Christmas Can Still Live in Your Heart

What a week! I've got to tell you, I have had like the best Christmas ever.

 

Wednesday evening we had our English party/Ward Christmas party and it was CRAZY. It was like the biggest party I've ever helped put on. We expected like 50 people to come, maybe, and we ended up with 120 PEOPLE. The room was so packed. But it was so fabulous! We had the greatest decorations, including a cardboard fireplace with red rectangles glued on it in a brick pattern, and we made gingerbread houses (so funny. these Asians have never made gingerbread houses before so they didn't realize that the icing has to be made so that it hardens and the candy was not your regular gumdrops and candy canes, but everyone loved it.) and the best part, we put on a live Nativity. In December's Liahona magazine they had a script of how to help your children put on a Nativity so we did that, and since it was English class we aske the ward member to memorize their parts in English. So we had the missionaries do the narration and the ward members (with homemade costumes) act it out, while I played little musical interludes on the piano. My absolute favorite was Joseph, who got so into his part: "Please! There must be some way you can help us! My wife is about to have baby!" n his cute Chinese accent. Love it. Best Christmas party ever.

 

Christmas day was awesome as well. In the morning I woke up a few minutes early and played some Christmas music to wake up my companion, then we opened our presents and made a wonderful Christmas breakfast, including French Toast with maple syrup, fruit, sausage, and orange juice. Then we headed out to a member's house, Sister Zhuang, and used her Ipad to Skype with our families. That was so great, I loved getting to talk to my family. They are awesome. Then we went out to lunch with Zhuang Jie Mei (members are so generous! But I don't understand the thing where people eat meat that is like all bone and hardly any meat). Then we went tracting in the rain and wished everyone a Merry Christmas. In the evening the Bishop treated all of us missionaries to a restaurant where you order a steak and then there's an all-you-can-eat buffet with it. It was delicious. In the evening we had a gift exchange thing with some members then an awesome lesson with Taco. Then we had a crazy miracle; a girl named Claire who had come to the Christmas party called us and asked if we could meet with her, and I was going to set it up for a couple days later but she was like, "Can we meet tonight?" so we had a miracle lesson at like 8:30 at night. Seriously, the paragraph I just wrote includes like all of the things that could possibly make a missionary happy save someone walking up to you holding a white jumpsuit and asking where the font is.

 

So that's pretty much all I have to talk about this week! We have been working hard and biking a lot and trying to help people feel the Christmas spirit. We have hope for Claire and Taco (who says that baptism sounds like a big responsibility but she'll come around) and Sister Chen, which is awesome. We have figured out how to have hot water to shower with in the mornings (this has been an experiment over the week; turns out if you have two faucets going it will be hot, which means you have to turn off the washer and have both of us shower at once, or the washer and one shower, or one shower and one sink. Or you could put the stove on.) On Friday someone told me that the way I hold chopsticks is very good, like the standard way that chopsticks should be held. I knew I was Asian at heart.

 

I'm so glad that I was able to be here for Christmas, in the situation where I can realy focus on the Savior. I know that besides all of the fun activities and Christmas cheer, the most important reason we have Christmas is to remember the Savior and all he gave to us. All week I've been wanting to share this quote from a talk by Robert D Hales in the December 2013 Ensign, and hey now I have a chance to share it!

 

"Christmas is a time to share our gifts, strengthen others, and do our part in the kingdom of God. Christmas is also a time to express our love to others and to bear our testimony of the Savior."

 

I hope this Christmas (okay it's already past but Christmas can still live in your heart) you have a chance to share with someone your testimony of the Savior.

 

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

Don't Think About it Too Hard

Xiongdi jiemei, zao an! (that's where you respond, "zao!" That is how people start their talks in church. Yes, it is like the "aloha" thing in Hawaii. I love it.)

 

As I write this I am sitting in a computer cafe place about a two-minute bike ride from our apartment. It smells like smoke and is full of the noise of other people's computer games. For some reason they include passion-fruit juice in the price of the time on the computer. My juice is almost gone and I wish I didn't have so many mosquito bites. Weather-wise it is a lovely morning for about July 13th in Sammamish. It is December 1st. I can't read any of the signs posted in the building but they are playing American music. All in all, a regular p-day morning. (Is that enough detail for you, mom? :D)

 

Yes, another week in Taiwan has passed! It was pretty great. We had some good lessons and I didn't fall asleep in church quite as much as last week (which achievement a member felt the need to comment on yesterday. She said I looked a lot better than I did last week. A compliment? I think so.) We had some looong bike rides, which is actually pretty nice, gives you some time to relax. Our area covers the districts of Gangshan, Ciaotou, and Luzhu, and maybe a little bit more than that if you want to look it up on Google maps. So it's a really big area. And here's an interesting thing: in this mission sisters only teach female investigators and elders only teach males, unless they are part of a family for both ways. So our district has two sets of elders and us sisters all covering the same ward, we just split it up so we teach the girls and they teach the boys (I guess since there are two sets of elders they split up the area). So we see the other missionaries a lot more often than I did in Salt Lake. Also it means if the members want to invite the missionaries over they feel like they have to invie all six of us! But it's really nice of them. On Thursday a wonderful family gave us Thanksgiving dinner including a real turkey and a whole bunch of salad. Also, I discovered it is possible to eat ice cream with chopsticks. Frustrating, but possible.

 

Other things about food: My new favorite drink is dongguo cha, which is wintermelon tea. When it's plain it is essentially a liquid version of a buttered popcorn Jelly Belly. Add lemon and it is one of the most delicious things ever. Another thing I tried is rou song, which some missionaries call "fuzzy meat." It is powdered pork. I have no idea how they do that, but it is pretty good on rice. (Yes, I eat rice all the time.) For lunch we usually go out to a biandang place, which is like a buffet where you choose what you want to put in your box and they give you rice and it is tasty. I've decided not to think about how long the food has been sitting out under the lights. I made a goal that every time I get a biandang I have to try something that I am not particularly comfortable with eating. I haven't died from eaing seaweed tied into a bow, so that's something! Weirdest thing I've eaten at someone's house was fruit pizza. No, not the fruit pizza you decorate to look like an American flag on July 4th. Like, you get some circular dough and put tomato sauce, then decorate it with kiwis and apples and mozzarella cheese, then heat it up in a wok because ovens aren't really a thing here. Also, did I mention that guavas taste like Christmas?

 

Things about traveling: if I think about it too hard it is really scary to ride my bike in the crazy traffic. I decide not to think about it too hard. We went on exchanges with the sister training leaders on Saturday which means that we switch companions for a day, so I went up to Tainan and stayed overnight there. Tainan is MUCH bigger than Gangshan and I think I almost died inside while I was avoiding cars and scooters. Whenever we are at a stoplight we try to talk to someone and give them a handout thing with the addresses of all the churches in the area and a little message about the Gospel. Sometimes you have to be really quick to give it to people before the light turns green. In Tainan I had a conversation with a lady where she asked me if the church was nearby (umm I don't know I don't actually live here) and then I pulled out a tract to give her the light turned green so I was going to let her go but then she was like "Hey can I have that?" and I was like Oh yes of course! I wish everyone would ask if they could take our handouts. Most people take the light turning green as a chance to end the conversation. (We'll get you next time, never fear! Actually that happened, On Saturday evening we contacted a guy that Sister Grigg had talked to that morning. "Have you ever talked to missionaries before?" "Yes, this morning.")

 

Other random things: Apparently elections happened this week so everywhere we see these signs with a number on them and sometimes a picture of the candidate, like Number 3 is a nice looking lady with short hair and Number 5 is a dramatic picture of a guy in a suit. Well all week they have had these little trucks (and sometimes whole caravans of trucks and scooters) driving around and playing music to campaign. It's kind of fun! The other day on one of our long rides to Luzhu we were riding right along a Number 7 caravan and they kept waving at us. It was kind of fun. But I think Number 4 had better music. I would probably vote for them. I actually have no idea who won. But there were fireworks on Saturday, so I guess that means something? Actually that could mean nothing, people here just like fireworks.

