn't really go anywhere, because it was classified as as typhoon day still. So, that means that everyone was off of work and school, but that also means everything is closed. So, it wasn't the funnest P-Day I've ever had... but it was fun to hang out with Brother Zhang in a mall. Today we are going to an Air Force museum, so that should be pretty fun. I'll be sure to take some Top Gun photos for you - Taiwanese-style Top Gun.

Pretty much the rest of the week was all just finding. Which isn't that bad to be honest. We've been having trouble finding people, but that's pretty normal I've decided. To be honest it sounds like the whole mission is on a little bit of a slow down. I've been talking with some elders and they all say the same thing, but that's okay. I'm sure things will pick up.... maybe.

It's looking like this might be the last week for me in Daliao. Which is really sad. I really like the members here and it's a great area. I don't know, there's something really cool about the Daliao Ward that I haven't been able to figure out. All I know is that they're a wonderful ward and I'm grateful for their kindness towards the missionaries.

This week we went tracting. It was really fun. I actually enjoy tracting. We tracted into this guy who answered the door and immediately invited us in to drink some beer. So naturally like all missionaries, we went right in. We sat down and then declined beer 4 times, but then we talked with these two guys for like 45 minutes about the difference between Christian churches and stuff. It was really fun. Every time I talked though, one of the guys was just freaking out. He had a huge man crush on me. Pretty much anything I said he would say stuff like, "The more and more this guy talks the more I believe in God." He was astounded that me and my companion were able to speak Chinese. He was just freaking out. It was hard not to laugh sometimes. He was obviously a little bit tipsy. Oh well, they were interested, but no interested enough in us coming back. They basically told us they would rather drink away their days.

That's all I got.. I don't really have much to write about. Nothing really happened. Hahaha. I love you all though! I'm grateful for your prayers and support!

We got hit by some typhoons

Wow, I saw some pictures from my companion of East High. It got super wrecked from the rain. Hahaha. Well we had our fair share of rain too here. We got hit by some Typhoons. So naturally missionary work was pretty much a no go for like 2 days.

BUT, I'll start from the beginning of the week. To start off on P-Day we went back to KenDing. It was really fun. I've officially been to KenDing 6 times. Which is a lot. KenDing is pretty far away too. It's like a 2 hour drive one way. Brother Zhang took us to a cool place that had all of these rock shapes. It was really fun and really pretty. I love being over there. It's one of my favorite places in Taiwan.

On Tuesday I got to go on exchanges with Elder Bosco. He's from Provo, UT. He's a good guy. The only awkward thing is that our names are almost the exact the same in Chinese so yes, we are both Bo Zhang Lao. But, he also just served in QingShui. We spent most the exchange talking about Qingshui members and how awesome they are. I really miss Qingshui and I really want to go back. I will go back to QingShui eventually.

Everything was a normal week and we're working with Crystal still. She's going to KenDing for vacation so we won't see her for quite a while. On top of that, last time we met with her she mentioned that she might have some ancestral worshiping problems. Me and my comp just really worry that she's too whatever and easy going about stuff. She was willing to follow the 10 Commandments and the Law Of Chastity. So that was good. I think she'll get baptized though. It'll just be in September.

We also had interviews this week. interviews were great. President told me that I'll be moving areas in 2 weeks. So that'll be interesting. I think my next area will be my last area. I only have 3 more transfers after this one. Time goes by quick.... President still has not said anything about me going home early. So I'll probably have to remind him or something...

Then we get to the fun part of the week where we got slammed by heavy rains. I basically have just been soaked to the bone with rain since Friday. Pretty much, we were just getting slammed with rain waiting for a Zone Leaders/ Mission President to tell us we could go home. On Sunday church got cancelled and then we went around with our Ward Mission Leader and visited some families. We saw a really cool miracle where we felt prompted to go visit a part member family. When we got over there she said that her husband (the non-member of the family.) wasn't there. So we we went in and shared a spiritual thought. Then as we were leaving they told us about a less active family that lived nearby. So we literally walked over and found Lin DiXiong clipping away at some vines. We stopped and talked with him and then offered to help.  He rejected us 12 times before we just jumped in and helped him. We spent 30ish minutes helping him clip these vines off of this net. It was one of the funnest things I've ever done on my mission. I have no idea why. As we worked we talked to him about his reason for not coming to church and we learned more about his extremely Buddhist wife. We shared a spiritual thought and he was grateful for our service. As we were biking to our next family I felt very happy to be serving the people in Taiwan. Doing that little bit of service gave me more motivation and energy as a missionary.

Later that night we were told to go in. So we went home and just took some videos of the typhoon. It was really fun and really crazy. Fortunately nothing was broken and no one was hurt according to my knowledge. But, our apartment started to flood like a sinking ship. The rain was literally coming in through the tiny tiny cracks around the window and flooding our apartment so we rushed to get some towels and soak it up.

It was a fantastic week and I'm doing really well! Today we're going to an Airplane Museum.
I love you all so very much!

Listening to Christmas music and singing the ABC song with drunk guys

哈囉!!

Hahaha! I'm glad you got the video of me and Elder Fuller at Harbor! Yeah I was very grateful that they paid for all of it and were super nice! As for Elder Graves I'm pretty sure he's going to BYU for school.

Sorry to hear about the whole bank account thing. That sounds really annoying.

Yeah Sam sent me some photos of Zach and Jessica's wedding photos. It's pretty weird to see my friend getting married. He'll be a married man when I get home... I don't know how I feel about that... but nonetheless I am very happy for him! It's super cool to see him in his wedding photos. Are you guys going to the wedding?

This week was pretty good. It started off with me and my comp wanting to do more member work, so we decided to write up some cards for some members and then deliver them to their houses. But, the thing about Taiwan is finding addresess is sometimes not the easiest thing, especially for two American guys. We spent a good hour and half looking for our bishop's house. It was super rough, but fortunately with the help of Brother Zhang we found it. Then we couldn't find the other 2 addresses, so we're still working on that. It's like we can find every house number except the one we're looking for. It's a little annoying, but sometimes kind of fun.

My companion also recently found a Christmas CD in a member's house and took it home, so all week we've been listening to Christmas music. I'm not going to lie.... It's making me a little trunky. Hahaha, but I haven't said anything to him, mostly because that type of music helps him relax.

It's been really hot in Taiwan as usual. But now I've adjusted to the warm toasty weather. I just come home every night soaked.

This week we also went to the hospital to visit a member's son. From the Father told me and from what I could understand, he said that something was wrong with the veins and blood in his arms. It looks like he has a really bad case of Chicken Pox. I felt bad for the kid, but we played Uno with him and he really enjoyed it. Then I gave him a priesthood blessing and we were on our way.

This week I've been tired. I'm constantly falling asleep everywhere.

We also we met with a super cool referral. Her name is Crystal and she works at a small flower shop. She's really cool and she wants to be baptized. She's been taught most of the lessons. The only thing we're working on his getting her to church. We set a baptismal goal but then she couldn't make it to church so we have to adjust it, but she's probably our top investigator now.

Last night, to top of a pretty good week, we sung the ABC's with two drunk guys.

I love you all so very much!

Sister Graves emailed a video of Silas and Elder Fuller and a group photo

We just received this email from Sister Graves:

Hi Amy!  My name is Pam Graves. My family was just in Taiwan picking up our son from his mission. We had lunch at the famous Harbor Buffet with 8 missionaries.  I hope this is a great surprise for you!  Much love, Pam

Thank you Sister Graves for sending us the photo.