Teaching and "Releasing Pigeons"

10/20/15

Sorry this email is coming in on a different day, I get to go to the Taiwan Temple today!! I'm so excited! Anyways, first off I have to apologize if my emails lately haven't been quite up to par. It's pretty hard to remember that there actually might be someone else reading this and sometimes I forget and just use it as a 'pep-talk' for myself. So, from now on I will just say the things I have learned in the past week and then throw in a bunch of fun stuff. Sound good? Ok!

I've got to say, there is no better feeling in the world than passing a BMW on a bike. No better feeling. Granted, in Taiwan the streets are so narrow and there are so many motorcycles that cars can't move faster than 20 mph, but when you pass a car and then see the BMW symbol on it.... There is no way to describe it.

Cultural Experiences:

-You have to learn three languages in Taiwan: Mandarin (obviously), the language of the Spirit, and pigeon-English. Seriously. Their English is so bad. Old people yell at you in Taiwanese every once in a while, but you don't actually have to know what they are saying.

-Oh, they have open sewers. I'll leave it at that.

-Stairs aren't even

-Had my first earthquake

-The sidewalks sparkle

The coolest thing ever happened yesterday. The past week, my companion and I 'went ham'. We got 33 lessons in a week when most companionships struggle to get over 20, us included. It wasn't anything we did, the Lord just had a lot of people for us to share lessons with that weren't usually there. So then this Monday when we usually have Preparation Day, we had absolutely nothing scheduled. It was literally empty. So we went finding all day. Street contacting for 4 hours and passing out English flyers for 1 hour. Street contacting is where we get the majority of our lessons, so we were expecting to have so much success, probably around 7 or 8 lessons. We got 2. They were right at the end of finding too, right after the trial of our faith. I've found so much on my mission that those miracles come right at the end. We had said a prayer with one of those two lessons to help him find a job, and guess who told us they had received a call offering them a job yesterday? He did! It was incredible. He even asked Elder Boyce if they could do a prayer over the phone, so they did. I love you all so much and I am grateful for the example you all have been in my life! 

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Sorry, but I wasn't able to get all of those pictures, I did get some though! Dad's right about another big storm. It's pretty funny hearing everything from you that I've been experiencing here, I've got some funny things to share. First, the Taiwanese hate rain. I can't explain it! They are so scared of it. The minute a raindrop falls WHOOSH their rain ponchos come out. That's mostly what they wear here, just a light rain poncho that goes all the way down to the knees. Mostly they just stay inside when it rains. Typhoons are even funnier. I ask everybody, "Hey when is the next typhoon coming?" And they all kind of say, "Oh, next Monday!"  In reality, nobody actually knows when the typhoons come because they travel so slow. They all kind of know that a typhoon is coming, but nobody is 100% sure. This next one coming in the next few days apparently has the potential to get huge though, Dad would know better than me. I'll take some pictures though. Second thing, Elder Boyce and I actually jogged to Puji Temple a few weeks ago. The other temple you mentioned in your letter dad is out of our area. We only cover about half of Bei Tou itself, and then our area extends down to include a small part of Shilin. Today we are going to Chiang Kai Shek, so that should be amazing and I will definitely send pictures. So we were jogging the other morning, and I was thinking about Elder Colton Richman's companion who is named Elder Superman. Really. Superman. And I was like, hey, what if there was a kid named Bruce Bateman, and the teacher starts calling roll, says his name, and in the most Batman-like voice he says, "the E is silent". It gave me a pretty good laugh as I jogged down stairs surrounded by wild dogs and banana spiders. I'll let you in on a common occurrence here in Taiwan. It's called 'fang ge zi', or being 'stood-up'. But when you literally translate it to English, it means releasing pigeons. What?? All I can say is that I don't have many pigeons left because investigators release ours on a daily basis. I love you all! By the way, optimal solution for letters and such I think is going to be receiving all paper mail, and sending all email. Other than that, I might be a bit stuck. So tell me how this sounds: continue sending mail in letters no matter how slow, and send me each family member's email so I can send one out every once in a while in response to your letter. Every so often I will try to get out a handwritten as well, but it will mostly be that. Sound good? Let me know! I love you all!

-Elder Hawkes