 

My companion gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting yesterday, and from what I could understand (which actually was quite a good portion, despite my lack of vocabulary and my tendency to fall asleep after someone speaks Chinese for longer than 5 minutes) she talked about attitude and how it determines how well you succeeed. She told a story about when her mom was little she didn't want to eat peas and would sit at the table for hours because her grandpa wouldn't let her leave until she ate the peas (I had to get a translation from my companion later because I had no idea if her mom didn't want to eat beans or squash or maybe even watermelon, all I knew was she didn't want to eat something. See, I'm learning!). The point was, if she had gotten over her attitude and just ate the peas really quick then she could have gone and done other fun things instead of fall asleep at the table. Life is like that. Sometimes we get in the way of ourselves accomplishing all that we could. I have lots of times where I don't feel like talking to someone at a stoplight because it might be awkward or they might say something I don't understand or it's hot and I'm gross and I have no idea where I am BUT if I just get through that then I have invited one more person to learn about Jesus Christ. And if I learn to get through those moments then I will learn more Chinese and feel less awkward and get used to the heat (ha.) and most importantly, plant another seed of the gospel. So keep going! Don't give up! Eat those peas! (Do you feel inspired?)

 

Love you all, and love Taiwan.

The Sister Cardon in Asia

Tabula Rasa

Friday morning at about 7:30 I had a thought.

I thought, "You know, I really love this area. I don't think I want to leave. I would be pretty happy to stay here for the rest of this transfer. Maybe even a transfer after that."

At about 12:30 I got a phone call. "Sister Cardon," the office missionary lady said. "We have some news! You have received your visa. You'll be leaving at 8:30 on Tuesday morning!"

Thus is the hypocrisy of life.

Yes, it's true! I am finally leaving to go to Taiwan, in the middle of a transfer and at much inconvenience to pretty much everyone. Don't get me wrong, I am so excited to go. If this had been the situation six weeks ago I would have been ecstatic. Overjoyed. Ebullient. But now that I have been working seriously hard these past 8 weeks and so much work is finally coming to fruition (Ray's baptism. Lessons with Taylor. New investigators. Lists of names to find. Ward missionaries stepping it up. Lots of member trust.) it is really hard to leave! And there is so much going on in the next few weeks! Christmas parties and baptisms and pie nights and lessons and dinners and all sorts of awesome missionary things! Besides all that, the situation in the mission now is that there are no trios of sisters, which means that there's nobody extra to put in the spot I was in for the next four weeks of the transfer, which means that Sister Payne essentially companionless; she'll be living with the other sisters who serve in our stake and getting splits with members to come teach in our area. So that means so much coordination and stress for her, it will be hard to get the work done, people might not step up to help her, it will be difficult to be in a trio covering all 10 wards. She really has so many possibilities of what could happen and what might go well or wrong that it is a little overwhelming.

As for myself, however, my immediate future is a blank slate. I pretty much have no idea what is going to happen once I go to Taiwan. The only things I know for sure are that it will be Asian, there will be biking, and there will be food. I AM SO STOKED.

Seriously, I'm going to Asia tomorrow. I'll be flying through Seattle to Tokyo, then from there to Taipei. Total about 22 hours of travel. So excited! 

I'm not even sure what else I should talk about. This news has pretty much consumed the last three days.

We started the Stop Smoking program with Ray on Friday, and he is doing really great so far. We're settling his doubts about tithing and the Word of Wisdom and everything so hopefully he is still on track for baptism. Hooray! We had a couple of really good lessons with new investigators: one is 19 yo whose brother and sister joined the church last year, and one is a 10 yo from a less active family. I think they will both be baptized as soon as possible, I'm really happy for them. We also had an interesting lesson with a guy named Mel who was Very Baptist. We essentially sat there for an hour and listened to him tell us that our church follows a false prophet, the Book of Mormon came from man and not God, and that the King James Bible is the only true book. "But I really respect you girls and all you do." Um, thanks? Best part was when Sister Fletcher said, "Mel, I know that you have an open heart and are willing to listen--" before he interrupted her. "You don't know that! You are judging me, and I don't ever want to hear you say that again! Only God can judge us!" "...do you have an open heart?" "Yes I do." We decided to leave soon after that. In closing he prayed that we would read the Bible and not the Book of Mormon.

We've been doing these fun lessons with the YSA ward missionaries; we are teaching them the missionary lessons to help give them a good foundation so they can go and do their ward missionary work. Most of them are returned missionaries, so sometimes it's a little awkward to be teaching them things they've taught hundreds of more times than I have, but whatever. It was really good practice for me; I am glad I have gotten all this practice teaching in English, all I will need to do when I get to Taiwan is put the language in and I'll be like a pro missionary! Or something like that. 

We sometimes go over to this family's house to read scriptures with them. On Saturday we told them I was leaving and said goodbye, and took a picture with them. As we were posing for the picture the grandmother Joy leaned over to me, kissed my hair, and said, "This will be one of the last pictures before I die." How are you supposed to react to that?

So that's been our week. We've had some really good times and the work is going so well. I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have had to serve out here. When I first knew I would be getting reassigned to America I was hoping for somewhere exciting wherfe I had never been or something, but I think Utah was exactly the place I needed to be. I met people that I needed to meet and had the opportunity to learn how to be a missionary. One of the biggest things I've learned since I've been here, I think, is how important it is to stay strong in the gospel. So many people I meet were born in the church and have decided that they don't need to go anymore or that the people that have hurt them are more important than the truth of the Atonement. It's not true! God loves you and wants you to receive all the blessings he has to give. As it says somewhere in the Book of Mormon that I can't quite remember, All He requires of you is to keep His commandments. Just do that and life will be great! So that's one of the biggest things I have learned serving out here.

Next week I will be emailing from Taiwan! Remember that because of the time difference, you now have to email me on Sunday morning in order for me to get it that week. Oh, and don't send Christmas presents. 1) it probably won't get there before Christmas 2) it is way too expensive to send things from America and 3) I would much rather you invite a nonmember/less active to a Christmas event than send things to a missionary who already has the sun in the morning and the moon at night.

Love you all!

Pics: Goodbye to the Trailer Park! And shopping at Downeast. And my last good Mexican food for another 14 months. Gotta love Costa Vida.

Baptisms and Italians

So this week was pretty meh, not much exciting happened.

NOT. It was like the best week ever. RAY IS GETTING BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I don't usually use multiple exclamation points. You should take that for a testament to how excited I really am.)

It started on Tuesday. We had a lesson that did not start out very well; Ray had been talking to a former preacher at another church who had been telling him stories about Joseph Smith. Luckily Ray wasn't very inclined to listen to him, but we were still not sure where the rest of the lesson was going to go. We ended up just reading 1 Nephi Chapter 1 with him to hopefully get him to be more excited about the Book of Mormon. Then we kept chatting and he told us that his boss at work, who is a recent convert, asked him when he is getting baptized and who is baptizing him. Ray was a little leery of that, but it has really got him thinking. He thought it was really nice that his boss would want to be there when he got baptized then asked us, "Are you two going to be there?" Sister Payne and I looked at each other. "Well, if you get baptized before the transfer ends, then definitely. The transfer ends on December 16. That means December 13th is a Saturday. ...do you want to be baptized on December 13th?" He thought for a minute. "Yes." We couldn't believe it, we had to double check. "You're going to gt baptized on December 13th?" "Yes, I am." "How do you feel about that?" "Kinda tingly." That's totally the Spirit!

We had to hold it until we got to the car to really let out how excited we were that he said that. The rest of the week was great on his part; we went to Temple Square with him and a member on Saturday and watched the Joseph Smith movie, which he really loved, and then on Sunday morning we got a text from the Ward Mission Leader saying that Ray has asked Bob, a recent convert and one of Ray's best friends in the Trailer Park, to baptize him. This is going to get Bob on track, Ray and Bob are going to stop smoking together, then Sharon in the trailer park will want to get baptized too, then Ed Ray's best friend will come along as well, and we'll all end up going to the Celestial Kingdom together like one big happy Trailer Park family.

Or something like that. Miracles happen! (as evidenced by Ray's baptismal date.)

So in conclusion, that made it a really great week. Other good things include an entire Less Active family being at church all together, the YSA ward getting really pumped up about all of their new ward missionaries (including putting them into companionships and telling them they need to live the mission rules as best they can. The companionships all include a boy and a girl so I'm not sure how well that's going to work out and whether this might just be a ploy to get them all married but whatevs), and getting to go through the Salt Lake Temple for my very first time this morning! It was really wonderful. All temples are beautiful, but the workmanship inside the Salt Lake Temple is just stunning. Do you think someday they'll let me explore the whole thing? Maybe if my husband ends up a General Authority. I'm going to start working on that.

