Letter 64 (8/28/16)
Ok, so last week I shared the happiest and saddest news of my mission right? This week I'm going to share the greatest relief and the greatest excitement. The greatest relief: I am not, in fact, lactose intolerant. Most likely. Instead, I might have giardia. You know like the stuff that you get from drinking dirty water? Yep. Still not 100% sure, but I am on antibiotics for the next week. Last week I was told to drink a quart of milk and see if I exploded, and after I didn't explode the next assumption is that I have giardia. We will see.
Ok, so last week I shared the happiest and saddest news of my mission right? This week I'm going to share the greatest relief and the greatest excitement. The greatest relief: I am not, in fact, lactose intolerant. Most likely. Instead, I might have giardia. You know like the stuff that you get from drinking dirty water? Yep. Still not 100% sure, but I am on antibiotics for the next week. Last week I was told to drink a quart of milk and see if I exploded, and after I didn't explode the next assumption is that I have giardia. We will see.
Crazy big changes in the mission lately! By far the biggest is that from now on Elders will only teach men and Sisters will only teach women. The hope is that we will focus more on finding families instead, and that we can more easily avoid situations where inappropriate relationships develop between missionaries and investigators.Sounds simple, but that is crazy!! It means we have to take all of our investigators who are women, and if they aren't really close to baptism we have to give them to the Sisters. With that change, we will probably be handing over 張寶心 Zhang Bao Xin, 鍾姐妹 Sister Zhong, and 王雅慧 Wang Ya Hui to the Sisters. I think the change will be really good over the long run, but it means we have to work a lot harder now in our areas because there aren't any Sisters in our ward. Also, us and the Zone Leaders have combined areas because we are in the same ward. Strange things are happening!
The best change this last week and the greatest excitement this last week was that I am training!! The call came in last Tuesday night, and then I went to Taipei to meet him on Thursday! I am so excited! His name is Elder Dickson, and he is from Missouri. He is a little soft-spoken, but his Chinese is super awesome and he has a lot of great ideas for how we can make the work more effective. I am a little nervous about being a trainer, but certainly not more than I am grateful for this trust to help a new missionary get used to the missionary life and become a baptizing missionary! I've heard from everyone that being a trainer really changes your mission and teaches you so much, and I am so excited to learn everything I can from him during the next two transfers. I love you all so much and hope you have a great week!
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I probably don't need a new camera sent because if I really do need one I can just buy one here. It works fine though, it is just something wrong with the cable. This last week was exciting because the laundry machine broke after I had already put it all in with bleach and detergent, so I just manually filled it up with water and hand scrubbed all my laundry!! Super fun!! We also plan on taking my trainee to eat pigs blood this week and maybe some stinky tofu, so wish him luck. The giardiia isn't actually too bad, it is mostly just funny. I am just burping all the time lately, which led me to talk to the mission nurse. We still aren't 100% sure what is even causing me to burp though, so we are exploring possibilities. The other Elders make fun of me every time I burp now though and say I have giardiaiaiiiaa. Sort of a running joke. So umm, quick question. Every time I have to wake up before 6 in the morning I get super bad headaches for the whole day and my stomach goes off on a wild rampage like a tornado in a cowpatch. Is there anything I can do to keep the cows on the ground? It would just be nice to wake up a half hour early every once in a while to get extra stuff done without killing myself for the rest of the day. Any tips would be great! I love you all so much! I hope you have such an awesome week!
Me at 七星潭 QiXingTan! It is an absolutely beautiful beach you should look up on Google Pictures. Also, bad news. My camera ran out of battery and for some reason the cable isn't working. So I can't charge my camera or get photos off it. What I have been doing is stealing other cameras and putting my SD card inside, but hopefully I will get my camera fixed by next week.
Small plant growing out of an old stump
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