Letters from Taiwan: January 20, 2013

Yeah!! Hello everyone!

Questions! (Macy, these are your questions)

1. Do Missionaries celebrate holidays?

Yeah, kind of. We take gifts to people, and we say things like "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy New Year!" but we don't get a day off, haha. Those days are actually even busier than other days! We're out contacting all day, because everyone's out shopping or at home with their families so they have time to talk to us!

2. Do I get more time to myself in Taiwan than in the MTC?

Definitely NOT! hahaha I get about 30 minutes to myself each night, but the rest of the day is like this:

6:30 Wake up and work out

7:00 Shower and eat breakfast

8:00 Personal Study (study for my lessons that day)

9:00 Companionship Study (study more! and plan lessons for the day)

10:00 Language Study

10:30 go out and preach the gospel!!

9:00pm come home and plan, plan, plan!

10:00pm ME TIME! ha! write in my journal, relax, get ready for bed.

So definitely not much time, right?

3. Do I get to walk around and go to stores and stuff?

Yeah, on P-day we can go and do that kind of stuff, but mostly we're too busy to ever really just walk around and shop! And missionaries don't have a lot of money to do that kind of stuff anyway! We went hiking last week with a member and that was really cool, but mostly we just buy our groceries, clean our apartment and write letters!

4. Do I like Taiwan better than Utah?

Right now? hmmm, that's a hard question! Then again, there's a little too much snow in Utah right now!! Taiwan is absolutely incredible, and right now it's my home in every way! I don't really miss UTAH, I miss the people in it. Just like when I get home, I might miss TAIWAN a little, but it's the people in a place that really matter!

5. Am I doing better with the language?

Yeah, I think so! Here in Taiwan, they have a special system for learning Chinese. There are 3 phases and right now I'm working on Phase 1. Phase 1 is all of the lessons in Preach my Gospel, memorize about 150 vocab words per lesson, memorize grammar and all that stuff, and then we do a practice teaching session with a leader and they pass us off. Usually it takes about 2-3 "move-calls" (a move call is 6 weeks) to pass it off, but I'm hoping to finish it by next Monday! I'm still having a hard time understanding what people are saying back to me, but I'm able to talk a lot better!

And now for Jessi! That's awesome you're doing Taiwan for your report! Best country in the world... it's also probably one of the most interesting! You wouldn't believe some of the things I've seen! The first thing to know is that EVERY city is famous for some kind of food. I'm not sure what it is in most cities, but ask anyone living there and they'll know! Here in Tainan, it's not any specific food, but it's known for having the best, cheapest, and biggest variety of food! Pretty lucky, right?? Also, BREAD! The bread here is absolutely awesome! They have bakeries on ever block and it's always full of warm, freshly baked bread. Any kind of bread you can imagine, it's in there. Dessert breads (always full of who knows what kind of delicious Taiwanese delicacy), lunch and dinner breads (with all kinds of meat, veggies, and cheese), and then just snack breads! It's almost impossible to resist going in once you've smelled the breads as you walk past one of these stores!

Also, markets EVERYWHERE! Each street can be turned into a market just over night. You never know where the next one will pop up, and they're always going! In the morning, afternoon, or into the nighttime! Always absolutely PACKED with people and screaming to haggle over prices! Picture the flea market in California... take the entire block of it and compact it into a street about half the size of 9th South and that's a Taiwanese street market for you... oh yeah, and add about 1,000,000 people (all on scooters of course)! And that's another thing... everyone has a scooter. It's actually a huge pain to drive around in a car! There's so much traffic and so many stop lights that a car is just a pain (although there are still a lot of cars) so everyone rides around on scooters. It's nice for us missionaries because we can talk to just about anyone! It's also really funny because the people here have caught on to the way we missionaries work! They all know that if they're next to us, they're gonna here the Gospel, so if we get to a stoplight before people are there, you can usually look back and see about a 10 foot perimeter around us! Pretty comical, but we just scoot back and talk to them anyways!

So now to the weekly activities!!

This week has been pretty great! Not a lot of interesting stuff, but I have 2 awesome stories I want to share with you, and they both happened on Saturday!

