CALLED TO SERVE: Crime Scene, Runaway, and Love

The other night, we went to the chapel and saw the picture attached. Yes... that's blood. We were a little freaked out, and more than excited to put on our Sherlock hats and solve a mystery. We found a cigarette, NT$20 (not even US$1, not too exciting), and some napkins. Didn't help. As we surveyed the area though, we found two trails of blood running from the crime scene to two parts of the tall fence around our chapel. On the fence was a lot more blood. Our theory is this: a guy was bleeding really bad but not realizing it, hopped the fence to hang out at our chapel (no lights or security cameras) and smoke a cigarette, sat down where the crime scene was and shot the breeze for a few minutes until he realized he was bleeding really bad, went around the back way to avoid a streetlight, hopped back over the same fence, and disappeared into the night. Well, no way to confirm it, but I think Elder Puzey and I did OK at seeing a ton of blood and coming to conclusions as to what happened.

Miracle story! Elder Puzey and I were finding one day, and we were in a part of our area that we had never been before. It was in the middle of nowhere, but there were a ton of houses so we figured we would go knocking. It had rained most of the day, and we hadn't seen much success. I saw this random alleyway, and we turned down it. After going through these random alleys for a few minutes, we saw a place that looked cool and decided to knock. We rang the first doorbell (apartment buildings in Taiwan almost all have the doorbell speaker thing at the bottom) and they opened the door to let us in (it is hard to hear from the speaker thing so a lot of people just open it and talk to you when you come up). We went up, and she was super uninterested. She told us to go bother the people that lived above her. She probably didn't expect us to take her very seriously, but we went and did exactly that. The apartment directly above her didn't answer, and so did the other 4 or 5 doors on that floor. The last one on the floor answered, and Mr Yang 楊先生 answered the door. In a minute, he had given us his phone number and set up a time to come visit. Wow!

We visited him last week, and he has a crazy story. At 16 years old, his friend convinced him to drop out of school, steal all the money and valuables in his parent's home, and hop on a boat from the island of JingMen near mainland China to PingDeng in Taiwan. There, he opened a rather sketchy business--posting how to beat certain video games online and providing online video pornography. After that stopped making money and he had incurred half a million US dollars worth of debt from an underground loan company, he decided to open a gambling business. Out of the blue, his debt disappeared. Several years later, he discovered that his dad had paid the whole thing. Mr Yang got married last month to his girlfriend of 12 years, and the only thing he asked us to pray for was his cat that died a week or so ago. He is such a humble man, and very willing to listen to our message.

On that note, this week I studied the Christlike attribute of Charity and Love. I never would have thought about it, but love was so hard to put a definition to. Websters Dictionary didn't help. It is very interesting how skewed the world's definition of love is. After lots of thought and scripture studying, I decided that there were two most basic kinds of love: reciprocated unity of determination in a single wish or desire, and an unreciprocated but determined desire to have a single wish or desire. A married couple doesn't have to be perfect clones of each other to have love, but rather have perfect singleness of purpose. We don't have to have someone love us in order to love someone else, instead we can hope with our whole heart to be unified with them and serve them in any way that we are unified. I just thought it was interesting how closely love is related with distance--and not geographically. So, the gospel is the best way to feel of God's love. Why? Because it is the way we draw closer to our Heavenly Father. In the words of Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "Since 'God is love', the closer we approach Him, the more we profoundly experience love." I know that as I have drawn closer unto my Heavenly Father throughout my mission, I have felt His everlasting love. Speaking of love, I love all you guys and hope you have a great week!

These should be self-explanatory and really funny

Also, here is a general itinerary I was thinking for Taiwan. Saturday: Gugong in the morning, late lunch in beitou with maybe a quick hike, danshui warf for dinner and sunset, shilin nightmarket. Sunday: morning church (don't know where, Chinese or English), changkai shek memorial hall, Taipei 101, another quick hike that overlooks taipei. Monday: pingxi and shifen, elephant rock (ba dou zi), jiufen at night. Could probably do the monday stuff while still staying in a taipei hotel, although it is a pretty long drive (about an hour).

National Taiwan University. Best University in Taiwan, and has an incredible campus. Walked around it a little bit and took some pictures. Lots of pictures this week.

Buddhist "Hidden Treasure Temple"

'Artist Hill'. The artist village was a little to artsy for me, and was full of Asians dressed up like fruitcakes and leaning on mock city-scapes and taking pictures of their significant other. Even the art itself was much too modern, and I failed to be impressed by collages of an anime girl drawn next to pictures of rubber ducks, crowns, and 'will you merry me' posters.