Taiwan Taipei Mission

You're probably confused at this title but I'll explain why. Its Wednesday, the day of transfers, everyone is antsy waiting for the call to move. 12 o'clock passes by, still nothing, another two hours pass and everyone is confused. All of a sudden the phone goes off and there it is, the link to transfers....And my baby moved! My baby moved to 松山 to be with her dad (aka my companion right before I trained her) and I am staying here in Zhongli! They thought I would be leaving but nah I'm here for six months hahaha can't get rid of me, I'm like a cockroach that I never leave.

At first when transfer calls came I was so confused and a little angry at first I'm not gonna lie. With only three transfers left and already being in this area for three, I was kind of expecting to leave but then I didn't. I kept asking why to Heavenly Father and I felt like I was getting absolutely nothing. Then we went to a baptism for our elders (two of our investigators went which was a big blessing) and in one of the talks something hit me. She said that God's path is not our path. God's plan for us is not our plan. What I want may not be what God wants and I have to trust His will. I still don't understand why I'm here or what I still have to do in Zhongli but my work here apparently is not done! My new companion is from 台中, her name is 謝佳汶姊妹!

We've been really trying to meet with more members and work with them and less actives. One cool thing is when we had just finished eating with an LA we were going to go home and do WPS but we took the wrong street home, suddenly my companion sees this lady with a dog and we stop to talk with her. She's from Indonesia but is also Chinese. She was super interested in our church and is actually already Christian. We set her up to come to church this week and she came for all three hours!!

Angelina is the closest one to baptism and my last lesson with her and sister Sorenson didn't go so well cause her children were going crazy but the next day we went over (with my new companion) and it went so much better having members there to help teach is so important! I talked to her at church yesterday and asked her about baptism and she's pretty set on it so we set up her interview for tomorrow! We are hoping everything goes alright and she can get baptized this Saturday!

We had a huge blessing to get four people to come to church and three of them were our baptismal date investigators, with a lot of running around trying to set up members and take care of our investigators all went smoothly and everyone had a good time! Phew.

Nonspiritual thoughts:

A mosquito bit me through a glove at night Hahaha. I've resorted to buying a mosquito net.

I've been learning so many cheesy pickup lines in Chinese lately and it's so funny lol I just keep using them on sister Chu.

A lady that works at this Noodle shop across from the church came over to give us the love of my life aka fried chicken cause transfers were coming up.

Well....Transfers is coming up again and so we are really unsure of what is happening, but it is most likely that I only have a couple days left in 中壢

It feels weird to say that I only have three transfers left, I feel like time is flying by and I am like WAIT I AM NOT READY YET.

This past week it has been constantly raining and it makes you wonder....Does the sun exist? cause all I see are clouds and rain. Its been raining so much that we are unsure if we will ever see a clear sky again. The pool that is outside our building that is usually empty has at least six inches in it.

What happened this week:

So last week was really hard for our whole district and we were all just in the slums but we had an awesome district meeting (as always...I feel like I always leave those feeling pumped as ever to do missionary work) and now our theme for our district and this week were "It's razzle week everyone so give me some of that dazzle!" Our district started brainstorming more and more ways to do missionary work and how to improve. One thing our zone leader said that was super cool was that in order to be a successful missionary was to first be as obedient as you possibly can, work as hard as you can, and be constantly changing/improving.

So this week we were ready...We were ready to give it our all and go to work. We have really been trying to pray before every finding opportunity and to tell Heavenly Father our goal. For example,we kept praying on Wednesday that we would get a new investigator from English class. It was hard Cause most people in our class are guys and we hadn't been getting new students lately, but then all of a sudden when we get there that night there's this new lady. We see her and we are hoping she's having a good time and then after class we try and go set up with her. It turns out that she had been to churches before and she liked the environment but just didn't like them when they bashed on other churches. I quickly explained that we respect all religions and then we had figured out that because she liked the environment so much and had wanted to learn English, she purposely looked up online for English classes in a church building!! She came to church yesterday!

Another cool one was when we tried to go visit this investigator about thirty minutes before a ward activity. We went in the rain to her store and she wasn't there. Contemplating our time, I'm sure we could have gone to a 7/11 and made some calls or gone to the activity early, but we knew we had to find new people. So we decided to go knocking (now I've found only a little success from this but it never worked in the city so I was like might as well keep trying here right?) so we stop and we are like where should we go? We start biking but then we realize that we are just turning down random streets, so we stop and we set some goals and then said a quick prayer to Heavenly Father asking Him where should we go and asking to help us get some set ups out of it. We realized we didn't have much time, but I got the impression to go down this one street, this street had a lot of nicer looking houses and my companion at first was like are we sure we want to go down here? (we had tried some fancy houses the night before and they all had said no) but I was like yeah I think we should just try here cause why not? What do we have to lose?So it as super cool cause the first door we ring we hear the lady pick up but I don't know if she couldn't hear me or not but then she hung up. I rang it again because who knows why but then we hear a "hello?" from above us and so I get off my bike and there they are standing on their balcony. Long story short we were able to do a quick contact and ask when we could come back and share a message with him. He set up for Sunday night and it was such a cool miracle!!

