April 28 Letter (Is your TP Tender?)

Elder C is really good. He's the first native missionary in DouLiu is a LONG time. He'll help a lot. His English is pretty good, we don't have problems communicating. We'll be fine. We've explored a lot of DouLiu this week and one of our secondary areas, Lin3Nei4. It was pouring the day we did that and it was a 40 minute bike ride each way for one lesson. lol.
English class is still confusing me. I asked President about it in my last email and he thinks my companion is Elder B, so he didn't quite understand my concern. lol. This week in English class we watched 17 miracles with Chinese subtitles. I don't know how to teach such a wide range of skill levels. Elder C might be able to teach the beginners class, but they really like native speakers to teach.

In other news, I'm wearing my contacts again. No problems anymore. I just wanted to be sure my eye was okay so I didn't make whatever it was any worse.

Random fact about Taiwan: When you think of toilet paper, how do sellers describe it? Soft? Strong? Absorbent? Most things have English on the package here, and an adjective I realized that they use to describe TP is "tender". Does that seem weird to anyone else? I get the meaning, but it's not quite the right word. "sorry, I only use tender tp on my backside." yeah...anyway...

A member called us on Tuesday and wanted us to come visit him. He's one of President B's converts from his mission. He lives a long time away, but we got there and he said thanks for coming and then told us to start moving potted plants and dirt down 4 flights of stairs for him. lol. I see what you did there Mr. H! So we helped him and they gave us barley flavored icee drinks. yummy! seriously, it wasn't too bad after the first sip.

We had a lesson with a less active member and he's gone back to smoking, drinking, using beetelnut, etc. He was basically a Taiwanese hippie and very extroverted. He basically said God loves us and if we love other people and God then we'll be okay.

So yeah, that's it for me!

Love you all!


Elder Wolf

P.S. 

before I forget, 

shake my vanilla!

April 21 Letter (Another new Companion)

Hi family! 

I'm a little earlier than usual, but Elder S hasn't left yet and wants to be sure he can email his family today so we're doing it now. I may or may not be back on again after my new companion gets here (depends if he's done his emails yet). My new companion will be Elder C. I don't know anything about him other than he's Taiwanese and possibly speaks a little English.

Chris and Elder S.

B, I hope you have fun at the NaGe ("that". Pronounced 'nigga' with a Taiwan accent. All the american elders LOVE using that as much as possible.) They use NaGe for pretty much everything as the subject of sentences once it's been establish. "I'm going to a concert tonight!" "I hope you have fun at De NaGe (the that). Bad example, but still.

The work is going good. We have 8 baptismal goals and 2 of the 3 I've met have been golden! Everyone's been out of town for a Holiday and everyone's busy getting caught up on work and school from the vacation, so it's been difficult to meet sometimes; most of our investigators are college students. H is the same as before since we haven't met since last week; We had to reschedule and then she rescheduled again to tonight. Right now her date is May 18th (or whatever the closest Saturday to that is).

With my new companion, I'll be the only English teacher at our chapel...we have about 25-30 students each week and they're all at various levels...HOW DO I DO THAT?! I honestly don't know how to even start handling that...We'll probably need to combine with the other Elders in our district who teach at a different church (although the jr companion there is Taiwanese, too)

They're fumigating the sewers and apartment complexes here...We walked outside today and just about died from inhaling the fumes. The elevator ride down just 13 stories was killer. My respiratory system is messed up! My nose and lungs are still sore. It's in the air too, so there's no completely nonpoisonous oxygen to breathe at the moment. Because the sewers are getting it, there are cockroaches EVERYWHERE outside! Brown and red ones of all shapes and sizes. SUPER creepy to see cockroaches pouring out of sewers into the streets...then getting run over my bikes and cars...and eaten by birds and frogs who will later die from eating the freshly poisoned bugs...yeah...life is good!

That's it for this week

Love you all

Elder Wolf

April 14 Letter (1/3 of the way through the mission)

Hey I'm here! I guess I'll just list off my news. It's not a ton, but still news! Conference was pretty awesome. The chapel only had it in Chinese, so we ended up watching online a bit later. It's easier to take notes on a computer anyway!

Here's some number relating to our work here in DouLiu; Everyone loves numbers! We have 6 progressing investigators, and all of them have baptismal dates! One of them just got her date yesterday. She just came on her own to church once and a member hung out with her and explained things and she became interested and now has a date to be baptized in mid-May. We have another lesson with her tonight. The work is coming along great.

I never thought to mention these, but I guess I'll start; missionaries give a lot of priesthood blessings. I don't know how many I've participated in, but we gave one last week to a woman who was sick (she's been a member for a LONG time.) and she's better now. Lol. Imagine that!

I only lost two pounds this week, not 10. haha! You guys won't recognize me when I get off the airplane! I can't believe I'm 1/3 through already! Time flies usually! Soon it'll be 1/2! Not too long! By the time that happens though, Hunter will have been in Norway for 1 1/2 months! (did I do my math right?) I listened to about a minute of conference in Norwegian just to hear it spoken. It's a LOT easier to read than to listen. Kind of the opposite of Chinese. Lol.

