Shake My Vanilla: March 2013

Here are some excerpts from all Chris' letters in March.

He is very happy and LOVES Taiwan!

"Taiwan does not do Daylight Savings. We're still the same. While its an hour later to email, it's also an hour that we are all closer to each other :) lol."

"E.W. had a HUGE turn around. We don't know what happened, but HE asked US if he could be baptized this week (this was on Tuesday). Anyway, to make a long story short, he came to all 3 hours of church yesterday and I baptized him afterward. YAY!!! :D WOW! I had to make 3 attempts to get him under the water (he's a bit fluffy), but he loved it."

(New companion as of 3/11):

"It was odd saying goodbye to Elder F, but it's all good! I bought a bye-bye book that he wrote in. Byebye books are basically school year books for your companions and other missionaries in your areas, but unlike yearbooks, they usually have meaning and significance. People put pictures inside and write cool things.

My new companion, Elder H, is a baller. He's super awesome and funny. He looks like one of my MTC district buddies in Singapore. :) He's on move call # 7 right now (3 ahead of me). He's great friends with my new District leader, Elder B (elder A is the new AP!). SUPER good at guitar, likes swimming and mountain biking and skiing.

I JUST finished Jacob in the BoM yesterday. Enos is tomorrow. Is anybody else reading the BOM too?

I'll have fun, but the being safe part...maybe not. :) Elder F decided to say goodbye yesterday by making his box lock onto my handlebars while riding down the street and making me abandon ship. LOL. I'm TOTALLY fine. By knee has a small cut and my pants will be sewn up tonight! Church was fun with a hole in my pants. teehee!

EARTHQUAKE! yes, there was a small earthquake in the area on Thursday (about a 4.0 or 5.0) Super weird! We hadn't left the apartment for the day yet. It lasted about 10 or 15 seconds. We were doing weekly planning and our faces were vibrating and the room was FREAKING MOVING! It was cool. We didn't get dizzy or anything. The aftershock was very small. just barely noticable. It's was fun basically. :)

We got to do the Dan Jones thing new missionaries do with the new missionaries on Thursday! I apparently am now an experienced missionary and I took a new Elder around a big night market for an hour and showed him the ropes...He's super good! We got 5 adds and gave out 3 BoMs! After Dan Jones, we had a lesson with a 15 year old kid and he's super great. He believed it all and accepted the baptismal goal I gave him for 4/6/13. If I don't stay in DaKeng after this move call, I won't get to see it, but no worries, he's super good! (Xiao DiXiong)

I saw a man who looks exactly like Karate Kid's Mr. Miagi (sp) except with fancy clothes, on a scooter, EPIC facial hair and a FANCY Sherlock-Holmes style pipe. Just saying, I was smiling for 10 minutes.

We had an English class party this week and I made 40 cupcakes from scratch. Super fun.

Because it's a new move call, English class got switched around and I'm the advanced class teacher again. This week was pretty good. The spiritual lesson portion was great! There was a member there who shared stories and her testimony a lot and 3 of the students were not members (yet!).

The time came...I had to cut my belt so it was shorter. I cut about 2 inches off of it. UhOh! I've lost 30 lbs!"

(About picture of him knocking on door. We asked if a family lived there) "Nobody answered. The houses vary a LOT. This was in the poor area (about 50% of Taiwan is like that). There's better houses (30%) and some SUPER nice houses (10%). There's also worse houses that barely have a frame or a door (10%).

Elder H has a recent convert from his last area who works in our area and he wanted to take us to lunch today, so we just got back from that. We had to take a freakin' taxi! :) No, taxi was good. I don't know what scary means anymore...I'm numb to it. I do things on my bike now that I wouldn't dare do my first week on island. No worries, I'm not stupid, just used to it.

We met with E.W. on Tuesday night and went to the big mall. We ate at McDonalds and he was apparently expecting us to treat him to it because he didn't bring money for our dinner together and McDonalds didn't want to use my foreign card, and we were on exchages and the other elder didn't have $ either so I had to run to an ATM really fast and 1000's is all you can withdraw at 95% of ATMs.

Missionary stuff: This week was pretty good for us. We talked to 615 people on the street, have 7 new investigators (5 of which are progressing), found a family that is willing to visit with us any time we stop by and they're home. Eric Wang was super solid about coming to church this week, but yesterday we called him and he's in California for something...maybe next week...We'll keep trying our best! We also got 3 really solid referrals for Tanzi, BeiTun and TaiPing. A woman pulled us over from her scooter and as soon as she was sure we were missionaries said "I want to get baptized". YAY! She's a single mom and wants God in her life. The free English class really intrigued her as well. Elder Hellberg is basically magic. :) We're getting along great and DaKeng seems to be picking up a lot more. We also ran into a man on the street from South Africa (or just north of) named G and had a great lesson at a convenience store with him! He asked a ton of questions and set up again for next week.

S's family now officially belongs to us again! She was the sister's investigator since she's a woman and the only man in the house isn't interested, but she works a lot better with Elders, so we got special permission to teach her and we had one lesson with her on Saturday so far.

We helped a family move to a new house on Saturday too. SUPER HEAVY CRAP. We took a washing machine through a window, a 200lb air conditioner, giant dressers, etc. I'm sore. But we got octopus pizza and wheat tea (which tastes exactly like it sounds) out of it.

I also realized that I am the last remaining missionary in my zone that wasn't here when I first arrived. That might change on Monday or might not. We'll see.

If Elder H doesn't get called this week to be a trainer, I almost guarantee I'll be in DaKeng 6 more weeks...At least. :)"

Just a fun side-note, I ate this "super spicy" sauce at a ward activity around Christmas and the whole ward now thinks my favorite food is spicy. People order spicy things for me if we go to restaurants. Nothing too bad so far. Spicy is not the same to them as it is to mexicans lol.

New foods this week: Octopus pizza, milk flavored candy (exactly what it's called) and tomato-prune candy...eh...I also had beef tongue soup. SUPER good. I love beef tongue.