Hmmm what else. Oh, funny moment. We saw a lady walking alone along the street and I felt like we should stop and talk to her. I'm a missionary and am trying to learn to follow those promptings so we pulled up alongside her (probably should have gotten out of the car, we may have looked a little creepy), rolled down the window, and said hi. *thoughts are in asterisks*

Me: Hello! How are you?

Her: Comesta? 

Me: *Oh, she's Spanish. I'm going to pull out the ten words of Spanish I know and try not to speak Chinese.* Bien! E tu?

Her: Bene! Balahbldfrhssdgnsjkdghioh amore anjsfgjbloaerbpsdinrhug.

Me: ....oh. *why did I do that. I don't speak Spanish. She obviously doesn't speak English. She said "amor" is she trying to tell me I'm lovely? Probably not. uhh... ni hao ma? no.* Como esta? *really? That's all you can come up with?* uhh... no hablo Espanol.

Her: No habla? Blaifoghsmksdgpaemrhle amore bnsdoroagollea.

Me: *She said amore again. Wait a second, I don't think she's speaking Spanish. It sounds like Italian. Wait! I know some Italian! I know how to say "I understand a little Italian"! ...That's all I can say. That would not be helpful. Just deceptive.* Uhh... espanol or Italiano?

Her: Italiano! bosdghmk ciao rmppolella. 

Me: ....molto bene!

Her: Ciao!

Me: Ciao! (she walks away and we drive off)

Both me and Sister Payne: What just happened?

In conclusion, I don't speak Spanish or Italian and should probably stick to Chinese.

In actual conclusion to this letter, missions are great. The work is wonderful. People should go to church. People should pray every day. God loves you.

Love, 

Sister Cardon

Soup and Eggshells

Hey Family!

Well, it's official! I have completed my first transfer in the field. Am I still a greenie? I don't know. My first transfer in the field is also my first transfer in America--but not my last. Yes, it's true. I have not received my visa to o to Taiwan and as a result, I am staying in Stansbury Park, UT for another six weeks. And as far as I know at this moment, Sister Payne is staying with me! So we get to have six more weeks of adventures together. In all honesty, I don't have much feeling towards excitement or disappointment. I knew my visa wasn't here yet so I wasn't really expecting to go to Taiwan yet, and I was happy to stay here in Stansbury or even go somewhere else in the mission (I was feeling Fruit Heights.) But here I am! And as soon as I finish this email we are going to Deseret Industries and Payless to find me some winter clothes and boots. We literally had snow on our car this morning. Awesome. #visaprobs.

Hmm what else. This week has been full of pumpkins, candy, and wind. Also soup. Seriously, is it a thing to make tons of different kinds of soup? We went to two trunk-or-treats and a Relief Society activity where they had everyone bring a different kind of soup to eat. (The chicken tortilla with avocados from Stansbury ward was the best.) Then on Halloween night a member invited us over for dinner where she had made broccoli cheese, potato bacon, and chicken tortilla soup. So delicious. She also made the best pumpkin bars I have ever had.

We also did a lot of contacting this week, as always. We still have long lists of names to knock on their doors and see how they are doing. One problem we have is we forget who the person is when we knock on their door, whether they are less active or just need somebody to stop by and give them love. So we do a lot of awkwardly standing on doorsteps until they invite us in or we ask to come back or they tell us to go away. But it's all good.

Friday was a pretty cool day! We had a district meeting in the morning and then a special meeting with just our district and the mission president, President Hansen. We were all a little bit worried (is chastisement upon us?) but couldn't figure out anything we had done wrong. Is my visa here and President needs to talk to all of us to tell me? Are we finally getting iPads? The answer to all of these questions is no. President and Sister Hansen are starting a thing where they go around to different districts literally to do a Q&A session. We were allowed to ask President anything we wanted. So that was awesome, he told us all about how deciding transfers goes and talked about how to recognize personal revelation. Then at the end they were about to leave and you could see President having an internal debate. Finally he goes, "Oh, I'll just tell you. No one in this district is going to be moving this transfer." So we knew that we were all staying, but couldn't really tell anyone until Sunday night. So that was kind of fun.

In the afternoon we stopped by the house of an older couple (still not sure why their name was on our list. They are less active?) and hcatted with them for a bit. Shared a scripture. After that the husband goes, "Well, now that we have religion done with, do you guys like Sudoku?" He was doing a really hard Sudoku and asked us to help him. Then he told us that he had been given all these Sudoku books by someone and that he had so many, "I'm not going to be able to finish all these before I die!" so he gave them to us. Nine of them. We decided we would make a goal to finish completely one book so we could bring it back to him and tell him we had helped him with his goal. So on Halloween night when we had to stay in after 6 pm we did our weekly planning, then did Sudokus. It was pretty fun.

Saturday was good too! Sister Payne has had this deal going with one of our less actives that he wouldn't drink until November 1st and she would give up McDonalds. They both made it, which is awesome! So he took us out to McDonald's in the afternoon, it was pretty nice. We decided we probably shouldn't take him out for a drink.

Saturday evening was way interesting too. We went to dinner then walked around the same neighborhood to contact some of the names on our list. The first people were an older couple who were way nice and very happy to see us. They told us about their ex-daughter-in-law who had remarried to an Irishman named Stephen and they lived just two doors down. They warned us that he was very straightforward but loved talking to the missionaries. So we took a deep breath and knocked on his door; boy, was he Irish. He was way nice, very friendly, and very smart. And very stubborn. After talking about who we are, where we're from, etc, I mentioned that I studied Anthropology. He wants to be a history teacher once he can do his schooling in the US and was very interested to hear that I study that. "Tell me this," he said. "with you studying anthropology, how does that tie into your belief in the Book of Mormon?" What a wonderful way to open the door to a gospel conversation! Well, let me tell you. Stephen is very interested in proof; other religions have so much evidence of their scriptures but the Book of Mormon has nothing (says he. I could have pulled out some Proofs of the Book of Mormon but I knew it wouldn't go anywhere.), so how can you believe it's true, with you studying the science of peoples and archaeology and all that? I basically told him this: the lack of archaeological evidence about this giant battle or that city in the Book of Mormon being found in Central/South America doesn't bother me at all. Archaeology is awesome, but it is so hard to get anything definite. If we were to take your garbage can and bury it for 1000 years do you know what would be left? Eggshells. Literally only that. What can you find out from that? Somebody ate an egg. No, not even that. Somebody cracked an egg. So pretty much nothing. So the fact that we haven't found giant battlefields and a "Welcome to Zarahemla" sign means nothing to me; all it means is that I want to study it more. Instead of making me doubt that the Book of Mormon is a true record, it makes me want to go be the person that finds that evidence (I don't really plan on going into archaeology directly, but don't tell him that). What it really comes down to is whether or not I believe Joseph Smith was a prophet. To believe that I have to believe that God called prophets in ancient days. And to believe that I have to believe that God loves us. Guess what? I believe all that. I know that God called a prophet to restore His church upon the earth again and that that prophet was Joseph Smith. I know that God brought forth the fullness of His gospel through the Book of Mormon, and that it is the truest record that can be found. So what if we haven't found the temple Nephi built 2600 years ago. That was a really long time ago. My testimony of the Book of Mormon is not dependent on the work archaeologists, it is dependent on my faith in God and the Holy Ghost telling me it is true.

So there.

Stephen says he doesn't like to read and won't read the Book of Mormon until he knows it is true. (Anyone have any articles about evidence of the Book of Mormon in Central America?) But you know what, I am here for another six weeks, and maybe the reason I'm staying is so that I can help Stephen see that science and religion can totally go hand in hand. I knew I couldn't have been this smart for nothing :)

Well, love you all! You are great. Stay awesome!

Love,

Sister Cardon

PS bonus pumpkin carving pic.

Just Another Manic Sunday

Hey Everybody!

Another week has gone by and now we are at just one week left in the transfer! I can't believe it. Next week I could be on a plane to Taiwan! Or I could be shopping for warm clothes to survive the cold in Utah. Whatever happens, though, I will be doing the Lord's work! No matter where in the world it is, it is important that I am helping to bring people to Christ.

