ELDER RICHARDSON
DECEMBER 1, 2013
Happy Thanksgiving!
So
on Tuesday, a ward member called the sisters and told them that she was
making us a turkey. This ward member has never made a turkey before,
but that's why she decided that she wanted to cook us one. So ALL day on
Wednesday (because at first they didn't convert from F to C), we had a
turkey cooking in the chapel kitchen. On Thursday morning, we all
gathered and had turkey/pesto tortilla wraps for Thanksgiving! It was
great!
We've been trying to get in contact with one of our
less actives for about three weeks. But all three of the cell phone
numbers, the home phone number, and the address for his work were all
incorrect. On Thursday, on exchanges with Elder Weech, I tried all of
the numbers again and we went to visit his work, all to no avail. But
then, later that same day, Elder Lin and I just ran into him on the way
home! We were able to set up with him and the next day he took us to a
hotpot place. Hopefully, he'll be able to come back to church soon!
This week got COLD. It's not supposed to be cold in
Taiwan! It got down to like 10 degrees this week! Of course, that's
Celsius, and it means that the coldest it got was about 45 F. But it was
still COLD, especially with the humidity! I think it's supposed to warm
up again this week. And I'm still every day grateful that I'm not
serving in Russia.
We're still having more adventures with our forever
interesting investigator Li DiXiong. Last week when we went to visit
him, he gifted us a bunch of food and also a basketball, which was
really hard to get home on bikes. His handwriting is super interesting.
Everything he writes is very calligraphic, whether in Chinese or in
English.
Every week in gospel principles class, the teacher will have
everybody new introduce themselves, and then will usually write their
name on the board, so that everyone can see the characters. Every time
Li Dixiong has been introduced, he will always walk to the front of the
room and spent a few minutes writing his full name in English and in
Chinese, all in very fancy handwritting. Then he'll turn around and
start to introduce his life from when he was born. Usually my companion
has to get up and gently stop him so that we can continue with class.
Last night, the Christmas choir performed for the
first time at the new member fireside. It went really well! We've spent
an hour and a half on every P-Day for the past four weeks practicing.
This week we start traveling to all of our performances. We have 11
throughout the next four weeks, and we travel all over the Taibei area.
We're all really excited!
Ward council is always the biggest test of my
language ability, because it seems that especially in ward council, they
talk REALLY fast. They just start talking about all of the ward council
things and it goes really fast. The real problem though, is that every
once in while they will all switch to Taiwanese! And then I give up and
don't understand anything. It's always really fun though. Our bishop is
amazing. Every time he talks, he lights a fire under everyone listening.
He's just super energetic and passionate about the gospel. This week in
ward council he said, "Inviting is the responsibility of the leader.
Choosing is the responsibility of the individual."
This week at a stake hiking activity, we went up
into the hills behind the Neihu chapel. We went up to a little rest area
where we had a short devotional and sang a few hymns. While we were
there, we saw a guy who was standing on a rock above a small waterfall
doing Tai qi with a bo staff. It basically just completed my image of
Taiwan. My whole life, I will never be as cool as that guy.
Last week, the new sister missionary in our ward,
Sister Han, had to learn how to ride a bike, because she'd never ridden
one before! It was quite an adventure.
Well, that's it for this week. We're going to Costco again today!
Elder Richardson
田長老
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