April 7th Letter (General Conference)

Hi the family! 

It's your favorite Son, Brother and miscellaneous almost not teenager anymore person/stud! That's right! I am Lindsay Lohan! *mixed cheering and booing*

Yeah...so anyway. I've lost 4.8Kg this week. How? probably my water intake and no deep-fried chicken legs every day. I'm gonna need new clothes before too long! ;) They can mostly pass for now. I look fat in them cuz they're too big. Maybe I'll take a picture of me stretching my pants out to show how much weight I've lost. 

My new area DouLiu is great! I misheard the name of the main area though. I said it was JIA yi but is CHIA yi. We're looking good to baptize this move call, although I've only met one of our investigators because a Taiwan holiday took all the young people out of town to their parent's houses. The one kid I did meet has only met with missionaries 3 times now and he's probably the most solid person I've seen so far. His parents don't agree, but said he can get baptized after testing is over at the beginning of June. No biggie. 

Last night we went to a family's house for dinner; the last person to get baptized just did it the Saturday before I got here. So they wanted to feed us steak but we got there and they hadn't cooked it yet. My loving companion told them I'm the "#1 steak chef" and guess who cooked everyone's steak in their kitchen? It was a good rib-cut and was tender...too bad Taiwan isn't too into "undercooked" meat. Well-done is Taiwan's choice 90% of the time. 

Elder S and I get along great.  He's super fun-loving and he's really funny. All the members seem to love him. He jokes around with them and does good things. He works hard and plays hard.

New food! Tofu milk (the family we ate dinner with accidentally made it when cooking tofu in water). I had beef tongue soup again as well. 

My bike broke. the axle snapped. Those are only about 4-6 USD I think. I'm borrowing a member's bike for the moment. 

On Friday we took a train to the main part of ChiaYi and participated in grave-sweeping day. I got interviewed by a reporter while setting a giant weed fire. YAY! I enjoyed it. it was basically an excuse for me to go burn stuff...Til it started pouring. ;) First 5 days this week were soaking wet. Sheets of rain for hours.

We went to a different member's house for dinner another night. The husband is white. They have a son and an adopted daughter and a white/orange kitty cat. they fed us pizza and lava cake. The grandmother was visiting from California too. They're a super fun family!

My apartment is on the 13th floor of an apartment building (top floor) right next to the train tracks. It's about 4x bigger than DaKeng's apartment, but still only has one bathroom. 

I think that covers it for me this week. Can't wait to see conference! Thanks for the conference highlights. I heard the stats about missionaries from a member in our ward. Crazy!

March 31st Letter (Easter)

Wow!!!  Another month has gone by!  Chris has changed companions twice and has entered a new area.  We'll have a few posts to get caught up.  This one is from his letter on March 31.


Happy Easter to you! Nobody in Taiwan knew that it was Easter. ;) Kinda sad, but understandable.

Mom, yep, I have transfers! DouLiu is apparently a lot less populated than DaKeng and there's only a branch, not a ward. That also probably means that my area won't have other missionaries in it (sometimes areas are kind of shared. DaKeng also has Sister missionaries that go to BeiTun as well). There's also supposed to be good fruit and vegetables there too. I'm excited!

There was, indeed, a 6.1 earthquake in Taiwan. And oh man, did I feel it. :) The walls in the storage section of our apartment where cracked pretty good! . The earthquake was felt in China and Japan apparently too. 

We had 3 Elders in my companionship this weekend. Elder F's last companion is training, so he came to live with us. He's also replacing me in DaKeng. All 3 of us are from Utah. He has 12 siblings! crazy! :) I've heard my new companion, Elder S, is really good. We'll see how it goes ;)

This week's quote also comes from Elder F; He was doing pushups and stuff and to motivate himself he says "I'm Batman!" Jeremy would love him.

I ate more Bing this week. Mangoes are just getting in-season and they are GOOD! Seriously, best. fruit. ever. I'm gonna get addicted to mangoes.

In other news, G (our awesome black investigator from Africa) is progressing. He bought us lunch this week and we gave him a Book of Mormon and he committed to read and pray about it! He asks a lot of questions and likes to try to "confound" us, but if he truly reads and prays, he'll know it's true. 

We also have 2 new investigators we met on the road and they're both really good! One is SUPER solid for baptism (probably in May). He wanted to see the font and even went inside it. 

We have 2 new families to teach as well! YAY!

We met with S and her daughters again and they fed us for free and fixed a flat tire on my bike (which also might have a broken 'hub', whatever that it. I'll get it checked this week). Saying bye to them was hard...I promised I'd come back and visit them after my mission. S told me to bring "Xiao WuZhangLao", small Elder Wolf (my kid), when I come again. She wants grandchildren. lol. 

I also helped with the Dan Jones for new missionaries again, but because a few Elders didn't make it to Taiwan yet, I didn't get a greenie to take around, so I took pictures. It started pouring right when it started :) Rain is fun.