Life's Good in DongQu!

This was Chris' first week in his new area.  He seems to love everything about it!  Here is what he had to say:

Hey everyone!

Another week has gone by. I can't believe it. I have under 300 days left...including this one, I have only 7 transfers left. 

I have a correction about this new transfer though. I was told I was moving to GuiRen, but that is only the name of my district. My area is actually DongQu (still in TaiNan though). My area is REALLY small and there's a college with a lot of foreigners from all over the world. about 1/2 the people here speak really good English and everyone is SUPER cool. We have 2 black investigators and have a friendly relationship with 2 Jehovah's Witness missionaries in the area; we both were teaching English lessons at the same time at the same 7/11 one table away from each other. 

 

This area is more like my first area again with the amount of people here (a lot) but this time most of them actually live here! There's TONS of really good, really cheap food places, a train station, 3 malls, several hospitals (including a mental illness hospital that we sing at every Sunday), a huge college and lots of potential.

 

My companion, Elder W, is super good. We're getting along really 

well and having a lot of fun. We're seeing miracles (referrals that have already been taught everything, finding less-actives that are super willing to meet, finding addresses that don't exist, perfect timing for lots of things, etc, etc, etc). 

 Being District leader is going well! It's challenging, but super cool. I've already gotten to do everything they do in the first week -- DTMs, follow-ups, giving permission for things, a baptismal interview (for a 16 year old girl), Phase One Evaluations (chinese/discussions tests for new missionaries), etc. My district is amazing and we're all seeing miracles. We (my companionship) are probably going to have 2 or 3 new baptismal goals this week.

This place is super good. It's even typhoon proof! ;) There was supposed to be a giant typhoon and everyone was freaking out, but it kept being delayed and then ended up only hitting in the far south, I guess. It sprinkled a little here. 

We have an investigator that does free magic healing. He used to charge for it, but missionaries inspired him to start doing it for free. He did weird voodoo magic stuff on us, chanted numbers and gave us GALLONS of magic water and these magic beads that you can tape to painful spots on your body to cure it and stuff. Kinda funny, but we went along with it. :)

One of our Recent Converts in 10 years old and he just LOVES this gospel. His 15 year old sister helps us any time of day whenever we need it; she loves spending time with missionaries. We've found a lot of golden people (meeting with one at 6pm tonight - he's been taught everything in the past and is super excited to meet us) and we're having lots of fun.

I guess that's about it! I'm super excited for my new area and my companion and my district and everything in general! The Lord has blessed me a lot and I'm grateful for it. This gospel is perfect and true and wonderful. I love you all and wish you a happy week!

Elder Wolf

These are pictures from the Branch BBQ (Kao Rou) for the Mid-Autumn festival, before he left DouLiu.

Transfers!

Here is Chris' letter from this week.

"Hey everyone! 

This week wasn't too shabby. We were able to give 2 people baptismal goals and they are both pretty solid; one of them is GOLDEN x10. Z DX is starting to care a lot more about baptism and so we gave him a goal and he's looking really good to hit it. We had a lesson yesterday with him (surprise, surprise!) and I used the end of 2 Nephi 2 to say goodbye and was pretty bold (but loving!) about baptism). The other goal is for a Lin DX we met with a month ago; he just got back from a trip to China and finally got to meet with us again. On Saturday we met with him and taught the first lesson and it turns out he's super prepared for the gospel. He's very open and willing and was kinda excited to read the BoM and had no problem accepting a baptismal date. He came to church for all 3 hours yesterday too!

On Saturday we had a Branch BBQ (Kao3 Rou4) for the Mid-Autumn festival. It was super fun. I was asked to cut up about 30 pomelos before it started and finished in 10 minutes and amazed everyone. Lol. People thought it was strange that an American not only did it really fast, but also that he knew the Taiwanese method of cutting them. The bbq was really fun though. They use bamboo charcoal to cook tons of meat (mostly really thin) and vegetables and fish and hot dogs, etc. Everyone sits around a small grill and cooks what they want basically. 

