TAIWANESE BIRTHDAY

Another amazing week in Taiwan! I turned 19 yesterday! I've never experienced so many ups, downs, tears of joy, tears of stress, and sweat. SO MUCH SWEAT. I've still yet to understand nearly anything anyone ever says in Chinese, but each day it gets a little better. The key is to try to keep a good attitude about it. Each day feels like it's a million degrees outside and we're biking all day. I always think there's no way I can sweat more, but then I walk outside again.

Riding our bikes on the street is probably the best part of the mission so far. We swerve in and out of traffic, around cars, scooters, buses, people, and nearly get hit multiple times a day.

P-Day we went on a pretty fun hike that looks over Taipei 101 and almost all of Taipei, it was super beautiful.

A few funny stories this week, we were giving a lesson in a 7 and then out of nowhere some old guys start yelling at each other and that swinging at each other! It was like a boxing match! It was super funny because it was behind the investigator's back so he couldn't see what was happening and so we just kept on teaching. Also, the trash here comes at 2:30 and 7:30 most days. However, we're always outside teaching or finding during that time, so our trash usually piles up. We set aside time to return to our apartment at 2:30 so we could toss out the mound of trash, but we forgot and then heard the truck's song from down the street (the trash trucks here play the same song as American ice cream trucks....it's so disappointing.) We sprinted to our apartment, grabbed our trash, and started sprinting after the truck. Good news is...after about half a mile, we caught up to the truck!

In terms of weird food I got to eat this week, a member treated is out to...sticky tofu...I could smell it from several streets away. Why anyone would ever want to eat something that smells that bad I'll never know. But to my surprise, it actually tasted decent. It's not something I'd want everyday, but it's not the worst thing I've ever eaten! 

We have two wards that we attend because there aren't any Elders for the XinBan ward. So officially we're over the XinPu ward, but we also go to all of XinBan's activities. It's tough because that means we go to 6 hours of Church, and I still can't understand anything anyone says, so it's hard to sit there and stay awake for 6 hours haha. XinBan had a Talent Show and one of our investigators, Zhang di xiong (di xiong=brother), was performing at it. He has a baptismal date for the 26th of this month, and he's so close to being ready for it, but he doesn't see the importance of Church attendance yet. From my experiences thus far, that's the most difficult thing for the Taiwanese people. They are such hard-workers and are always at their job, so to give up a day and spend 3 hours at Church is unheard of. Another difficulty we've been facing is parents not allowing their children to be baptized. In Taiwan, they have to be 20 years old until they can be baptized without their parents consent. We have 3 baptisms that could happen tomorrow if their parents were okay with it. It's very frustrating, but we have to be respectful of the parents and their permission. 

Our XinPu ward had a special Father's Day activity at Church (Father's day is on 8/8 in Taiwan) and we had 7 investigators go. It's amazing when the ward puts on activities like that so that we can invite less actives and investigators. We visited one less active this week who has polio, and so it's very tough for him to come to Church, but out of no where he calls of 5 minutes before Church started and he just said, "Which floor is it on again?" It was a big surprised but also a small miracle/motivator for me to see him come all the way from his house to attend Church. 

We started to meet with Li Ming Hong this past week. He's a college student right now and he's been an amazing investigator. He's asked questions I've never even thought of before. He's understood, prayed about, and accepted everything we've taught him so far. I can feel his testimony of the Gospel already and we've only been meeting with him for a week. We set his baptism for the 9th of next month and he's already been making plans to be ready by then. We also met with Wu Zhen Yuan this week, who's been an investigator for about a month now, and he told us that he has realized God really is his Heavenly Father and he said he's never had such a peaceful feeling in his life before he met this Gospel. This was HUGE for him because he's been struggling to decide for himself these past few weeks. He also gave a firm "willing" to prepare for his baptismal date at the end of this month. We are trying everything we can to help these investigators continue to build their faith as they prepare for baptism. 

Not everything is sunshine and daisies. Honestly, there are many more downs than ups, but the ups leave you feeling so good about what you're doing. I've never spent 100% of my time on everyone BUT myself. The language has humbled me so much, and it's hard to not think about how comfortable I could be at home right now instead of in a random country who's language I can't speak. But when you experience seeing the change the Gospel brings to people's lives, it makes it all worth it. These two years are not about me. It's helping people and their families have a life-time, and eternity, of joy.

Elder Smith (施長老)