Superstars

4/3/16

  I have a new companion! He is a 短傳, which means 'temporary missionary'.... I think. I'm pretty sure there is no real good translation, but basically it just means he is only serving as my companion for 3 weeks until I get a new one. His name is Elder Zhu, and he is native Taiwanese, and has Aspergers. He actually lived in Utah for a while though, so his English is really good. For example, today I explained what the word 'poignant' means.

    

  This last week, before Elder Karlinsey went home, we were able to go to a Junior High school and teach about Easter. It was super fun! They had absolutely no idea what Easter was (most only knew the name and didn't even know about bunnies and eggs let alone the Atonement), so it was cool being able to share the real meaning behind it. Anyways, we taught three different classes, and after each one ended we got absolutely mauled. Every single student in each of the classes wanted a separate photo with each of us missionaries. If you want to feel like a superstar for a day, go to a Taiwanese school. They took so many stinking pictures, and then someone got the amazing idea that we should all sign the prints of the pictures that came from their cameras. The poor students who didn't have cameras just got us to sign blank pieces of paper. It was crazy. There was one point where around 60 students were around us 8 missionaries, all taking pictures and yelling and getting our signatures. One girl started crying when a Sister missionary in my district had to leave. My smiling muscles were killing.

   

   I am so excited for Conference! I am really jealous of you that have already seen it! This week, we taught Ivan (the investigator who cancelled his baptism) an awesome lesson about how the Atonement of Jesus Christ has an influence in our daily lives, and he said he was willing to keep working towards baptism. It is going to be a long journey, but I am so excited! I love you all and I hope you enjoyed conference!

Xin Feng Missionaries! 

a girl that started crying when we had to leave. We got absolutely mauled at that Junior High

these our near our house, XinFeng is full of these flooded fields. 

Pretty cool, especially with the fog.

Buddhist temples are everywhere

we got to see this awesome antique lighthouse after we visited the elementary school

This is just a super awesome signpost by a park that we walked through the other day on

 exchanges with the zone leaders.While on exchanges, my companion totally slammed into one of those parking gate things and destroyed it, so today we had to go and pay 5000 塊. It was a bummer. 

My companion is a duan chuan, so I am basically training for the next three weeks, after which he will just go home again. duan chuan is literally translated "short (time) spread (gospel)", or temporary missionary. He is only a missionary for three weeks because they had to find a companion for me. So it is a little bit like going on splits for three weeks. I can't say too much for fear of him reading off my screen, but he has azbergers. We can just say it has been an interesting week and a half and the next week and a half will be interesting too. Definitely a test in patience, but he is also super awesome. We are having a pretty good time together, and my Chinese is really improving because we mostly speak Chinese together.

 it's kind of an interesting situation, especially when we paces around the apartment every night during planning in his whitey-titeys ;) it's definitely a good experience though, because I do most of the talking in street contacting and lessons are almost all me as well. It's been a struggle to get him involved as much as I can.

This is a picture of us emailing right now because I realized we hadn't taken a picture yet! Anyways, I better go, my computer time runs out less than a minute and then my computer will shut off at this internet cafe. I love you guys!!!!!