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.