And what a work this is! I may have mentioned before that we work with 6 wards out here in Stansbury Park. Count them. Six. In pretty much everywhere but Utah, missionaries usually work in one, maybe two wards, or maybe there are like 6 missionaries assigned to just one ward. But no, we are the missionaries for six whole wards. That means we work with six bishops, six ward mission leaders, six Relief Society presidents, six ward councils, and on. I am so grateful that I have been blessed with a good memory because boy, it is hard to keep all these names straight! But I love it so much. We always have something to do. Let me tell you about our schedule for Sunday yesterday:

8:30am Ward Council #1

9:30am Meet with Relief Society presidency of Ward #5

10:30am Ward Council #2

11:30am Ward Council #3

11:50am Make sure our investigators actually go to church, go to Gospel Principles with them

1:00pm Ward Council #4

2:00pm mingle around the end of sacrament meeting for ward #6, set up lesson with investigators for later

2:30pm sit in the car and eat goldfish.

2:50pm go to Sacrament meeting in Ward #2

4:15pm Stake Correlation meeting with all the Ward Mission Leaders and the other sister missionaries in the Stake

5:00pm Dinner at a member's house

6:15pm Go to the trailer park to see how Ray liked church

7:15pm Go to a LA house to set up appt for tomorrow

7:40pm Go home to make pumpkin seeds and organize the 70+ names we have gotten from WCs and Relief Society Presidents.

9:15pm finally get too exhausted after looking at all these names

9:30pm collapse into bed.

No joke, that is what every Sunday is like! It was crazy. But so good that we have so much work to do! During the week we met with every Relief Society president and asked her who we could help, and now we have so many names that we didn't know about before. I am so doing this at the beginning of every transfer from now on, it's just ridiculous that we waited until the last week of the transfer to get the work going like this! But it's great. I love it so much. I'm just glad I have P-day today haha!

Oh of course I need to mention that Ray finally came to church! And he brought his best friend from the Trailer Park, Ed. They didn't stay for Sacrament meeting but they are both totally planning on coming next week. It made yesterday pretty much the best day ever. We love it when things actually go how they were supposed to! I think our hard work over this week was really paying off and the Lord definitely helped us get through that crazy Sunday. I love this work!

Side note Thursday was like the coolest day every because there was a solar eclipse. And I made sure I knew what time it was going to be and I came prepared with my sunglasses and a paper with a hole cut out of it and in conclusion I might be an astronomer when I grow up.

Another side note I feel like I have knocked on more doors this week than my whole life combined. We did this awesome thing on Saturday where we went on splits, we got two nice ladies from the ward to go with us to start working on the names we had gotten. Sister Payne and a girl about to go on her mission took the car and went around a few neighborhoods while I and an awesome lady who just moved in to the area walked ALL the way down this street of houses. There weren't too many straight-up rejections (except for this guy. Me: What ward do you go to? Him: Umm... this one. We don't really go that often. Me: Oh, why not? Him: Because we don't want to. Sister Payne: Why not, it's the best! Him: If you start talking like that I'm going to shut the door on you.) (in retrospect we probably could have handled that one better. But he was kind of just grumpy.) though a lot of people weren't home. Still, good times! I feel like a real missionary.

That's about it for this week! I love you all!

Sister Cardon

We're Not Crazy, We're Awesome: October 20, 2014

Another week gone by in Stansbury! Good times. Love it.

Yesterday a man said to us that our job as missionaries is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." I have actually seen that so much this week. I had the chance to talk to several different people who were struggling and I shared scriptures with them and listened to their problems and tried to find ways to serve them, and it was so neat for me to see that I can really be out here to help people, not just teach them the missionary lessons. (That does help people, but you know what I mean.) We had the opportunity to do service in several different ways; we volunteered helping with kids' games at a community event called the Pumpkin Walk, and we helped a lady clean her house (10 missionaries all cleaning baseboards at once meant it was a really quick job) and on Thursday we'll be setting up tables for a Girl Scouts event. It's so cool to be able to do real things to help people, not just testify about how Christ can help them (which is way awesome in its own right.) So life is good!

We are also here to afflict the comfortable. We've been teaching this man named Ray that I've mentioned and the other day we had a really good lesson with him where we talked about change. He doesn't think he is ready to change but we asked him "Why not?" and he really had to think about it. We told him that he can decide now to choose to come closer to God, and asked him what he thought God would ask him to do if He were right here. "Well, probably stop smoking." "Then why don't you?" "..." He didn't really have an answer for that. We are asking him to pray and find out for himself if what we teach is true, and he's said that he already knows that we must be telling the truth because we wouldn't lie to him, he just needs to really know it. Haha we wish he could know a little faster, but we can't really complain because he is making good progress.

Hmm what else was exciting this week. We had new missionary training on Wednesday and somebody bought us lunch at Rumbi Island Grill, which was nice. We've had a few rough days where we prepared so well for a lesson only to knock on the door and someone else (not the person we were trying to teach) answering the door and saying "Do you need something? No, he's not here. Don't come back." So that's a little discouraging. But we've been working hard and having lots of good contacts, and if we are not seeing success in numbers then we are at least seeing that by our example we can bring other closer to Christ.

Haha we had an intersting experience on Saturday; we went back to the house with the Caucasian lady and the Chinese husband, and this time Mr Zheng was home! So I got to practice Chinese for a bit, which was good for me. It was hard though, he is fgrom northeastern China and so had a different accent than I am used to. A lot of the time I was catching most of the words he was saying and having no idea what he meant. Is it a thing when you learn other languages that it is hard to tell when people are asking questions or making statements? Or is that just a Chinese thing? Because I was having a really hard time figuring out if he was asking me questions or just saying things half the time. Neither of them are really interested in the church, but I totally took the opportunity to teach a little lesson when he asked if I had anything else to say. When I finished testifying about families he only commented on my Chinese on not on the message (except to say that In Taiwan they are probably more open to religion than he is) but hey, we're bringing people to Christ little by little. He did say that my Chinese is at an intermediate level and I shouldn't worry about when I go to Taiwan, so that's something. And he understood everything I said, but sometimes he just started laughing when my grammar was way off. But hey, I'm learning. 

Wow I almost forgot to say that we had the coolest opportunity on Friday to go to my cousin Anna's wedding at the Salt Lake Temple! You can get permission pretty much just once on your mission to see your family, especially if they will be at the Salt Lake Temple, which is essentially in our mission. Since I'm only here for six weeks I decided to take full opportunity to do that so my companion and I got to go to my cousin's sealing. It was so wonderful to see many of my aunts and uncles and grandparents and of course to see that ordinance. I do not want to get married anywhere else except the temple, it was such a wonderful experience. And now Anna and Taylor will be married for all of eternity and receive so many blessings because of it. Why would you want anything else? I loved getting to be there, and I needed that boost of love and hugs to get me through the next few weeks. I love my family. They are great.

So that was my week! Good times and not-as-good times, but I'm here to learn and I'm here to learn to rely on faith. We spoke in church yesterday about our personal conversion, and it was neat for me to look over my life and notice how well I've been prepared to serve and how strong a foundation I have. I cannot imagine ever wanting to leave this church, it had blessed my life so much. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a missionary.

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

Picture: Diva picture from the temple because we like to take model shots.

Trailer Parks and Spiders: October 13, 2014

Good week! There probably isn't going to be much flow to this. I will try my best.

Miracle: we were about to drop one of our investigators, Trailer Park Ray (62 and missing a tooth. Also a little creepy. The Lord looketh upon the heart.) Sometimes he doesn't seem that interested and says he knows everything. plus, we invited him to conference and he totally bailed at the last minute, so that was kind of annoying. So on Tuesday we were going to have a make-it-or-break-it lesson with him, and we decided to stick it out. He says he's been thinking a lot about religion a lot more recently, and he wants to stop smoking and change his life, and then we invited him to church and he immediately accepted! We thought we would have do a lot of convincing but he was so excited to come. Then Satan broke his water heater so Ray didn't come to church. But we're making steps!

We knocked on a door where someone told us a Chinese man lived. A definitely Caucasian blonde woman answered the door and inside was her very fair-skinned, possibly albino three-year-old. We had an awkward conversation trying to figure out if we even stopped by the right house or not and determined that yes, this was the right house but Mr. Zang was not home. Yes, that child was half-Chinese. No, they don't really want to hear our message. And yet we stood in the front hall and talked to Mrs. Zang for more than an hour in great detail about many of the trials of her life. It was an interesting evening.