Then we start biking a bit farther down the street and we see this person pull into their garage with their motor scooter. We immediately stop and we all just stare at each other and awkwardly say hi. We start talking about the restoration with him and he's like that's cool and then I was like have you been to church and he was like yeah when I was younger but I don't remember a lot. Then I asked...So what plans do you have Sunday? He's like I have none whatsoever. Me;

PERFECT cause we have church. So we made sure that he was pretty set on coming to church to just try it out! He came to all three hours and the elders set up with him!

We also set a goal to get into a house within the next half an hour of our finding time and so we set down on this street and the third door we knocked on she turned out to be Christian! She said what are the odds you would knock on my door when I know for a fact that there are only two Christians on this street, this has to be God's doing.

Nonspiritual thoughts:
Okay you know the story that I wrote about earlier where the guy came on his balcony and we were able to contact him? well yeah it was super awkward at first cause this is how it went down in the English translation version:
Me: Hi! How are you two doing?
Them:(the guy and this lady next to him) pretty good
Me: Wow you guys are so young, is she your wife? she's super pretty!!
*The lady then walks back into their house*
Him: That's my mom.
Me: *my series of emotions and facial expressions as expressed through emojis*

oh....So sorry hahaha...Well you can tell your mom that she is super pretty. She looks super young.

So we are riding last night and trying to find some people right? well my companion sees this lady that has the same car as her mom and so I'm like let's talk to her and you can say that! Bless my companion (And don't worry she said I could write about this cause it's funny) but she says to the lady, "我的媽媽有一樣的茄子“ instead of "我的媽媽有一樣的車子“ So in English instead of saying "My mom has the same car!" she said "My mom has the same eggplant!"

So you know the lady I wrote about earlier that was Christian? Well she answered the door and we get let into this lady's house and when we first walk in we see her kneeling down wiping this toxic green looking liquid off the floor and we are like whatever it's fine so we sit down and start sharing about the first lesson. Part way through the lesson this horrible smell hits me and I'm like what 什麼東西 is this smell and I see her daughter come out and wipe up this stuff off the floor and it was because the dog had pooped on the floor!! So she cleans it up and my companion and I are trying to secretly plug our noses and keep teaching. We continue on with the lesson when the same smell hits us again and we are like WOAH THIS DOG NEEDS TO CONTROL ITSELF cause then it steps in its own poo and starts running around and we are like DON'T TOUCH OUR STUFF. The daughter comes out again and cleans the poop up and we try and salvage the rest of the lesson. So we are almost done with the lesson when I look at the floor and there it is....ANOTHER PILE OF POOP. The smell hits us hard and I tell the lady that her dog had once again pooped and she yelled for her daughter to clean it up. Needless to say the dog got ten times less cute because it kept pooping during our lesson, stepping in it, and then running around. The struggle was real.

Words from our wise district leader cause this week is razzle and dazzle week: We are killing it yalls... it's almost like we have a bedazzle on our body top 身上。We are beating every before this week but don't forget this month we will get at least 5 baptisms and 13 new investigators and at least 2 new baptismal dates to hit the standards of razzlement.
#razzleit #givemedatdazzle

This one former we called was having a meh day 還好 (ok) day. When I asked her what the best part of her day was she said she had none so I was like can I tell you a joke? it basically was this pickup line that this youth had told me and it got her laughing and then she set up with us...So we are pretty sure the pickup line is what really hooked her hahaha hahaha.

We were talking about one of our baptismal dates in district meeting and our district leader kept getting her name wrong and calling her Angela instead of Angelina and so his companion was like it's Angelina Jolie 的 Angela (because in Chinese sometimes you can shorten words or some words will be a compound of two different words or they sound similar and you want to know which word it is and to figure out you could ask them 那一個 (which one) and then the word and then they explain, so for example if you were like oh it's 每天的每 it's meitian de mei (which means it is like every since meitian means everyday) okay I give up trying to explain this...You just got to understand Chinese to realize how it's funny. 我放棄了。(I gave up)

We told our English class that I would probably be leaving this next week and so in the English class line group this one guy kept posting that they would miss me and I felt so awkward cause I was like... it's not a big deal the English class is awesome with or without me. and then he's like it does matter and then he posted a song dedicated to me titled "with or without you" HAHAHAHAHHAHA.

So I am getting my hair dyed right? Well this ward member is hilarious and she's like you're going to have 布丁頭 or in other words I would have pudding hair cause they have this pudding here that is yellow and then has this black line at the bottom. So they told me to take a picture with pudding once I have it done. Then this one member was like don't do it cause then how am I going to recognize you!! Then the one member who called me pudding head was like you'll see her walking with pudding hair and you'll just know it's Sister Chao.