Changes and Parking

1/10/16

One problem with Taiwan is space. There is none of it. There are so many people here and no where to put them. Much of Taiwan is actually too steep to live on, so they can't just spread out like we do in the States. This leads to a few interesting cultural aspects. First off, Taiwanese graves aren't anything like a cemetery. I haven't actually seen the graves up close, but the mountains are actually covered in them. You will have to look up pictures. The mountains are the only places they have for graves. Second is trash. They can't just dump their trash in a big pile, and they don't have room to store it for second-hand sale or anything like that, so they recycle. Everything. McDonalds has like three or four trashcans and I have no idea where to throw away my garbage. Third, under the majority of public parks here are parking lots. They build parking lots under the parks because otherwise a park wouldn't be worth building--it takes up too much space. Fourth, the roads are tiny. There are parked cars and motorscooters on either side of the already tiny roads, so when people want to park they just stop in the middle of the road and turn their flashers on. Somehow, that means, "Hey! I'm gonna park here for just 10 or 20 minutes and block traffic, but it is OK because I have my flashers on!"

Changes in missionary work are here! First of all, they changed exchanges. Usually when we go on exchanges with the Zone Leaders, you just swap companions for a day and then there is a companionship in each area. Now, both missionaries will go and stay in the leaders' area. This last weekend, Elder Dixon and I were able to go to ShiLin (famous for its gigantic night market) on exchanges. All four of us went to a ChiDaoBao ('eat-till-full') and got sick on taro and sesame ice cream, guava, and steak. It was pretty fun having two companionships together, and I learned a lot about being what my mission president calls being "spiritually bold". Awesome topic worth studying. Also, there is less of a focus on less actives and more of a focus on baptizing converts and teaching repentance. I love that! I think we missionaries over complicate the work every once in a while, and forget to teach the beautiful simplicity of Christ's Atonement. Today we got news that at the end of this month there is going to be a worldwide missionary broadcast on this new focus. So excited!!! Love you all and hope the most depressing month of the year is one full of happiness!

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Haha I don't really need ties. Missionaries accumulate quite an astonishing amount of ties by the end of their mission, and when they leave they just offload. I have so many ties. The small things I can just buy here for super cheap, so I am super good on all the little gadgets and stuff. Anyways, we had some interesting things happen this last week. My favorite was probably our baptismal date investigator getting arrested. Ok, so maybe he seemed a little crazy when we talked to him on the street, but not THAT crazy... He would always say "My father was a doctor, my mother was a doctor, my cousin was a doctor, my siblings were all doctors, my...(so on and so forth)", but other than that he seemed relatively normal. He told us he wanted to join our church so how could we not talk to him? Either way, he called us on the phone one day, and it was really hard to hear what he was saying, but eventually we got out from him that he wanted to meet at the second floor of the police station by our apartment. We thought that was weird, but we went and asked the police station if we could go to the second floor. The police officer gave us the look I expected him to give, and then said, "Wait, Huang Guo Fang?" We were like, "Ya!" All of a sudden, like three other police officers were all chatting and laughing about Huang Guo Fang and how two foreign missionaries wanted to meet with him. Eventually they told us they had picked him up the night before (for reasons they couldn't tell us), and that he was just sputtering out nonsense and lies. They told us to stay away from him so we tried until the missionaries from the area next to ours called us on Huang Guo Fang's cell phone and asked why this random guy they had never met new them, knew us, and wanted to talk with them. Oh well, I think it worked out alright. That's pretty much it for now, I love you guys!!!!

this screams Taiwan

another of DanShui, absolutely gorgeous. The picture doesn't do it justice.

Fog over Taipei! 

This picture holds the bottom part of Taipei 101! See if you can find it!  

here is an Ama playgroud (old person workout place) that is clear up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. Elder Sessions (my zone leader whose grandma was my 6th grade elementary school teacher) describes it as Sherwood forest, because there are tons of little dirty shack patio things that all these old people hike up 

into the mountains to go hang out at.

attempt at a panorama. Worked out OK I guess....

The other one is of our whiteboard at English class. We get a little off topic at times... And guess what??? The Taiwanese don't even know the planets! They couldn't name them! Brother Su just had to translate the names using his phone!!!

Sarah, I found your dream. It is a little store in ShiLin called "Brique". There are four artists there. What you do is you go in, choose and artist, and give them a concept. Not a drawing, a concept. They take that concept, draw you something up, and then put it on a shirt, on a wallet, or etc. The first picture is some examples, and the second is what was outside their store. Everything in that store screamed Sarah. We are actually getting Zone T-Shirts from that store, I will have to send you a picture when we get them finished.