On Saturday we had an awesome opportunity to listen to Sister Linda K Burton, the general Relief Society President! She came to our stake and gave a wonderful talk about joy: true joy can be had by relying on Jesus' Atonement, Obedience, and Yielding our hearts and will to God. She was very inspiring and I got to hug her afterward! I'm really lucky to be here in Utah.Our mission president's wife came to the event and sat with us, then afterward we took Sister Hansen out on splits with us. We didn't have any set appointments to teach so we decided to take Sister Hansen to the trailer park to meet someone we are teaching, Sharron.

We have had better ideas.

It was hot. Sharron was not in a good mood. There were cats everywhere. Sister Hansen is allergic to cats. Sharron wouldn't let us inside for some reason. We stood outside on the porch. It was still hot. There were flies. Sharron did not want to listen to a message. Sharron wanted to tell us every detail about her various surgeries and when her husband died and how she is still paying on a truck she doesn't even have. Sister Hansen was wearing the wrong shoes. In conclusion, it was not a very successful appointment and I still feel bad that we made our mission president's wife stand outside in a trailer park. But, you live and you learn! I hope Sister Hansen forgives us.

We got to see Meet the Mormons on Friday! I highly recommend it: it's a church-commissioned movie directed by a family friend of ours, Blair Treu. It was so good. It's like a documentary about six different people and families showing that Mormons are just normal people; it really is a documentary so if you don't like that sort of thing you might not enjoy it, but I loved it. Totally cried. Totally would see it again. 

Things missionaries get excited about:

conference talks

Mormon memes on LDS.org

Meet the Mormons

return appointments

how old the general authorities are

HOLY COW we caught the biggest spider ever on our sticky mat in the basement the other day. It was a wolf spider. It was two and a half inches across. I about died.

Last, I had a dream that my visa never came and we all got another reassignment. This time I was reassigned to Portugal. It might happen. But actually, Sister Hansen said that the new rule is that visa waiters will stay for the whole transfer, so that means I will be in Utah until about November 4th. It's great!

Love you all,

Sister Cardon

The Salt Lake Life: October 6, 2014

It's been a week, alright!

Conference was fabulous. We had tickets to both the Saturday morning session and the Sunday afternoon. It was so cool to be in the conference center! We had a ridiculous amount of stress about who to take with us, since we need to take an investigator or less-active or someone, but seriously no one wanted to go with us. This week was a little rough: hardly anyone answered their door, or their phone, and most people cancelled their lessons like the day of. We did a lot of walking and driving around and saying "..Well, where should we go next?" after yet another person didn't answer their door. Or opened their door a little bit and said, "We're not religious. Good bye." But hey, one cool thing was that we knocked on a door and the lady was very friendly and said "You are the first missionaries I've ever seen!" She had moved here a year ago from guess where... Sammamish! So we had an instant connection and were totally about to baptize her but then she said she didn't want any brochures. Someday, lady. You came to Stansbury Park for a reason. 

One of my favorite talks in conference was Elder Ballard's about how we need to stay on the ship of the church and wear life jackets. He is so powerful! And Elder Holland's talk was so good, he doesn't care about talking about hard subjects like depression or poverty. He just says it like it is. And Elder Bednar's was great. I never understood why missionaries all love Elder Bednar so much, but now I do. He is so great. We are totally printing off his talk and giving it to everyone ever. And I really loved the simplicity of President Monson's message: be Christlike. We are a Christian people, and we need to follow His example. That's it! I am so grateful that we have inspired leaders of the church who tell us what we need to hear. I felt like the theme of this conference was personal revelation, that we need to gain a testimony for ourselves and then ACT on it. So great. 

Chinese this week: coolest experience. We went up to Temple Square and tagged along with a Chinese tour! It was so neat. I legitimately understood what the sister giving the tour was talking about the whole time, except for the brief moments that I zoned out and sort of lost it. Also, little details sort of slipped, like how many pipes are in the organ at the tabernacle. I don't know how many pipes there are, but I do know that she was talking about how many pipes there are. That, my friends, is improvement. She also included me in my companion as real sister missionaries in the tour, like asking us question about how knowing we are daughters of God has blessed us. I totally responded in Chinese, and people may have thought I talked really slow and didn't know what I was saying, but the important part was that I did say things. And I got to bear my testimony in Chinese, which is what I was called to do. Life is great. We had to go all the way to Salt Lake to find Chinese people, though. We went to a Chinese restaurant in Stansbury last week and I asked the girl at teh register where she was from-China! "Ni shuo Zhongwen ma?" (do you speak Chinese?) "What?" "...Ni shuo..." "Oh, I speak Cantonese." Cool.

One of our less actives, Ezequiel, is doing great. He has been struggling with drinking but the week before I came Sister Payne made a deal with him that if he didn't drink until November 1st, she would not eat McDonald's until then. And they are both holding to it! Ezequiel calls us every time he has a test where someone asks him to come out drinking and he has passed every time. We are so proud of him. The Gospel really changes lives, and I am so grateful for the influence it has had in my life. 

Love you all, stay strong and share the Gospel with your friends. It's fabulous. 

Love,

Sister Cardon 2.0

Somewhere Close to Grantsville: September 29, 2014

Wow, what a week. My first area is Stansbury, UT, right next to Tooele and pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Have you gotten to speak any Chinese, you ask? Well, let me tell you about our conversation with the owner of a house which a few weeks ago my companion saw an Asian lady gardening outside. We knocked on the door and a white man opened up with a "Oh, it's the missionaries" disgruntled kind of look on his face. He asked what we wanted and after a brief introduction:

Me: Well, you see I'm actually going to Taiwan on my mission so I'm trying to learn Chinese and I thought... your wife... might be.. Chinese.

Him: ...no. She's from Korea.

We then left as awkwardly as possible. So the answer is no, I don't think there is anyone who speaks Chinese here for maybe 40 miles. But if there is one person, then by golly I will find them! Actually cool thing, we got permission to go up to Temple Square and tag along with a Chinese tour there so I can find some people to practice with! So not all is lost.

It has been a crazy week, much different than anything I was expecting. I'm out in the middle of nowhere, and it is great. We cover six wards in the Stansbury Park Stake and there is so much work to do. We get fed every night and meet all sorts of neat members, nonmembers, and less-actives alike. And guess what? We are over a trailer park. Yes. I get to walk around a sketchy trailer park and tell people about Jesus. IT'S SO COOL. Interesting characters I've met so far include Ray, who smoked during our whole lesson and has interesting ideas about what we do with tithing money, Shirley, the 60-year-old black Muslim lady who didn't want to go to Women's Conference ("BOOOring!"), and Bob, singing and guitar playing fellow who we have convinced to do a musical number with me in church the week after conference (if I'm still here). It is so cool! I also chatted with a Bishop who served in Taiwan 40 years ago, met a family with 9 kids all hanging out in the living room on Sunday evening, and walked dogs for service at like 8:30 in the evening when it was way dark outside. I am not a dog person. That was hard. Another day we sat in a McDonalds for like 20 minutes because we didn't realize that our appointment was actually for the next day. 

The following conversation occurred on my first day in the field with a 10-year-old girl:

Girl: blah blah something about an older sister who's not here.

Me: Oh, did your sister go to college or something?

Girl: No, she's gone. Forever!

Me: (very kindly and sympathetically, I might add) Oh I'm sorry, did she pass away?

Girl: ... NO! Why would you say that?! She's not DEAD! Why would you ask me that? Oh my goodness, that is so sad! I'm going to cry! *proceeds to burst into tears*

So I also made a little girl cry on my first day. So many adventures just in one week! It is so great.

My companion is Sister Payne from Calgary (don't worry, I tease her about her Canadian accent at every opportunity) and she is just great. She's been out six months and is so much fun, we are having a great time together. 

I also got to go to Women's Conference in the Conference Center! We had five tickets to it and then one lady dropped out of coming so we went with some members, and it was so neat. We went out to dinner afterwards and a group of older couples at the next table paid for our dinner! It was so sweet. It's pretty great to be a missionary in Salt Lake, I have to say. But it was a little weird to be driving around Salt Lake City at night, it felt like I should be going back down to Provo for school, not back to the mission. But it was so cool to see the conference live. I really loved President Uchtdorf's talk. He spoke about how God is essentially raining down blessings on us. It is our doubts and fears and sins that keep up an umbrella so we don't receive those blessings. All we need to do is have faith and repent so that we can put down the umbrella and receive the wonderful rain of the blessings that God wants to give us. It was very inspiring, and very fitting since it was like pouring rain in Salt Lake that evening. 

