Happy Christmas!

Merry merry Christmas! Oh wait, can I still say that? This morning when we were talking to the Zone Leaders they said, "We don't know how to contact people these last two days; Christmas is over and we can't say "Happy New Year" yet!" I am of the persuasion that there is no limit to when you can wish others happy Christmas greetings.

And we have had a great Christmas! Here's a list of all the Christmasy activities we did this week. Oh and keep in mind that a few weeks ago I bought a box of 280 candy canes from Costco, so pretty much all of these activities involved me pulling out candy canes from my pockets and handing them to people.

Monday: FHE where we talked about Christmas traditions and watched an old church video about the Christmas story

Tuesday: Caroling with a group from the ward; we were on exchanges and I was leading the area (which I have only been in for a week) so we did a lot of calling people and asking how to get to places. It was way fun! I found a Lindt chocolate truffle in someone's candy dish and it made me happy.

Wednesday: a member brought us a TON of food from Costco, including a real live pumpkin pie. It was the most delicious thing ever. And for our English spiritual share we sang some songs and watch a video.

Thursday: In the morning we went to an old folks' home and performed with a bunch of little kids: we shared the Christmas story, the elders both dressed up like Santa, we sang a few songs, and made little origami Santas. In the evening we went caroling again and someone gave us kind of spicy ginger tea. In the evening Sister Graham and I opened up our Christmas pajamas, read the Christmas story together, sang a few songs, and snuggled safe in our beds.

Friday: CHRISTMAS! We got up in the morning, opened our presents (we filled each others' stockings), made a delicious breakfast with French Toast and dragonfruit and hot chocolate and then headed to a member's house to SKYPE! so fun. Love my family. We ended up going to the member's daughter's school to sing again, had lunch with the family, handed out stickers at another school, did weekly planning, and went to our ward party. DUDE. So much food. There were 5 tables full of food and dessert and hot Kool-aid and cabbage and weird rice things wrapped in leaves. Haha, the whole evening there was this member who kept coming to me and telling me what I needed to try and what not to eat, and she told me how much she loved Madonna and asked me what the name on my passport said. She was hilarious.

So that was our Christmas week! It sure was fun. It made me feel really good to be able to talk to so many people and spread Christmas cheer. I am so happy that I can serve here in Shalu! It's windy and cold and big, but it's great. I'm so grateful that the Savior was born and that I get to be here and spread the message. And I get to meet so many cool people! We found some new investigators this week who are really interesting; they don't have a car because global warming, they've visited the temple in Portland, and they are way prepared to hear the gospel. Miracles!

Love you all! Hope you all have fun with your Christmas presents, but don't shoot your eye outov

Sister Cardon

Mission Tour!

I feel like the past few weeks have given me an opportunity to do a lot of reflecting, and the reason is that I am coming up on a year of being in Taiwan. What? This week we had our once-a-year mission tour, where we have an opportunity to hear from our mission president and a special guest, a member of the Seventy. The reason this is so weird is because when I first came to Taiwan LAST year we had mission tour with Elder Gong, who was just called to be in the Presidency of the Seventy but right now is the Asia Area President. So for me to attend Round 2 of misison tour with Elder Sam Wong was just, like, super weird. Aah! I'm old! Okay no more of that.

And mission tour was so great! We were lucky enough to be in the Jiayi chapel, 3 minutes from our house, so that was nice that we didn't have to travel far. The tour was over three days, so on Wednesday they met with missionaries in Taizhong, Thursday with us including missionaries from Zhongxing, Tainan, and Jiayi, and then on Thursday they went down to Gaoxiong. It was pretty neat! It was so cool to hear from our leaders. Elder Wong is hilarious with his Cantonese accent and funny comments. He's also a leader who just kind of wings it with the program, but I'll talk about that in a minute. President Blickenstaff talked about D&C 6 and how we need to repent and not be cumbered with things. Sister Blickenstaff talked about John 6 and believing in Christ. We had Costco pizza for lunch and I had plenty of time to get really nervous for the part after lunch, when I was singing in a musical number.

