Hi
Mom and Dad!
Sorry
this email is a little later than the others, we went out to lunch today with
all the Elders and a member from church to eat snails (which are
surprisingly really good!) so we just got to the internet cafe. It sounds like
your week went good though!
As for Phase 2, it is just a lot of flashcards. You study it all on your own,
and then when you want to pass it off, you do it with the assistants in Taipei,
and then you go on to Phase 3, which are characters. But you can buy any of
them at any time you want, so the whole passing off thing doesn't really
matter. Especially for me since I already know most of the characters in Phase
3, so I'll probably spend more time on Phase 2, just speaking and learning
words, than I will on Phase 3. I've also started reading the Book of Mormon in
Chinese for about 10 minutes a day during my Language Study just to work on
tones and pronunciation, and that seems to be helping a lot. I love learning
Chinese. Our ward mission leader told me this week that he thought I was a
Taiwan person on the phone, because apparently I have a Taiwan accent, so that
was cool, haha. He said that if I keep going at the same rate, no one will know
I'm an American by my voice, so I hope that actually happens, haha.
My
week's been good though! It's flown by, again. It’s so crazy to think it's
already over halfway done with January. Time is flying by. But I did finally
spray paint my bike last Monday! It looks so awesome! I'm so proud of myself,
haha, it's yellow and blue, I'll send some pictures when I'm done writing. Also
this week I had my first dog experiences as a missionary...luckily they were
more bark than bite, (at least that's what I tell myself), and luckily most of
them were tied up, so we didn't actually get chased. Well, one did, but he
wasn't all that fast, haha. Being a rural area like this, there's a lot more
dogs, and a lot more people who just speak Taiyu (Taiwanese), not Chinese, so,
that's been fun. I've picked up how to say 'ting bu dong' (don't understand)
and 'you're beautiful' in Taiyu, but that's about it. Haha, that language is
crazy. It's not written at all, just spoken. Anyways, it's been fun.
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| The 'before' . . . |
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| And the 'after'! |
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| A happy sister missionary! |
So
this past week our areas changed! President Day decided to do this thing where
each missionary companionship has a set area in their area. For example, since
ZhuNan has 3 sets of missionaries (us, and 4 Elders), the area is now split
into 3 sections, and we each get one. So we can only work in our section. At
first, our section was a lot of, well ... not much, ha. ZhuNan itself isn't very big,
so when you split it up, it's even less big. Our area is so big though, it's
seriously HUGE. We have all of west ZhuNan, which includes lots of farm lands,
and the ocean, so that's cool. There are some places we will not be going to at
night...haha, due to dogs and lack of lights, and that it's just creepy all
around, but it'll be good during the day! It will be a LOT of knocking on doors
and less street contacting, but we're excited to see how it goes. We spent
basically all Saturday just exploring the area and knocking on doors
and there are so many people here who haven't ever seen missionaries, it's
crazy.
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| The East China Sea / Taiwan Strait |
In
fact, we knocked on this one door, and a girl came out from Indonesia (there's a
lot of immigrants in this part of Taiwan) who spoke pretty good Chinese, and we
asked if we could say a prayer with her. By the end of the prayer
she was holding my hand and crying because we prayed for her family, and it
turns out all of her family are still in Indonesia, including her children, and
she hasn't seen them in at least 6 years. It was really sad. We're going
back tomorrow to visit with her again. It's just crazy that there are
those people out there, in our area, that we wouldn't have found if this new
area thing hadn't happened. It'll be really cool to see what else
happens.
This
past week we also got new pamphlets, and a new invite for contacting. Now, when
we introduce ourselves, we're supposed to touch our nametag and refer back to
our purpose, with baptism included in that. So, that's been interesting. Basically
we introduce ourselves, and then say how our purpose is to invite others to
come unto Christ through baptism. Some people aren't exactly open to that, but
others are! The first night we tried it we actually had a girl who said she
would be baptized, and we're meeting with her tonight, so it's really cool!
It's definitely a way to see who is willing to listen and accept the message
and who isn't.