In conclusion, life is good. I'm having such an interesting time here in Stansbury and I'm loving this mission. I'll be happy to go to Taiwan, but in the meantime I'm appreciating the blessing this experience is. 

Love,

Sister Cardon

P.S. My mission office address is 

1535 S Edison St 

Salt Lake City, UT 84115

so you can so write me for the next few weeks.

Last One, Best One

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, here it is. I am down to my last few hours at the MTC. Some of you may know and others may not that I have not yet received my visa for Taiwan and have therefore been temporarily reassigned. I will be serving in the Utah Salt Lake City mission until my visa arrives, hopefully within two to four weeks. That means that in about three hours from now I will be taking the Frontrunner train up to Salt Lake City to meet my new mission president and wife and start my real mission in the field! I AM SO STOKED. My mission covers north of SLC, including Bountiful and up to Layton. Then it also has like all of the salt flats. Maybe I'll go convert the pirates of the Great Salt Lake.

This week has really been so great. We have had so much fun with our last classes, in-field orientation, teaching our investigators for the last time, and creating our last memories with our district. We have had such a close district that it has been hard to say goodbye; luckily, though for the next few weeks we will be going to places as diverse as Seattle and New Hampshire, we will all meet up again in Taiwan since all of us are going to the Taichung mission. It's really exciting. We had an awesome time last night at our departure devotional, the evening devotional, spending time writing notes in our memory books, and then the elders gave each of the sisters a blessing to prepare us to go into the field. The Spirit was so strong and I'm so glad that I've had such a good relationship with these people, all 12 of us. 

Wow, I'm trying to think what else I could say about this week. Our teacher Sister Wu cried during your last lesson teaching her as an investigator, and probably the best moment with Brother Wu is that he said "hao chi!" completely voluntarily. We knew he appreciated us. What's going to be hard about going to the the field in America is not having someone you can ask questions about Chinese to all the time; boy has it been nice to have a teacher standing there ready to tell you the difference between dailing, lingdao, zhidao, and zhiyin. (Hint: they all mean the same thing, to guide or lead. Except some of them are nouns and some are verbs. Wait a minute, Brother Wu didn't actually finish answering that questions, I have no idea when to use which one. Zaogao!) So it will be a little difficult to keep up my Chinese while I'm in Salt Lake, but luckily I have an hour to study every day and I know the Lord will provide a way for me to study and remember so that I will be prepared when I get to Taiwan. Man, this whole faith thing is great. I love it.

Oh my goodness something I was totally going to forget to write about was that we had the awesome opportunity to have Elder Richard G Scott come and speak to the whole MTC, and it was also broadcast to like five other MTCs! It was so cool. And guess what, I got to sit on the stand with an apostle. My district was assigned to provide the opening and closing prayers and the ushers for the devotional, and my companion was asked to say the closing prayer. So of course I had to sit up there with her and I was within twenty feet of an apostle for like an hour, nbd. No, I didn't shake his hand. He spoke about the importance of prayer, and he told us we needed to have a blast on our missions. He also told the sisters that their missions would bless their lives and future families in ways they cannot even begin to imagine. It was such a neat experience to hear from an apostle of the Lord and learn from him.

Aside from spiritual times this week we also had some fun times. Sisters Ashby and Geddes had to drop off another sister to the travel office at like 4:30am on Wednesday morning so the night before Sister Ashby was getting into bed and I realized she was wearing her whole Sunday clothes, name tag and all. So I said "Sister, you probably shouldn't sleep in your skirt," and then a mild discussion occurred about the ridiculousness of wearing your clothes to bed and there may or may not have been pillows thrown at each other. It was great.

A cool thing about having teachers who are RMs teach us is that they have awesome stories. We were talking about different cultural things in Taiwan and Brother Wu, who is tall, white, and ginger, was telling us about this one time on his mission in Taichung and he stopped to talk to someone on the street, or maybe someone sitting on the bike next to him at a stop light. He started saying hello and sharing about the gospel when the Taiwanese person he was talking to didn't say anything, just simply reached out their hand to stroke his face. Turns out Taiwanese people really love to see white people, to the point that they may or may not touch your face. Man, I'm so excited to go there.

To conclude I would just like to say that I have had such a good experience at the MTC. I have grown so much spiritually, learned more Chinese than I ever could have in 9 weeks somewhere else, and have made some of the best friends I have ever had. I've learned so much about my purpose as a missionary and in life, and I have so much more love and patience and humility than I ever have had before, I think. I'm so grateful for the opportunities I've had here, and I can't wait to serve the people of Salt Lake and Taiwan. 

Life is good.

Love,

Sister Cardon

Hao chi!

Hey family and friends!

Let me see what I can remember that I want to say about this week.

Performing: I performed three different times yesterday, it was great! On Saturday night my companion and I put together a number for sacrament meeting, and besides my music falling right on top of me when I turned to page it went well. Sister Wawro likes to make me play things that aren't actually written in the music, but it usually works out and it's a good exercise for me to practice improvising. Then in the evening devotional I accompanied for two different songs: a violinist playing I Need Thee Every Hour and two elders in my district singing Where Can I Turn for Peace. Both went really well (from other people's perspective, at least. I knew where I messed up and I tried really hard not to look like I was freaking out on camera. Sources say I looked pleasant and happy, though, so that's good.) and lots of random people have told me it sounded awesome. One elder going to Houston Vietnamese speaking said, "Now don't be modest. Are you really good at the piano?" What am I supposed to say to that? Still, it was a cool experience to get to perform for the whole MTC and Ted Callister, who gave a really awesome devotional that ibn all honesty I don't remember much of because I got really exhausted after my adrenaline rush of performing, but I know it was really inspiring. (I sound like a terrible missionary, but I promise I really did listen!)

Chinese is still great, we sure have good times in class. Last week our teacher Brother Wu was writing a whole scripture on the board in pinyin, which is romanized Chinese. You write how the word sounds then draw a line over it representing which tone it is, which I can't really do in the email but hopefully you get the picture. Well he finished writing the scripture on the board and then started stranslating it, starting with "shi de," which essentially means "yea." So he writes "yea" on the board and draws a fourth tone over it, which, if you don't speak English, is not something you do. It was pretty funny. Now we sometimes assign tones to English words just to spice things up. Yes, I've been here for eight weeks and yes, that spices things up. Another thing we do when we're super bored is add "hao chi!" to everything. It means "good eat" and is used to describe delicious food, but we pretty much just say it whenever the opportunity is presented. Last week the following conversation happened (all in Chinese, of course):

Brother Wu: Next, we're going to practice inviting people to be baptized.

Me: hao chi!

Brother Wu: ...what does that mean?

Me: Well, when you eat good food and you really like it, then you say hao chi!

Brother Wu: ...yes. I know that. But why did you say it?

Me: We've been here for eight weeks.

Good times.

Lessons have been going well, although we still have many moments when we don't know what's going on. A few days ago we were teaching about resurrection and I asked our investigator what she thought about it; I didn't understand her response but asked if she had been talkign about reincarnation. No. A few minutes later she again talks for two minutes without me figuring out what she's talking about, something about bodies and perhaps being buried. I get an idea that she is talking about cremation, and how can someone be resurrected if they've been cremated? So I say, "Fire?" and make little fire motions with my hands. "Yes, fire." Sweet! Successful communication. I still don't know what she was asking. And I still haven't figured out how to say "cremation" in Chinese.

It's been a really good week and I've definitely been learning a lot about patience with myself, the other missionaries around me, and the MTC. But we only have a week left, and I definitely want to put in my best effort for the last few days I am here. I have such a wonderful opportunity to learn and grow and serve. I love it here, and I'm not sure I'm ready to go into the field, but hey, that's what faith is about, right?

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

P.S. You have one week left to send me a DearElder every single day if you want. Just sayin.

Napkins Are For When You Are Cold

Hello family and friends!

