WEEKLY
LETTER #12 FROM ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON
AUGUST
4, 2013
It's
been a great week! I love the people of Taiwan already, and it's great when we
can see the work of the Lord moving forward!
I
think because my last two emails have been written in air conditioned rooms,
I've forgotten to mention how hot it normally is. It is SOO hot in Taiwan.
Whenever I tell someone that I like Taiwan, they always ask "Why?? It's so
hot!" So even they think it's hot. Everyday is probably 36 degrees C (I
don't have Google to convert for me, so you'll have to do it.), and on top of
that it is incredibly humid. Arkansas is fairly humid, but not as humid as
Taiwan. Not even close. We come home at nights absolutely drenched in sweat,
and then we crank up our air conditioning down to 18 degrees, and it's SO nice!
Luckily, because I'm in Taibei, it's usually pretty smoggy so we don't have the
sun beating down on us as well. It's also nice because we have mostly just one
more month of extreme heat, and then we should have nice weather all the way
until February.
Chinese
is so smart; they don't have names for the months. August is just 八月 which is just
"8 moon." We don't need to mess with names, just use numbers! They do
the same thing for days of the week. Monday is 星期一 (one) and then
Tuesday is 星期二 (two). It's so simple; I love it!
We've
gotten quite a few new investigators this week. Elder Pratt says they seem to
come in waves, and we got a wave this past week. We had three first visits with
new people this week, and we're super excited about a lot of them! We have one
who is named Edward (everybody seems to have English names here), and he is SOO
excited to meet with us again. He loved just talking about things that he has
been thinking about, and we hope to be able to show him that the gospel has
just what he's looking for! His English is very good, so we gave an Our Search
for Happiness book, which he'll hopefully enjoy.
We
have another investigator named "A" (this is ambiguous because Chens
are SO common. We have about 4 investigators named Chen, and it's super
confusing.). This guy is SUPER loaded. Seriously. The other day he was showing
us some of the things in his house (his house is small, but in Taibei it's
worth about $10 million USD), and he has some really cool and really old
artifacts. He showed us one thing that was about 600 years old and that he
bought for $100 million USD. We have no idea how he has so much money; we just
hope it's not illegal. He is a fantastic investigator. He loves learning from
us and we've taught him all the lessons and then some other things. He's an
ongoing investigator because he spends a lot of time taking care of his ailing
father, so it's hard for him to get to church. We really like him. Last visit,
he decided that we weren't getting enough fruit (because fruit in Taiwan is
INCREDIBLE; especially the Mangos), so he said he's going to just give us fruit
every time we visit him.
One
of the things that my companion and I are working on is motivating the
members of the ward. A lot of people here are hesitant to do missionary
work, so we're trying to encourage them to give more referrals!
Chinese
is coming along well. I don't know a whole lot of non-church vocab, so it's
hard to understand people a lot of time. And they all talk so darn fast! I know
that the Lord will help me improve in the way and at the pace that I need to.
As long as I'm being faithful, I'll be at the place with the language that I
need to be!
They
have a language study system here that's in phases. Right now, I'm in Phase 1,
where I need to pass off vocab, phrases, and teach each of the five lessons.
I'm excited to get to Phase 3 which is all about reading the Book of Mormon in
characters!
Here's
a good phrase for you this week. It's a missionary phrase more than a Taiwanese
phrase, but it's one we use a lot. Fang4 ge1zi5 means to place a pigeon. It's
an idiom that means to get stood up, so we use it when investigators don't come
to appointments or don't answer their phones, which seems to happen a lot.
My
English class is still super fun! Last week, we talked about some common
idioms, and they got really confused about the difference between "in over
my head" and "went over my head." They really loved when I told
them about how "y'all" was used and tried to mimic a Southern accent
for them. They didn't understand it at all. I've also been told that they don't
like Australian or English accents at all. They like the American accent.
When
you are speaking Chinese, and you are unsure of something, you can just add
"ba" to the end. It shows that whatever you just said, you are
uncertain about, so you can totally cop out of anything you say, just by adding
ba!
We
had a great contact on the road the other day. His name was Chen DX and we meet
him as we were walking on the sidewalk and he was just about to get on his
motorcycle. At first, he tried to get rid of us, but as we kept talking, we
basically had a whole first lesson with him, right there on the road. We spent
45 minutes talking to him, and talking about everything in the Restoration. He
was just eating it up. Unfortunately, he doesn't live in our area, but we'll be
sure to get his contact information to the right people. As my mission
president would say, it's still a score for Team Jesus.
田長老
Elder
Richardson
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