Week 6

Hi all,

 I found the bike order form in the mission call packet - Thanks for reminding me I had a copy.

Apparently I was the only who got the form in Mandarin.

Everyone is now requesting to have me send a picture of me on my ordered bike as it is likely to not be the right size and I’ll have my knees by my ears!

About my visa I think all is OK but they had us sign something for it.... but the person who helped process it pointed to a line a said sign here, so striving to be the obedient Elder I desire to be, I began to sign at that line, when he then said, no not that line!!! So who knows what will happen now!

We get to be escorts next Wednesday, and the Wednesday after that - so that will be fun remembering how I felt being dropped off and hopefully re-assuring all the greenies.

Today we get to clean the Temple which is why I’m emailing in the morning, and after this week it will be open, so I’ll get to go at least twice more before I will do a session in Mandarin.

You can send pictures in email, as others do it all the time, so I know it works.

It feels weird for sure being the oldest Mandarin speakers here, although we are excited because this Wednesday we get new Taiwan Taibei missionaries in our zone so were pretty excited!

Haven’t seen any General Authorities yet, when they were here for the new mission president conference, they kept that whole building on lockdown.

Thanks for asking (worrying) about my dry cleaning needs.  They have a service here for dry cleaning; I’m trying to stall out until like the week before I leave to get that done so I show-up in Taiwan with all clean suits.

Lessons are a 3 hour series two times a day with two different teachers.  Both our teachers are awesome! First is sister Weinheimer who is incredible! She is from St. George, Utah but we talked to other teachers and missionaries, and apparently she is like a legend in the Taiwan Taichung mission. The other teacher is Sister Chen, from Provo Utah, but her parents are from Taiwan and she just got back less than six months ago from the Taiwan Taibei mission! Most of our lessons end up having her talk about Taiwan, which just makes us all want to go right now! Usually we'll do about an hour of language study, and hour of teaching our investigator (so if three companionships teach, 20 min each) then some gospel oriented lesson, or coaching when the teacher picks a companionship to work with.

Cool thing that happened yesterday. We get a long walk to the Temple every Sunday, and on this one we saw our teacher sister Chen, so we went up to talk to her, and turns out she was showing around some people from China! So we extended our temple walk time by about an hour, and just talked with them - so much fun!  We even got to teach some as well!! We also began Skype-teaching during some of our lesson time. Of course when Elder Sullivan and I tried to do it, the computers were broken - figures - but in the end we were able to Skype Sister Weinhiemer’s past ward mission leader back in Taiwan. Super fun!

Good to know that the MTC will hire me when I get back - I would absolutely love to teach when I’m a RM - It would really be lots of fun. You get to be investigators for one, and I don’t know for sure but it seems like it would be very cool to help others!  I know Mandarin teachers are in demand as both our teachers are leaving because they are graduating.

A lot of routine here, nothing ever really changes except my Spirit - which is the point.  Crazy I’ll be starting week 7 soon, and in about 22 days I leave for Taiwan! Having fun, absolutely exhausted, but I love it! Miss you and love you all lots!

Ding Zhang Lao