This has been a good week. We are still missionaries, lessons are goign smoother, and it feels like I can speak Chinese. I mean, if someone who A ctually Speaks Chinese starts talking to me I probably wouldn't understand them, but when other missionaries speak I totally get it! I even translated for our branch president's wife during sacrament meeting yesterday, which was really fun. I totally got most everything and it made sense to her, although I didn't know the word for "work" so that was confusing sometimes, and I might have just summarized instead of translating directly. But hey, cha bu duo. (Not much difference.) Also, one of the new girls may have said that she was really grateful that Joseph Smith loves us and God sent Joseph Smith to die for us. Not necessarily untrue statements, but I kind of think she meant to say "Christ." I don't blame her, Yesu Jidu and Yuese Simi are pretty similar names and easy to get mixed up.

Yesterday in class with our native Taiwanese teacher, Sister Wu, we had a section about Taiwanese culture. She told us things not to do (bouncing your knees while teaching a lesson: not cool. It looks like you are poor.) and that Taiwanese people don't really shake hands. It's kind of weird to them and you have to ask permission before you stick your hand out awkwardly. Then we were discussing table manners (always hold your bowl up to your face, not eat over your plate. Also, don't ask for someone to pass you a dish, just stand up and get it, or reach over.) and the subject of napkins came up. In America at a fancy restaurant, you shake out your napkin and put it on your lap. Do they have anything similar in Taiwan? Sister Wu looks at us really confused and says, "Why do you put the napkin on your lap?" Well, in case food spills, then your clothes don't get dirty. Then Sister Wu starts giggling. "I thought it was because you were cold!"

So we've had a whole week with our new teacher, Brother Woolsey. Also Wu Laoshi, so we call him Brother Wu. No relation between Brother Wu and Sister Wu, he's a tall gangly redhead. And he is a great teacher! He served in our mission, Taiwan Taizhong, and just got back in like April (we think so, at least. Sometimes when we ask him personal questions he says, "...hao." and moves on.) so it's really great to be able to ask him questions about the mission. And he is such a good missionary teacher as well, he did a teaching demonstration the other day of the first lesson and it was SO GOOD. We were all like, "Can we have a recording of that lesson?" and "Can you be our companion?" And he's like "No cause you're a sister." It was a little deflating. 

Last week we got to try Skype TRC for the first time, that was fun! We got to a special computer lab and Skype with members actually in Taiwan which was way fun, except the sister we were Skyping with didn't have a camera so it was just like a phone call and it was really confusing and we can't really speak Chinese. But it was fun nevertheless, and we get to try again tonight, so hopefully that will go well. We should probably plan our lessons. That would be good.

Oh so I've mentioned the past few weeks that the Taiwan group ahead of us has been having visa issues: well now they are having official visa issues and are going to be reassigned stateside for six weeks. The Taiwan visa process is changing so they had to resubmit and now it's going to take another four weeks for them to get theirs, so they are all getting new mission calls this week for the first transfer. It's kind of sad, but they're all pretty excited to try a stateside mission for a little bit. Prayers that we won't be in the same boat would be much appreciated! 

Sorry no pictures this week, the computer is freaking out. Also I don't really have any pictures you might want to see, yesterday we had a "who can take the creepiest picture" contest in our district and I don't think you want to see the random close-ups I have of complete strangers. 

Love you all, I'm so glad to be here on a mission and learning so much about patience and faith and charity and the Spirit and all those good things. Life is good.

Love,

Sister Cardon the Younger

That's us: God's Henchmen

Turns out in Chinese that if you try to say that some one is somebody else's man, you are saying either 1) they are in a romantic relationship or 2) they are the person's henchman (we figured this out by my native Taiwanese teacher trying to explain "mafia" to us). In conclusion, when someone asks you in Chinese what a prophet is, you should not try to say that they are God's man. You should learn the word for representative or messenger. That would be less confusing.

Another week here at the MTC! Life is still good, we are still learning a lot every day. Two major things happened in our little lives around here: the district that was supposed to leave this Friday for Taipei hasn't gotten their visas yet, so we might have them for a whole extra week or they might leave on Wednesday or anywhere in between. So that's been exciting. The more major event though, is that since the BYU semester is starting up schedules have changed, and there was so many logistics with that change that Brother Olsen is no longer our teacher. He was there the first day with us and is so much fun and such a good teacher, so it's actually been really hard on us this weekend. We'll still see him around and our new teacher Brother Woolsey is great, of course, but it's not the same. But don't worry, the church is still true.

hmm what else. We have a running joke that Elder Tatton is keeping a pet hamster in his room (he isn't actually, don't worry) and have managed to convince the new zone leaders that it's actually true. Some entertaining shenanigans have ensued from this situation.

We have Mandarin Sisters' Soccer on Saturday and had a really good game a few days ago. My favorite part was when Sisters Bowman and Lew weren't touching each other or the ball and we still screaming because they didn't want to hurt each other, just waving their feet in the air. it was great. I totally made an awesome goal. Also, I am way good at Four Square now.

We had an awesome devotional last Tuesday from Elder Martino of the Seventy, and he totally told us that we need to be putting in our best effort and I was like YES MAN I WILL. I can probably still put forth more effort. Then last night we had a devotional from Brother Holzapfel who used to be a mission president in Alabama and he teaches at BYU and he was super inspiring and kind of yelled at us Elder Holland-style and then the closing song was 'How Gentle God's Commands" and I kind of laughed a little bit. He told some really cool stories and I was so inspired and excited to be out in the mission field where I can follow the Spirit to just drive a little farther and find a woman in a trailer in the middle of the woods who is ready to hear the gospel. Except, I'll probably be biking a little farther to the next rice paddy to find a cute little Taiwanese family who needs the gospel. Point is, people all around the world need that gospel and I am so happy that I get to do just that: share it.

I'm out of time and need to go eat dinner, but I love you all and guess what, I'm still so happy to be here and learning and growing and having the chance to feel the Spirit so much and speaking Chinese even though I can't actually speak it and be edified by Christ's servants and humble myself and learn how to teach the gospel so that I can help the people of Taiwan come unto Christ. Shall we not go on in so great a cause?

Love,

Sister Cardon

P.S. Best quote from this week: "The most rebellious thing I've ever done is have a bad attitude at a service project."

P.P.S. Here's a mildly awkward picture of our district because it is super hard to get people to take good pictures on Temple Walk.

Whooaaa We're Halfway There: Ups and Downs

So many of you may know that Chinese is a tonal language, so that the way you say the vowel changes the meaning of the word. You have to memorize the tones of a word in order to know the word. Many words will be two syllables together, and we've come up with a code for how to know what the tones are: when the two-syllable word starts with a rising tone and ends with a falling tone, we call it a mountain. Switch that and it's a valley. Starts with a flat tone and falls means it's a slide. We actually haven't come up with any more than that but you get it. The word for companion is tongban, and it's a mountain. You have both ups and downs with your companion, so it goes up and then down. That's a bit was this week has been. 

It's actually been a great week! One up was our lesson with our investigator on Tuesday. We decided to show him around the chapel so that he would want to come to church (we walked about twenty yards to the main building with like six chapels in it) and we had this whole lesson planned about the sacrament and baptism. We decided to sing a song at the beginning to bring the spirit so we sang him 'Nearer My Good to Thee' in Chinese. The Spirit was so strong and he was asking what this feeling was so we ended up just talking about that the whole time! It was so wonderful, I wish every lesson could be like that. Maybe I should sing in lessons more.

One down, however, was our lesson with him on Saturday; we tried to tackle to Plan of Salvation. It was going really well until we got to Adam of Eve. To most of the Western with Judeo-Christian backgrounds, this is a simple enough topic to expound on; they know the basic story and you mostly just have to teach the LDS standpoint on it. In Taiwan, however, people might have never even heard their names, let alone know anything about trees and serpents. So we try to teach that and for some reason I think it's important to tell him about them not being allowed to eat the fruit and that they're supposed to have children but they can't until they eat the fruit and basically it was super confusing and I was way embarrassed and he thought it was ridiculous and it sounded ridiculous coming from me because, you know, I CAN'T SPEAK CHINESE. But it was great.

Another up was that we got to host on Wednesday, which is fun, because you help welcome new missionaries into the MTC and tell them how awesome it is and you get to miss class for a while. I helped like 7 new sisters come in, including one going to Taiwan! She's not in our zone though. But we did get a whole new district of missionaries going to Taibei, which is really awesome. They're super nice and it's cool not to be the youngest ones anymore. I guess the down with that one is that it was way exhausting. Still fun though!

