Hello family!
The only sign of Valentines Day here was a little balloon on the senior missionaries desk back at the mission office. We don't celebrate Valentines Day here, and well thats probably for the best. Don't want too many elders sitting at home eating chocolate reading dear John's. In fact we don't want any elders like that! (of course...)
It's been raining pretty consistantly here as well, and surprisingly enough, it's cold. It's probably like 50 degrees, which is nothing compared to the 0 back in Utah, but it's so humid here you're slightly cold no matter where you are. It's getting a lot better tho, weather wise :)
Have I told you that everything here in Taiwan in amazing? Because seriously it is. The food is to die for, and we normally get all you can eat rice meals, for 50 kuai. (i don't know how much that is in American, I'll leave you to figure that out :) Traffic here is really quite amusing. Everyone thinks that Asian drivers are really bad, when really they are quite impressive, I haven't seen things back at home that these people can pull off. They are super defensive, and they seem to know everything that's going on. I don't think I've seen any accidents, and everyone is just super friendly. They like to let you know that your behind them (just a little honk) and they always give a little honk just before running a red light. It's great :)
Today is "Power Cleaning Day" (much better than Valentines day if you ask me) and our appartment (sp?) looks amazing! (as expected of course) We also went over and helped out another couple of elders clean theirs (they helped with ours as well)
As for our investigators, they're all going swimmingly. I met a super prepared individual yesterday, and I'm excited to teach him more tonight.
Well the book is blue, the book is true. Lately I've been really thinking about the power of music, and how it really does have a dramatic effect. While in the MTC my companions and I sang in the choir, and that was really such a great experience, to be able to invite the spirit, and enjoy the gift of music. I really believe that music has a dramatic effect on our lives, and it wasn't until recently I've noticed how much of an impact is has on me specifivally. When we sing hymns, or listen to church music it really makes me uplifted and helps me think about the good things I'm currently doing, and things I'll do better. At other times I look back on my life and think about some of the other music I used to listen, and how that may have effected the rest of my day. I'm so greatful for my great access to uplifting music, and I encourage you all back to listen to the kind of music that invites the Spirit, and get rid of the music that invites pride and unrighteous doing. I love you all, and it's amazing to hear how amzing you all are, and I look forward to hearing more!
Wan an :)
-Elder Tate
-Tang zhanglao
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Jared's first letter from Taiwan
Well quite a bit has happened since I hung up the phone on tuesday, so I'll probably just go in chronological order hao bu hao? (natalie can translate)
So right after I hung up the phone I started talking with the lady that offered for me to use her cell phone ( when I couldn't get the other phone to work) and that was pretty exciting. It was a lot in Chinese, but she also had good english so it wasm't too hard. She agreed to let the missionaries to contact her (she lives in Taichung so who knows maybe I'll see her again!) and I got her info so that they can :)
Then I had a 14 hour plan ride to Taiwan, not super exciting, I st next to Missionaries, read through 3 Nephi (which is amazing, I highly recommend it.) and slept. When we got to Taiwan we met our Mission president, President Bishop, he was very nice, and we rode the bus back to some zone leaders house (conviently my zone leaders now.) The next morning we discovered that as part of the mission culture we all wake up at 6 (the norm is 6:30) and go running. It was way cool because we got to see more of the city :)
then we did a bunch of orientation stuff, for awhile, had some really good taiwanese food. So far I have eaten pork blood (jello style and rice soaked in pork blood style) and a duck head (in it's entirety) So far no problems with shrimp/crab, and seeing it has been pretty rare as well :)
Then after that things got pretty exciting, we did an activity called the "Dan Jones." We went to a super crowded night market (like super crowded, most place it is difficult to move) and stood in the middle and started by singing love at home(chinese of course). After that we took turns getting on soap boxes and bearing our testimonies, Dan Jones style. That we quite the trill, and afterwards we went contacting in the same market :)
The next day I met my Trainer, Elder Johnson, he's really amazing, he's been zone leader like 6 times, and he really knows what he's doing, it's quite nice, and after that we got straight to work.
I'm serving in the Taiping region of Taizhong, so it's still very crowded, huge city, but we also have some more suburbs areas. The thing about this area is that we're doing a thing called "white washing" which means we're the first missionaries assigned to this area. (it's a little more difficult to explain, but pretty much an area split in half, and we're the missionaries in the new region.)