The time came and we went up to sing our number, "I Believe in Christ." We had a quartet with me, Sister Ashby, Elder Smith, and Elder Johnson, and the very talented Elder Crockett who just made up his own arrangement on the piano. It was kind of funny like the day before we were performing he was like, "hey do you think we should do the last verse in a different key?" (keep in mind this is after we had already added an a capella part and made up our own stuff to split parts on the fourth verse, etc) and even though changing the keys always works I just had to be like NO TOO MUCH. It was a really great musical number though, and it really brought the Spirit to the meeting. The coolest part though, was at the end when Elder Wong was wrapping up. We were about to have testimonies from missionaries who are going home soon and then the meeting usually ends with the president authority (Elder Wong) giving a testimony as well. But this time he was like, "You know, usually I would be the last speaker of the meeting but the missionaries who sang the musical number did so well that I'm just going to have them come up here and sing the last verse of their song again instead. They're just going to give my testimony for me. And that will be the closing song as well." OKAy I guess we're singing again! it was a pretty neat experience. And then afterwards Elder Wong asked us to sing the last two verses again so he could get a recording of it. So now there's a member of the Seventy with a recording of me singing on his phone. That's pretty sweet.

So it's been a pretty good week! We have seen lots of miracles and we have lots of investigators who are progressing. One cute girl named Cindy said, "I'm not entirely sure why I want to be baptized, but I know that it feels good and I want to do it." 

OH I totally forgot to talk about the other awesome thing that happened this week: we got to go to a wedding! A member in our ward was getting married this weekend but her new husband is not a member, so they had the wedding at the chapel. It was really interesting. It was kind of a mix of a wedding, a sacrament meeting (this lady gave a talk and started going off on how her kids went on missions), and a wedding reception. It was pretty fun though and the food was tasty and now I've been to a Taiwanese wedding. Sort of.

So yeah! good week. I'm happy and loving Taiwan, my companion is great, and we see miracles every day.

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

November Has Come

And here we are, already halfway through Sister Thao's last transfer in Taiwan! It's a little crazy how fast time goes by. How on earth is it already November?! Last November was the month I came to Taiwan in the first place. What the heck?

Life is good in Jiayi. We are seeing a lot of success in finding new investigators, setting dates for baptismal goals, getting lessons, etc. Seriously, I can't even believe how great this area is. The only problem is getting people to come to church, but that's the thing that is really hard for missionaries to control so I don't feel too bad about it. We'll just keep on keeping on!

We have a really awesome investigator named Rebecca. Well, she's sort of an investigator? Before I came here Sister Thao and her companion would just go out to lunch with her sometimes because she (Rebecca) recently became Buddhist and just wanted to have friends but was not interested in the gospel. Recently, though, she has been asking a lot more question about God and prophets and the commandments we follow (which are like, everything that devout Buddhists do)(except being vegetarian)(Buddhists can stick with that). Rebecca is really funny and speaks English most of the time and is super spontaneous. Yesterday after we chatted for a long time and then went home she texted us and was like, "Hey if I want to get baptized can I do it before Sister Thao leaves?" What? we hadn't ever even talked to her about baptism. It's pretty awesome to see how the gospel can change people in just a short time. We are going to keep working with her and help her to have a desire to be baptized (for the right reasons haha, not as a goodbye present to Sister Thao). Miracles!

Other things that happened this week:

I went to Mission Leadership Council last week in Taizhong and it was super exhausting. We took the train up to Taizhong and then sat there and did missionary meeting stuff for like 6 hours and took the train home. But we had a delicious lunch! And it was cool to see all of the mission leaders in one place trying to figure out how to help our mission improve. I felt very inspired. And I asked Elder Stevenson how his dad is doing. He said he is stressed out. 

Halloween! We celebrated by having a birthday party at a member's house, because Elder Robinson's birthday is in November. They had a cake with a picture of Elder Robinson's face printed on it in frosting. It was pretty hilarious.

And I can't really think of anything else to share for this week. I went on exchanges with Sister Ashby from my MTC district! That was fun.

Have a good week!

Sister Cardon

Pictures: We went on exchanges to Xinying this week and I don't know why but they have statues of deer, like, everywhere.

I decided to wear an elephant dress today. It is green.

This Email is Mildly Mediocre

It'd be great if I could tell you all the cool stories that happened this week, but I can't. If I told you, I'd have to kill you. And I can't, because my license to kill was revoked. So that's too bad.

Okay, not really. But, I can't really tell you any cool stories because I legitimately cannot think of anything cool that happened this week.

So I'll tell you some of the mundane things that happened this week!

Sister Thao and I are both almost out of money for the month so we have been eating $35 (that's Taiwanese money) bowls of turkey rice for, like, every other meal.

We spent a lot of time calling people last-minute to come to lessons with our investigators and we had some success, but also some unsuccess. We will plan better this week.

This morning we went to the hospital because Sister Thao has a wart on her foot and on the way there we had to wait for the train for 40 minutes but on the way back we had to run to make it.