For English on Wednesday we had a mid-autumn festival party. I made no-bake cookies with everyone and when I put the sugar in they all groaned (they don't like sweet things) and only a few people ate more than one. It was really funny to see them take the first bite. American cake, chocolate chip cookies, and most american candy is way too sweet for them. Kinda funny. :)

Anyway, I don't have a ton of time, so I get to the biggest news. Move call came on Saturday. I'm moving South. I'm going to GuiRen which is in TaiNan. Here's a map with DouLiu and GuiRen marked. That's not the best part though; I'm going Senior companion with an Elder W that just finished training. That's still not the best part; I'm also going District Leader. My district has 10 missionaries (2nd biggest in the mission) including 2 Zone Leaders that will attend my District Training Meetings every week...Kinda scary...Wish me luck.

That's about it I suppose! I love you all! 

Elder Wolf

P.S. Shake my Vanilla"

Duck eggs and Giant Buddha

9/8/13
Ni Hao everyone! 

Pinocchio (member friend in DouLiu) just started filling out his paperwork to go on a mission!  Super cool.

I played "spot it" (both versions) with my English class on Wednesday and it was a hit. Everyone in my class (14-35 years old) liked it and got really into it. Great idea!

The moon festival is about to start and that means lots of Barbecues! The church is having one on Saturday that we're going to and apparently missionaries get invited to BBQs by strangers a lot. Pomelos are a festival, seasonal fruit (which DouLiu is famous for!) that I tried for the first time this week. They're big, green and soft, but the inside looks like an orange. Unfortunately they are the most Fan (annoying, bothersome, irritating) fruit ever! The skin is super thick and leaves green oil on your hands and the sections of fruit have tough, strong skin between each one. It takes 20 minutes to eat a small one! plus the fruit is bland and leaves a bitter taste for a long time. Basically pomelos are lame. That is all.

I also ate the duck fetus this week. I was on an exchange with a zone leader in DouLiu and we both decided to eat it. It cost about 60 cents USD. The yolk was basically normal, the fetus was small, soft and slightly furry and the white was SUPER hard and chewy. they white was the hardest part to eat. It crumbled instead of dissolved in your mouth, so you basically had to swallow  whole. Everyone should try it some day. Also, everyone try the century eggs. I eat them often. 

In other news, McDonalds has been in Taiwan for 30 years. We ate lunch there and my companion ate corn soup; on the way out he sniffed and then started laughing and said "I had a corn in my nose!" and opened his mouth to show me. I don't know how he managed to get "a corn" in his nose from drinking soup, but he ate it... :P

 We've spent about 8 hours in total trying to find ONE less active member's house in a far away place and we managed to find a hidden Buddhist sanctuary place with the giant gold Buddha in it.  We also went to the police station to ask about the address to find out it doesn't exist. GAH!

Z DX (the investigator with a baptismal date a few weeks ago) just called and asked when he can have a baptismal interview. That's pretty strange. We'll see on Wednesday why he's changed all of a sudden. I have hope! :)  (Baptism date was dropped a couple of weeks prior to this)

We're working to get the branch more involved in retaining the people we have. Baptizing does no good if they just leave again. Missionaries move and we can only do so much in a short time. We're starting up home teaching with the branch now. We'll see how it goes. We probably haven't baptized in DouLiu because we needed to rescue and help the branch retain. The Lord knows that. We've got some good people lined up with baptism potential. We'll see how it goes.

 

The work was focused on visiting LAs (less actives) again this week. Yesterday we went to two secondary areas and rode 68 minutes at an average speed of 16 mph to get home. Kinda crazy. I got to cut a watermelon at someone's house and they were all watching very intently as I did it. They all think I'm a master chef because I peeled and cut up a watermelon with the SAME KNIFE and do it in less than 2 minutes. :) Kinda fun 

That's about it for this week. Love you all!

Elder Wolf