ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON #69 -- SEPT 15, 2014

ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON #69

SEPT 15, 2014

On Monday, we ran into a girl from Poland who is here studying . She told us that the day before, a Taiwanese lady ran into her on the street and dragged her to show her the church! We have a few members like that, who will just grab anyone they see or know and bring them to church. It's great! They have so much fire!

On Wednesday, our English class had a fruit party. The zone leaders ran an activity where they played baseball with rotten fruit. I'm told it was quite spectacular! We also had a Buddhist monk attend our English class, which was quite interesting.

We found a Dairy Queen in our area. So we HAD to go. We both got a Brownie Temptation Blizzard. Which was a delicious taste from home. Most ice cream in Taiwan is not that sweet.

We spent even MORE time this week working on the Phase 2 project I wrote about last week. We probably spent 6 hours or more on it. But it's a good service we can do for Elder Lin, who is busy enough as it is. I went through about 400 cards in 3 hours on Friday.

I was thinking this week about what a blessing it is to be right next to the temple. Because of the area where we serve, we walk past the temple at least once every single day. It always makes me feel good to see it, and even though I can't go in as much as I want, it's still good to see it.

We went to the baptism for Samantha. She is the one that we started teaching my first few weeks in the English ward, and then the XinDian missionaries starting teaching her. So she got baptized on Saturday! I'll send the picture!

Samantha's Baptism

We met with the Williams family last Saturday. It was a great lesson! We did a lot of preparing and practicing for the lesson, but the thing we didn't anticipate was having 5 kids in the lesson too. But I told everybody that it was like I was home again! We had a good discussion, and I think the Williams are very prepared and now is the right time for them to progress and learn about the gospel. We are excited to keep meeting with them and see them grow!

One of the cool experiences about reading scriptures in a different languages is to think about the same verses that I've read many times in English in a different light because the Chinese puts a bit of a different spin on it, even if it's the same meaning. I'm currently reading through the four gospels in Chinese, and I'm really enjoying it. There are some things that sound better in English, and some that sound better in Chinese. Here's an example of one I found this morning. Luke 14:11 says: "For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." I love the Chinese version because it's so simple and concise: (You can get Richard to translate it for you) 凡自高的，必降為卑。凡自卑的，必升為高。Anyway, it's really cool :)

I got my Ukulele fixed this morning, and bought a book, so I'm going to try and practice a few minutes every day. We'll see how that goes.

So Janae mentioned in her email about the VISA problems that the missionaries coming to Taiwan are having. All of the missionaries who were supposed to come last Wednesday couldn't get here, so it's creating quite a mess for everybody here and there. But that means that our transfer day is tomorrow instead of last Friday. No worries though, Elder Wilson and I will both be hear another transfer!

Orange moon above the Taipei Skyline

Sorry, this email was pretty scattered. But it was a good week.

Love you guys :)

Elder Richardson

任淳楷長老