By the time it gets to Monday, I forget all of the things that just happened in the past week. All I remember are the things from the weekend. But it was a very exciting weekend!
The big deal this weekend was the Worldwide Broadcast on Sunday. I hope a lot of you got the chance to watch it. It was really neat to see most of the Twelve Apostles there and to hear them speak. We missionaries especially liked the new announcements from L. Tom Perry about some of the changes in the missionary work. I'm sure those will be taking place soon after I get to Taiwan.
Singing in that choir was so much fun! For those of you who didn't see the broadcast, the choir was HUGE. At least 2000 people. But of course, with a choir that size, it is quite a process to do anything and everything. Just walking to the Marriott center took quite a while. I think the intention was to have 1100 missionaries and 1100 members, but I think the end result was about 700 members and 1400 missionaries. It was kind of crazy. It was so cool to sing with a group that big in that huge auditorium.
This week has also been the week of the plague. There's a nasty stomach virus that started getting people sick early last week. We started hearing about it on Tuesday. And then there was an Elder in our zone who got sick. And then one of the zone leaders got sick, and now one of the Elders in my district has gotten sick. So we're all trying to be really careful. I hand sanitize at least 10 times a day. MTC-wide, we're no longer allowed to handshake, and all of the cafeteria is plasticware. Hopefully it doesn't spread too much more than this.
Last week, instead of doing normal TRC on saturday, we did a skype call and taught a member who actually lives in Taibei! It was really neat. It wasn't our smoothest lesson, because we weren't told we would be teaching beforehand, but it was surprisingly well. It was so relieving to be able to understand what she said (or at least enough to extract meaning)!
I'm so anxious to get out to the field. I know I still have a WHOLE lot to learn, and I know my Chinese in the next 3 weeks is going to improve so much faster than it has before, but I'm just really excited to start serving and loving the people of Taiwan!
Some other notes:
-One of my main responsibilities as district leader is getting the mail. Since I go to get the mail after lunch and dinner everyday, before I leave, two or three of the elders in my district sing the "Here's the mail" song from Blue's Clues. Every day. Twice a day. I just have to roll my eyes every time.
-When we pronounce the word "Skype" in English, we have the silent e at the end. But how Taiwanese people pronounce it, which is the way our teachers pronounce it is "Sky-pee." It's really funny.
-When our teacher Mu Laoshi was in his last area in Malaysia, he had an elder living in the same house as him that was a native that only spoke Malay and English. So because my teacher couldn't speak Malay, they spoke English. The only problem was that the native elder didn't understand English very well, unless you spoke in a thick Asian accent. Therefore, my teacher has a very well developed, extremely hilarious fake Asian accent. It might be the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life. We're going to try this week and get him to teach an entire lesson in that voice. It should be fun!
-We're excited to get about 50 new Mandarin missionaries on Wednesday! It will be the largest amount of Mandarin speakers that have ever been at the Provo MTC at once! We had a branch split last week, so there are two Mandarin branches now!
-We're still getting more missionaries every week! I think in about three weeks we will have the more missionaries at this MTC than we've ever had before!
Thank you so much for your letters! I really love getting them! I don't always have enough time to write back to every one every week, but I try my best!
Elder Richardson
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