Craziest Week of My Life

I don't even know where to begin. We landed in Taiwan on Wednesday, the flight was about 14 hours long and felt like an eternity. The jet lag wasn't bad at all though because I forced myself to not sleep on the flight so I could sleep well the first night there.

When we got off the plane the humidity and heat hit me like a truck. Within 30 seconds I was already sweating more than I thought was possible. And you never get used to it. I've been hot and wet since I got here, but I've just accepted it haha. We spent a night in the Mission Home which is right next to the Taipei Temple. We had a little bit of orientation and then got our trainers.

My trainer is Elder Jorgensen, he's from Utah and has been on his mission for almost a year now. His Chinese is amazing and he's always so energetic. He is a great example on how to connect with people and the way he teaches is amazing. He's helped me so much already with the language and how to street contact/teach lessons. I don't really do much in lessons though because I can understand 1 word out of about every 100 that the natives say haha. I've felt lost in nearly every conversation since I've gotten here, but it's a super fun experience. 

My area is called XinPu. It's basically in the center of Taipei. The city is amazing. It's super packed with crazy traffic but that's what makes it so fun. 90% of people ride motorcycles/scooters here, so the roads are crazy.

And all the "traffic rules" are just suggestions apparently, so it's basically free-for-all, but I actually like that better than how it is in America because there's never any road rage, everyone just flows with the traffic. Since we're in the city there's the MRT (basically the metro), and we take that a lot to get places super quick. On Saturday night there was a Typhoon hitting Taiwan, and my companion and I were out on our bikes when the heavy part of it hit. Out of nowhere we could literally see a huge gust of wind coming right at us, and it completely stopped us and our bikes in our tracks, picked us up off the ground, and tossed us back. There were motorcycles and people being tossed everywhere. We kept riding home (don't tell my mom) and with a lot of effort and trash/branches flying at us we finally made it and ran inside. A few minutes later a member come over (DURING A TYPHOON) and brought us food. The members and people of Taiwan are so nice and hard-working. I've learned so much from just a few days with them.

We meet so many people and teach so many lessons that it's hard to remember them all, but my first night here we were talking to and old Taiwanese guy on the street for about 20 minutes, and then at the end of talking we were taking a picture with him and then he turns and gives me a big fat kiss on the cheek. My trainer couldn't stop laughing. My first night in Taiwan I got kissed by an old guy with barely any teeth left. Oh man I love Taiwan haha. The food is absolutely amazing. Everything I've had so far has tasted better than everything I've ever had in America. And it's all so cheap. We get a meal for normally less than $2 USD. There was one really rich member who took us out to eat at a super fancy expensive restaurant, and he forced me to eat chicken testicle...well I guess that's something I can check off the to-do list... to be honest is actually didn't taste too bad. I'd eat it again if I had the chance.

Yesterday was my first time at church, and so I got invited up to speak in Sacrament meeting. But the thing is I didn't know I was invited up until everyone started looking at me. My companion nudged me and so I walked up and just basically said anything I knew how to say in Chinese. The whole 3 hours I couldn't understand anything, but my trainer translated a lot for me so I could at least sort of follow along. 

We have so many different people we're meeting with right now. Most of our lessons are taught in 7-11's (they just call them "the 7" here) because they have about 3 or 4 on nearly every street in Taiwan. We have 7 people with baptismal dates, and we found 4 new investigators this week. I don't have much time to go into depth, but something I've realized in this first week is how important each person is. We study for, pray for, and teach specifically to the needs of every single person. Everyone has different issues, conflicts, and concerns, and the only way to know how to best help them with those is through the Holy Ghost. There's no way to do this work without the Holy Ghost leading and guiding us. 

Elder Smith （施長老）