As of right now we have one progressing investigator, he's pretty much amazing. Wen og doogk is his name, and he's actually Vietnemese. His English is poor at best, and he doesn't speak a lick of Chinese, but he still puts up with us. We merely give him passages from book of Mormon (we have a vietnemese one luckily) to read and we try and discuss it with him. He comes to church every week (Even though he understands nothing about what's going on) and loves it. We managed to teach him how to pray, and he reads and prays daily (or at least we hope so... it's a little difficult to be able to tell)
Umm besides that we contact people like crazy, and we met the ward yesterday. The Ward is ridiculously amazing. One brother came up to me and gave me a big hug, even though I've never met him. And another has a limit put on him for the number of times he can take missionaries out to dinner because he spends too much of his money treating missionaries out.
Today is Monday, most of the time will be spent trying to get more Vietnemese books, and buying stuff, and tonight we have quite a few appointments, and some of them seem really good so I'm excited :)
Right now I am typing this from a ghetto little internet cafe, and all around me are people playing games like Warcraft and such. It's quite lawls :)
Well I love it here! The people are amazing. It started raining last night, and riding around in the rain was actually really fun. I'm going to enjoy it here :)
The church is true, Joseph Smith was a prophet, and he really translated the Book of Mormon for us, and this is such a blessing to the world.
Yesterday I contacted a funny elderly man who asked me why none of the missionaries are French, and their all Americans.
Love you! :D
So right after I hung up the phone I started talking with the lady that offered for me to use her cell phone ( when I couldn't get the other phone to work) and that was pretty exciting. It was a lot in Chinese, but she also had good english so it wasm't too hard. She agreed to let the missionaries to contact her (she lives in Taichung so who knows maybe I'll see her again!) and I got her info so that they can :)
Then I had a 14 hour plan ride to Taiwan, not super exciting, I st next to Missionaries, read through 3 Nephi (which is amazing, I highly recommend it.) and slept. When we got to Taiwan we met our Mission president, President Bishop, he was very nice, and we rode the bus back to some zone leaders house (conviently my zone leaders now.) The next morning we discovered that as part of the mission culture we all wake up at 6 (the norm is 6:30) and go running. It was way cool because we got to see more of the city :)
then we did a bunch of orientation stuff, for awhile, had some really good taiwanese food. So far I have eaten pork blood (jello style and rice soaked in pork blood style) and a duck head (in it's entirety) So far no problems with shrimp/crab, and seeing it has been pretty rare as well :)
Then after that things got pretty exciting, we did an activity called the "Dan Jones." We went to a super crowded night market (like super crowded, most place it is difficult to move) and stood in the middle and started by singing love at home(chinese of course). After that we took turns getting on soap boxes and bearing our testimonies, Dan Jones style. That we quite the trill, and afterwards we went contacting in the same market :)
The next day I met my Trainer, Elder Johnson, he's really amazing, he's been zone leader like 6 times, and he really knows what he's doing, it's quite nice, and after that we got straight to work.
I'm serving in the Taiping region of Taizhong, so it's still very crowded, huge city, but we also have some more suburbs areas. The thing about this area is that we're doing a thing called "white washing" which means we're the first missionaries assigned to this area. (it's a little more difficult to explain, but pretty much an area split in half, and we're the missionaries in the new region.)
As of right now we have one progressing investigator, he's pretty much amazing. Wen og doogk is his name, and he's actually Vietnemese. His English is poor at best, and he doesn't speak a lick of Chinese, but he still puts up with us. We merely give him passages from book of Mormon (we have a vietnemese one luckily) to read and we try and discuss it with him. He comes to church every week (Even though he understands nothing about what's going on) and loves it. We managed to teach him how to pray, and he reads and prays daily (or at least we hope so... it's a little difficult to be able to tell)
Umm besides that we contact people like crazy, and we met the ward yesterday. The Ward is ridiculously amazing. One brother came up to me and gave me a big hug, even though I've never met him. And another has a limit put on him for the number of times he can take missionaries out to dinner because he spends too much of his money treating missionaries out.
