13 Weeks Remaining- December 29, 2013

大家好

Here some things we did this past week - 

- We went to the Bishop’s house with a bunch of other members and celebrated his birthday. We ate a bunch of food and sang happy birthday to him. It always fun spending time with the members.

-On Christmas we went to the church by the temple and had a conference with the mission president and all of the Taipei area missionaries. They gave us some training and then we ate a big meal the mission president's wife put together - turkey, rolls, stuffing, etc. It was good stuff. Afterwards, they did a talent show and they gave us a present. The present was a copy of Doctrine and Covenants with 3 columns in it - English, Chinese characters, and the alphabetized pronunciation of the characters (Roman Pinyin). We have this same thing for the Book of Mormon. It was cool because last month I got to help proofread it & help correct it before they bound it into a book. After the Conference, we went back to our area and went to a subway. There we sang carols with the other elders in our district while we handed out gospel pamphlets.

-Later during the week, we went to go visit a less active the ward wanted us to visit. It was in the boonies. We had to take the subway, then a bus, and then we walked up a mountain for about an hour. We get there and there was 2 dogs barking at us. But they would just back up when we walked towards them. So we walked around looking for the house and the area is looking abandoned. But then we looked out into a rice field and see this guy. We asked if he knew the less active, but all he did was wave a machete at us. Eventually we find the house. We knock on the door and an older lady comes out. We tell her that we were the missionaries and she just starts yelling in our face - saying “Why the heck did you come here?! We aren’t Christian!” She was the wife of the less active. After a while though, she calmed down and we were able to sit down and talk to her and the son. She had no interest in the church but the son might start coming to our English class.

-This week, I ate some chicken foot and cow tongue. Also I got shocked walking into some restaurant’s bathroom that was a boy and girl bathroom together all in one. I guess it’s pretty common here but it was the first time I encountered it since being here lol.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas

Love,

Elder Chatman