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.