Another
really cool miracle this past week was S. Unfortunately, it turns out
she's not in our area, she's in the MiaoLi area, so we had to give her over to
them to teach, but we met with her last Monday night suddenly, and it was one
of the coolest lessons ever. She said she believes the Book of Mormon is true,
and how whenever she reads it she feels God's love for her, and how he supports
her. She also said how she believes Joseph Smith's First Vision, and how she
loves this church so much. The Spirit was so strong when she was telling us
these things, so we know she really meant it. That was our last time meeting
with her, because of the area problem, but it was still a really cool
miracle.
Another investigator (who is no longer our investigator, due to the area changes) is a
miracle as well. She's already in Mosiah (in The Book of Mormon), and believes it all, she's so awesome.
We did the third lesson, and she really understood it. She was asking all the
perfect questions, and then she would repeat it in her own words just to make
sure she got it right. It was really cool. She just needs to get to church,
which is a problem for a lot of people here. She doesn't have a way to get
there, so the Elder's who are teaching her are working on it, but she's
awesome.
This
week's been really cool though! It was a lot of just exploring areas, and lots
of wind. The wind here is SO big! Haha, oh my gosh, even when you're going
downhill you still have to pedal as hard as you can, and make sure it doesn't
blow you into the next lane. Although, no one is hardly ever in the next lane,
haha, so it's fine anyways, but still. I do love it here though. We had a 'qing
ke' this past week with a girl who is less active, and that was so fun! She's
great, she's only less active because her job doesn't allow her to go to church on
Sunday, which is a problem, but she has such a strong testimony still. She gave
us 'pi dan' (thousand year old egg, you could look it up, or Dad might know
what it is, it sounds really gross when you hear about it, but it's SO good)
and everyone was amazed that I liked it, haha. Apparently a ton of 'Wai Guo
Ren' (foreign) missionaries 'bu gan chi' (don't dare to eat) but I think it's delicious.
I love the culture here, I loved it in Shanghai too, but since I'm just
completely in it all the time here, I feel like I love it even more. I'm so
lucky I get to serve here, the people are amazing and it's just great,
haha. (And
we're actually meeting with F M tonight, so I'll ask her about that song,
haha, I'm so excited, she always makes me happy.)
Well,
that's been my week just about! It's gone by so fast! I also finished the New
Testament this morning, and that was super interesting. Revelation was a little
harder to understand, but once I realized what the 7 seals were he was talking
about, it helped a lot. And the end of Revelation was awesome as well,
it's so interesting to read about the Millennium and the Celestial Kingdom, its
super cool. Now I just have to decide if I'm going to start the Old Testament
tomorrow or Jesus the Christ, I can't decide. Maybe the Old
Testament, but that kind of intimidates me, haha, so I don't know, I'll let you
know :) Haha, anyways, I love you!
Well,
I love and miss you guys! I'll try writing a letter today and get it in the
mail soon :)
Love
you!
-Qiao
Jei Mei
Here are some more pictures Amie sent home this week. :)
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| They have such cute pastries in Taiwan! |
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| And silly missionaries, haha! |
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| Amie called this their 'mailbox friend'! :) |
Hey
Dad!
Haha,
this week has been good! I still appreciate the chickens in the morning, it's
kind of nice to hear them waking everyone else up, haha.
The
church here is really good! It's smaller, but still a ward. There are a lot of
less actives, but there's probably about a solid 30 or so people at church
every week? I'm really bad at estimating numbers, so I might be wrong, but
probably around there. Everyone is really nice too, we always eat together
after church, and they're super welcoming and willing to help, so it's fun. As
for investigators, this week has been a little interesting. I mentioned in my other email how our area just got split, so we lost a lot of our investigators
because they're in the Elder's part of ZhuNan, but we also got some from the
Elders. So, I'll probably have a better update on investigators next week.
We've been working with a lot of less actives, almost more so than investigators lately, but we do have some new set ups for this week with new
investigators, so hopefully those go well.
We
completely rearranged our area book this past week, and our investigators are
looking a little sparse, but we'll keep finding some. We'll be doing a lot of
knocking on doors and hopefully find some families... that would be really
cool.
Chinese
is coming along
I'm
also going to start Phase 2 this week I think, so that'll be fun, I'm excited
to learn some new words. Lots and lots of flashcards, but it will be fun
:)
Love
you,
Sister
George
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