The first one! We had a lesson at 5:30 on Saturday night with a guy that we already met with once. The first time we met with him, he didn't have much interest. He found out that we were that "moermen jiao" (Mormon church) and kind of tuned us out the rest of the time, but we invited him to come to our free English class and he came the next week! He watched us missionaries interact with people after and saw that we actually had a sense of humor! I talked with him about music for a while (he loves Queen and Maroon 5) and we just tried to show him that we weren't just robots! He told us he could meet with us again and so this is how we got him to church Saturday night! Now, to preface this, this whole week has been a "finding week." All of our investigators dropped last week, so we were pretty much starting fresh! It's been exhausting, to say the least. We've biked probably 10-25 miles each day this week, and talked to over 170 people (for more than 5 minutes each)!! I was feeling pretty tired, especially because we didn't see a lot of results out of all of our work! But we stayed optimistic and kept praying really hard to find a good investigator who was prepared to receive the Gospel! And that gets us to this guy! We talked a while at first, just trying to help him feel comfortable, and then we taught a lesson on the Plan of Salvation. It was a pretty good lesson, I didn't think we did anything too special, but he paid attention the whole time and seemed interested in everything we had to say! At the end, we told him that, based on our actions, we can basically choose what kingdom of glory we can inherit... he said he wanted to go to the Terestrial. Ah man! You're supposed to want the Celestial!!! We talked to him a bit about why the Celestial is so great, and he seemed to change his opinion. After that, we asked him to say a closing prayer. This was so special. I can't begin to explain how awesome it is to witness somebody literally introducing themselves to a God and Savior they've never thought they could talk to before. He began his prayer (he actually started out by saying Dear Lord, Jesus... but we fixed that after his prayer) and then he was silent for about 30 seconds. I was wondering if he forgot what to do next, but I felt like I should just be quiet and listen. Through tears, he choked out 2 sentences. "Thank you." and "Thank you so much for letting me meet Elder Ryan Noll and Elder S." (and yes, he actually tried using our English names) and then he quickly closed the prayer! At first, I thought he might have been laughing, not crying, but then I looked up and he was wiping his eyes!! This guy, who I didn't think we would even have a second chance to teach, just said a beautiful and heartfelt prayer in front of me, and I know that one day he will get baptized!

I'll apologize here and say that this next story has no spirituality in it whatsoever. Before going to that lesson on Saturday, we had a former investigator call us and tell us he wanted to eat dinner with us! We were pretty stoked, and told him "Yeah, sure!" We asked him where, and he told us he'd come pick us up at the church. We were a little worried because he was pretty shady about not telling us what was going on... we asked a couple more times, and he said his parents were cooking dinner for him and a bunch of friends. We thought it was great! We could meet with our former, and hopefully find a bunch of other investigators at the same time! We were pretty stoked!! We finished our awesome lesson that I just told you about, and then this guy shows up on his scooter to pick us up... we can't ride scooters. We told him we'd just follow on our bikes and he was still REALLY shady about where we were going! He said his parents aren't cooking, but we're going somewhere to eat with them and they invited us... ok??? We asked him if it was a bar, and his response was "Bu suan jiuba..." in a kind of unsure way... that means, "No, it doesn't REALLY count as a bar"... By now, we're both thinking "it's a good thing we've only got 200 kuai on us, because I think we're about to get mugged!" But we followed him to this place, knowing that it could help us find people who desperately need the Gospel (mom, I know you're about ready to kill me, but just keep reading! It gets better!) We pull up to this tall building that looks nothing like a bar, so we thought we'd be pretty safe. And then, to add more to the weirdness of this situation, our former tells us it costs 50 kuai for dinner! We were more than happy to pay, but we were so confused as to what was happening!! We start walking in, and as we're going to the elevator, we're seeing a bunch of old people, nicely dressed, walking around the building. Now we're even more confused because it's not what we're expecting at all. We walk up to a table and pay our 50 kuai and then we walk into the room and see our former brought us to.... a cooking demonstration. A COOKING DEMONSTRATION!!! They were trying to sell us some POTS!!! Elder S. and I were dying with laughter (later) at the fact that our investigator tricked us into coming to a 2 hour convention for pots!!! Needless to say, we were stuck there for about an hour, and then (at the first opportunity) bolted and got some real dinner!! hahaha that was one of the funniest, most disappointing, and craziest situations I've been in so far!!

Well, I'll end by telling you all that I'm doing great in Taiwan! I'm loving it more and more each day! We're working hard to find, find, and find! Until next week then! Love you ALL!