Another major up is that WE GOT OUR CHINESE NAMETAGS. We each got two nametags that are completely Chinese and have the name of the Church in Chinese. It is so freaking exciting. We're not allowed to wear them until we get to Taiwan, though, which is kind of sad. 

Also, WE'RE HALFWAY DONE. Saturday was the halfway mark of the MTC, and I should be leaving for Taiwan in four weeks from tomorrow. It's so crazy! I'm going to Asia! I'm supposed to know Chinese! I don't know Chinese! I don't ever want to teach about Adam and Eve again! I can't wait to eat real Taiwanese food! it's great.

Haha something funny that happened last Monday after I had already emailed is that we put our laundry in the dryer before the washer so we ended up with some nice warm clothes that were still dirty and we couldn't actually finish laundry until after dinner. It was really dumb. But pretty hilarious. Also, turns out you can wash and dry your nametag (not necessarily in that order) and it will be fine. Those things are sturdy.

Another up/slightly embarrassing down was that we were on the big screen in devotional last night! We were sitting on the front row of the bleachers in the back and the speaker, Stephen B Allen who is the managing director of the missionary department, pointed to us (almost all of our district was sitting together) and said "Hey, all of you sitting right there, count off twelve or so of you and come up here on stage." So we went up there and he asked us to tell him something we gave up to be on our mission, and we couldn't say anything that others had said before us. I said it was not seeing my family, including my six-year-old brother with Down Syndrome. Haha when Sis Wawro was up she said "marriage" and he was like "Oh will you tell us about that" and she's like "uhh no I don't really want to talk about it" and there may have been catcalls. It was pretty funny. We're practically famous.

So it's so cool that we have a native Taiwanese teacher (Sister Wu) because we asked her to teach us some Taiwanese idioms, and she has some really good ones! Every other day or so she will give one to us, it's great. One of my favorites is "You really have two brushes," which is like saying somebody is awesome. We tried to ask her where the saying comes from, but she's like "I don't know, do you know where 'raining cats and dogs' comes from?" and we were like "okay fine" but then I remembered that I do actually know where that comes from.* But oh well. Probably some Chinese calligraphy master was so awesome he could use two brushes at once. Another one is the Chinese version of "the pot calling the kettle black": 50 steps laughs at 100 steps. She did tell this origin: it's like if two guys are trying to get to the same destination and one of them takes 50 steps and the other takes 100. Neither of them makes it to the destination, but the guy who took 50 steps laughs at the one who took 100 because he exerted more effort and still didn't make it. The point is that the one who took 50 also didn't get there, so he's being a hypocrite. (it took us like 20 minutes to figure this one out from Sister Wu's explanation.)

So that's the kind of week it's been! Good parts, bad parts, but overall still great because I'm a missionary. Devotionals are some of the best parts, we get to hear from really wonderful speakers, last week we had Sister Bonnie Oscarson, the Young Women's general president. She told some really awesome stories from people in her family who served missions. Love it. 

Yesterday at Relief Society the speaker (Sis McConkie of the YW General Presidency) said this: As you stand up for Christ, He will stand up for you. I love it, and it totally reconfirms to me that I am in the right place, standing up for Christ and defending His gospel and that because I am doing so, He is supporting me and helping me be an instrument for Him. So inspiring.

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

P.S. The picture is of my new nametag and me wearing jeans, because happy is what happens when all your dreams come true. It's so nice to wear pants.

* Cats and dogs used to congregate on people's thatched roofs and when it rained sometimes the roof would fall through and so would the cats and dogs.

Four Square is Serious Business

No, really. If you've ever been to the MTC you know it. Everyone knows it: Four Square is one of the most important things you do as a missionary besides learning the language and fulfilling your purpose to invite others to come unto Christ.

Okay, not really, but it is a pretty big deal. Wei JM and I decided we were going to try it this week. All the elders in our district play it nearly every day during gym time and we figured our pseudo-brothers (the elders in our district) would be fairly nice to us while we're playing (they're not particularly, but they do cheer for us when we're not against them) so we tried it. It's way fun! And we get better every time, I've made it to King more than once. We convinced Bi and Gu JM to play with us the next day and soon we will have a force of sister missionaries playing four square that will be one to be reckoned with. We've even come up with strategies that would totally work if we could actually aim the ball. I did execute a pretty good Criminal Hook the other day, though, but Elder Shurtleff was too quick for me and he hit it back. Next time, though, next time. And I will be sure to let you all know when we execute a perfect Flamingo strategy. (I love being a missionary, i really do. But sometimes you need a little distraction, like planning strategies for a game I haven't played since third grade)

The food at the MTC cafeteria is really good, especially their desserts. So, I have made a goal that i am only allowed to have dessert on Sunday. I know about myself that I don't really do well at resolutions unless I have some incentive, however, so I asked my district sisters to help me come up with one. Their solutions: a deal (not a bet, because missionaries don't bet) that if I eat dessert on a not-Sunday then I will have to confess my undying love to an elder in our district of their choice. That would definitely be against the rules, and since I try my very best to follow the missionary commandments (it's really hard to go to sleep right at 10:30, I'm telling you), then it is actually a really good incentive for me. I didn't even have dessert on Sunday, I was so terrified of the prospect of having to tell an elder that I would love him forever. Hey, maybe I could say it in Chinese so fast that he couldn't understand it. That would be a good thing to practice, definitely more important than learning vocab for the Restoration! :)

I really hope everyone knows I'm kidding and that the point is, missionaries aren't perfect. I don't know if that's the point, actually. THe point probably is that I feel really good now that I'm not eating dessert and i don't even want to anymore because i feel so awesome. It's good practice for Taiwan, where they really don't have good dessert. So I'm happy! But if my companion tells me how good her cake is one more time there might be something to talk about in companionship inventory. (that was a joke, i love her)

Missionaries aren't perfect, it's true, and I definitely learned that yesterday. At sacrament meeting every week the branch presidency chooses two missionaries to give a talk on an assigned topic, but the things is that everyone has to prepare a talk and you only know that you have been chosen to give the talk when they announce it, about two minutes before you actually speak. I gave this sort of impromptu testimony my first Sunday here so i was pretty sure that i was exempt from speaking since there are three whole districts who have been here longer than us where NOBODY in the district has given a talk in Sacrament meeting yet. So I wrote a basic outline for a talk on repentance, shrugged and decided not to translate it into Chinese because I probably wouldn't be speaking anyway, and went on my merry way. The counselor gets up after the passing of the sacrament to announce the speaker, and the words "Our first speaker will be..." are coming out of his mouth when I suddenly think "It's me, shoot, it's me, I'm going to be giving a talk, why is it me?!!" and he finishes, "...Sister Cardon!" Compelled to be humble, much? :) Haha I'm making it sound worse than it was, I think it went pretty well, I just spoke a lot more English than I would have if I had prepared more. And it's good practice to give impromptu talks because you never know what will happen in the mission field! I'm actually really lucky to be able to have the Spirit with me to know what to say and practice speaking in front of groups, even if it was a mesh of Chinese and English that didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Last night we had an awesome devotional where Jenny Oaks Baker, a wonderful violinist, spoke and performed five or six pieces. She is so talented! Her violin sounded like silk, and she performed with her four kids, which was really cute. Her last piece was I Know that My Redeemer Lives and she was essentially playing a duet with herself, playing two strings at a time. It was so impressive, we're so lucky to have the opportunity to hear such wonderful music and speakers at the MTC.

We taught TRC again on Saturday and it went a lot better than last time! We planned the lesson about prayer on the walk over to the building where they hold TRC (not a good idea, you are definitely supposed to do more planning than that, although since it went well I'm not entirely sure i learned my lesson) and had two really nice discussions with some chinese-speaking RMs about prayer. In one of them we talked about having more sincere prayer, which I decided to put into action, and it was so awesome! Last night I tried praying specifically for every person in my district, and I felt like i gained so much love and understanding for them. Praying for people really helps you love them, and I definitely encourage you all to think more about specific people when you pray (you see, I'm practicing giving commitments when I teach, isn't it great to be a missionary? :D).

Thanks so much for your support, love you all and hope you are having a wonderful week. I sure am, I love being the Lord's representative.

Sister Cardon

PS I'm always trying to coordinate outfits with my companion, much to her chagrin, and this time i actually did it, here's a picture :) Every time I see companions with matching outfits I go, "see, they're doing it!" and she rolls her eyes. But I won this time.