Today is Monday, most of the time will be spent trying to get more Vietnemese books, and buying stuff, and tonight we have quite a few appointments, and some of them seem really good so I'm excited :)
Right now I am typing this from a ghetto little internet cafe, and all around me are people playing games like Warcraft and such. It's quite lawls :)
Well I love it here! The people are amazing. It started raining last night, and riding around in the rain was actually really fun. I'm going to enjoy it here :)
The church is true, Joseph Smith was a prophet, and he really translated the Book of Mormon for us, and this is such a blessing to the world.
Yesterday I contacted a funny elderly man who asked me why none of the missionaries are French, and their all Americans.
Love you! :D
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Jared 1/31
Hi family! Okay so I leave next Tuesday! Crazy Right?! I'm so excited! How long has it been? 3 months? I stopped keeping track, and now I just count down till I actually leave :D
We keep on hearing cool things from Taiwan. The latest thing is apparently they have spiders that a foot in diameter! Cool right? Freaks my companions out to no end, but I like the idea of hanging out with those, and eat "1000 year old eggs" supposedly way strange, but that's okay :)
So i've officially been here too long. I think I'm getting to the point that I feel like this is my mission, and I'll just never leave. And we speak so much Chinese sometimes it weirds me out when other people speak english. We were watching the Joseph Smith movie last night and I had 2 moments that made me realize I've been here way too long. The first was about half way through I thought to myself "Wow, why are they still speaking english." The second was there was a girl running (in her twenties or something) and I thought to my self "Oh know! she won't be able to see her companion!" Lawls right?
I should be sending a package home soon. It's not very exciting for you. It's merely a collection of all the letters I've gotten here, because I don't want to throw them away, and I don't want to carry them around. So if you could just put that with my box or something that'd be great :) There should also be a few more pictures for you to oggle at. :)
Hmmm.... I don't know what else you would have interest in. Everything is pretty much the same here... Oh yeah! brb
okay. SO I'll be leaving on February 8th 2011 :)
From 12:25 PM to 3:50PM I will be on layover in LAX. You may not come and visit me, however I will be giving you a call sometime during that time block. I am aware that the girls will most likely be in school, and you're all pretty busy, but I am permitted to give a small call so I'll do that :) Unless you have a time that you particularly want me to call during, I will try and call around 1:30? How does that sound? Well let me know.
Love you very much :) Thank you parents for reading the scriptures everyday. At the time I never really realized the blessings that came from it, but now I can see the effect of being able to gather every night and just read a page. I love the scriptures, I love this church, but most of all I love you <3
-Tang zhanglao
-Elder Tate :)
We keep on hearing cool things from Taiwan. The latest thing is apparently they have spiders that a foot in diameter! Cool right? Freaks my companions out to no end, but I like the idea of hanging out with those, and eat "1000 year old eggs" supposedly way strange, but that's okay :)
So i've officially been here too long. I think I'm getting to the point that I feel like this is my mission, and I'll just never leave. And we speak so much Chinese sometimes it weirds me out when other people speak english. We were watching the Joseph Smith movie last night and I had 2 moments that made me realize I've been here way too long. The first was about half way through I thought to myself "Wow, why are they still speaking english." The second was there was a girl running (in her twenties or something) and I thought to my self "Oh know! she won't be able to see her companion!" Lawls right?
I should be sending a package home soon. It's not very exciting for you. It's merely a collection of all the letters I've gotten here, because I don't want to throw them away, and I don't want to carry them around. So if you could just put that with my box or something that'd be great :) There should also be a few more pictures for you to oggle at. :)
Hmmm.... I don't know what else you would have interest in. Everything is pretty much the same here... Oh yeah! brb
okay. SO I'll be leaving on February 8th 2011 :)
From 12:25 PM to 3:50PM I will be on layover in LAX. You may not come and visit me, however I will be giving you a call sometime during that time block. I am aware that the girls will most likely be in school, and you're all pretty busy, but I am permitted to give a small call so I'll do that :) Unless you have a time that you particularly want me to call during, I will try and call around 1:30? How does that sound? Well let me know.
Love you very much :) Thank you parents for reading the scriptures everyday. At the time I never really realized the blessings that came from it, but now I can see the effect of being able to gather every night and just read a page. I love the scriptures, I love this church, but most of all I love you <3
-Tang zhanglao
-Elder Tate :)
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