Oh my word! Words cannot describe how amazing Taiwan is. I fell in love the first night and continue falling in love even more with this country and this people every single day. You would love it here so much! There are so many people and it's so rainy and the buildings are so tall. I have yet to go through a culture shock. This place just feels like home. Like I'm meant to be here. It's a wonderful feeling! Well, the time difference is about 14 hours...I'm ahead. The flight was actually not too bad. It was about 15 hours and the one headed back home will probably be just as long if not shorter. But that's just from L.A. It was funny because every time I would fall asleep, I would wake up to find that some part of my body had fallen asleep too! It was either my legs or one of my arms. So funny!
My new p-day is Mondays. My mission president is by far one of the bext men I have ever met! The first morning we were here he took us out running in this park called Jiang something. I forget the name of it but it's a really famous park in Taiwan so it won't be too hard to find on google. Then afterwards President Grimley took us out to breakfast and it was so stinkin delicious!!! Afterwards we just had a bunch of orientation and then they made us go on this scavenger hunt...HA! They basically let us loose around Taiwan for about 20 min and we were to talk to as many people as we possibly could. Which is interesting because I really don't speak the language. After dinner they have this babysitting activity. We got paired up with a senior missionary (who actually spoke the language) and we just went out tracting for a solid 2 hours. The one thing we had to do that was my favorite is called don jioaing...which turns out that when the light turns red and all the people pull up (most on scooters because that what they ride here) you just scream your testimony to them about the book of mormon..they best part is people don't really know how to react to that so they just sit there and try their best to ignore you. But it's they best feeling afterwards and you just feel so pumped!
Friday I got my trainer!!! Her name is Sister Wu and she is a bendiren (pronouced bundeeren)..which is Chinese for native. She is from southern Taiwan and I will be killing her after 2 transfers. I love her so much! She speaks English really well so it's nice because I basically have a walking dictionary with me who can really help me perfect my chinese. She is litterally a lot like me and if I were Chinese I probably would be just like her! I also have my "dad" (the other sister in our tri-panionship) in the mission field with me too. Her name is Sister Burrell and I love her so! She is super helpful and always has like the best advice. I'm serving in an area called Sungshan. Google it! It's so pretty and I have Taipei 101 in my area! The people here are so stinkin nice and super helpful to missionaries. It's a really big blessing.
But anyways, back to the story. We went and taugh like 4 lessons after I got back and dropped off my stuff. But one of the lessons after dinner fell through and so we went chaomening...knocking on doors..or in taiwan..ringing a lot of doorbells because there are so many floors in each building. I rang one doorbell and the lady litterally closed the door in my face. I saw quite a few miracles that night though. We walked down this street and said a prayer and then my companions asked me which way to go. So I lead the way and we had no luck for about 4 doors. We were standing at this door and I was ringing the doorbells and no one was answering, but I leaned up against the door and it opened! So, we walked up the stairs and ended up teaching a full lesson to somone! It was so cool!
Saturday we got qinged! Which means a member took us out for dinner. This member is called sister trouble (I dont know her Chinese name but that it what she goes by!) I learned though that when you get qinged you have to eat every single peice of food they put in front of you.. otherwise it's super disrespectful! Do you know how much food they give you?!?!!? Oh my word it's like Thanksgiving dinner only you don't get to pick how much you want to eat. You just eat whatever is put in front of you! Hahaha! Needless to say I took a lot of food home with me that night! That and this city is like the bread capitol of taiwan. Oh my gosh!!! I might die! Hahaha! But thankfully my bike showed up! Today I'm headed out to go and buy a helmet so I can ride it. But anyways, Saturday I was so stinkin tired that I was struggling with one of our last lessons of the night. It was so hard to stay awake and the worst park is my companions noticed! Haha! But they weren't offended. Most chinese people know that my first week here is going to be long. But the lesson right after this one was so amazing and spiritual. We were meeting with a recent convert who got really really offended at church and was having a hard time with forgiving them. She wasn't sure if God really loved her and we really struggling. They only thing we could do was comfort her and let her know that we love her. I bore my testimony and totally cried. I love her so stinkin much and I didn't realize it would only take me one meeting to feel that way. So good!
Sunday!!!! Was so much fun! Our ward starts at 9am and we had 3 investigators show up..i'm not sure if that is good or not but i thought it was! Then afterwards we had stuides and then we had dinner at Wu Mama's house! Love her! She is one of the coolest members in the ward and pretty much the missionaries mom. Did I mention at church they gave us more food? Oh my goodness! But we sat down and ate dinner and one of the investigators sitting next to me was Zang DX(brother Zang) and he was like here try this! and keept putting stuf fin my bowl!!!!!! ahhh!!! It was so funny but the food was so good. The best part was they brought a big plate of fruit(best fruit i have ever tasted btw) and then he proceeded to sit next to me and keep showveling food in my mouth! Hahaha! Good thing I really like fruit because he just kept coming with it. ahhaha! Ok! Last story! Last night my companions thought it was funny to feed me pidan...which litterally means 2000 year old duck egg. I didn't know that and I have a motto for my mission...try everything....yep! I definately took a bit of this rotten egg...It was so gross! I cannot even tell you! I took a video of it that I might send you at one point. haha But it can't go on facebook! But yeah, thats life in the mission field so far! I'm loving every minute of it! If you have any questions just let me know! Love you!
Sister Burton
MORE PICTURES:
No comments:
Post a Comment