I'm mildly addicted to the Butter Milk Bread they sell at 7-11. It's delicious and full of white flour.

We biked to our secondary area on Saturday, but we didn't really have a good map of the area, so we did a lot of "Do you know where this neighborhood is?" and people pointed us in vague directions. Finally after about an hour and a half of biking we found the neighborhood, but the house numbers didn't make any sense. Then we finally found the house, but when we got there a grumpy man told us that the lady we were trying to find hadn't lived there for ten years. We then went to 7-11 and had microwave dinners.

Yesterday at FHE we played a game kind of like "Big Booty" but with animal signs instead and it was really fun. Got a little rowdy. No one was hurt.

We are going to go shopping in Xinying today.

I am in charge of putting together a musical number for zone conference next week! So that is fun. We are having a quartet sing "I Believe in Christ." It should go well. 

And that concludes the mundane for this week.

Something that has been great about this week, though, is that we have some really great investigators who have a desire to learn. We met with Angela and Rainy last week and set baptismal goals with them, and this week when we met with them again and asked, "How do you feel about your baptism?" they both were really excited. Angela was worried that the baptismal interview would be a test about the Book of Mormon haha. it's really great to see them start to progress and build their testimonies and come closer to God. And I've noticed about myself that I have become much better at really listening to people and trying to figure out what they need and ask questions. Like, I always have tried to be friends with my investigators, but now I feel I can connect with them a lot more (Chinese helps) and really be on the same page. It's so important to really understand people and listen them. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care! True facts.

Love you all! Have a great week.

Sister Cardon

Pictures: from our long bike ride on Saturday

...I don't really have any more pictures. Man, I was really bad at taking pictures this week! I will do better next week.

Anyone for Turkey Rice?

You know, I've decided I'm just going to stop trying to predict where I am going to be and who my companion is going to be and stuff, but recently it's usually just ended up being wrong. I was all settled and ready to spend another six weeks in Shizhong with my cute Korean Sister Eo, and then at 10:28 on Saturday night I got a phone call. "Sister Cardon," President Blickenstaff said. "I would like you to serve as a Sister Training Leader in Jiayi with Sister Thao. Is that okay?" "No, that's not okay," I responded. haha I'm just kidding I didn't say that. I think I kind of sputtered and mumbled and said umm yes at some point. Wait but I'm not kidding that I've been called to serve as an STL, which is pretty exciting! For those of you unfamiliar with the organization of a mission, we have various leadership positions such as zone leaders and district leaders, who both lead and help other missionaries and report numbers and stuff. But there's also Sister Training Leaders, who are called to help the sisters in their zone. The difference that it makes to me now is that I will be going on exchanges a lot more often, I get to make a lot more phone calls, and I will definitely be striving to increase my humility and faith. I've had several very good STLs on my mission so far and I hope that I will be able to help the sisters in my zone as those ones have helped me.

New area! Jiayi is more in the middle of Taiwan, between Taizhong and Tainan. They are famous for eating Turkey Rice and having nice people. I already love it here; the city has a great small-town feel and the streets are small. Wow, I really did miss having just two-lane roads while I was in Shizhong. I am so excited to be here for the next while. I will likely be here for 3 months at least; this is Sister Thao's last move call so she wil be going home in six weeks, so I will be probably be here for at least a transfer after that. And then I only have one more transfer left myself, so this very well might be the last time I move until I go to America. But we don't talk about that. 

Fun facts about Sister Thao: her family has 8 people and they are Hmong! She grew up in Wisconsin and speaks three languages (English, Chinese, Hmong). She is great. 

As for this past week in Shizhong, it was pretty good! We had an English party that was... fairly successful. Lots of people came. It was Halloween-themed. Note to all: don't try to make toilet paper mummies at a Taiwanese Halloween party unless you want it to end up like snow in the cultural hall.

The best part of this week, of course, was listening to General Conference! I love Conference. It was so neat to hear the testimonies of our inspired leaders, especially the three new apostles. Did anyone catch that Elder Stevenson's son is serving in Taiwan? Did anyone think to ask me if maybe that son is serving as a zone leader in Taizhong right now? Yeah that's right. Our mission has an apostle's son. No I haven't ever actually met him. But I probably will at the next mission leadership conference! So that's cool.

I was struck by how many speakers in conference spoke on the theme of obedience, even if that wasn't necessarily their topic. I feel like we are being reminded more and more that each of us needs to develop our personal testimony and stay true to the standards and commandments we believe. It is so important for us to be strong examples of the believers and remember the covenants and promises we believe! One of my favorite talks was from Larry S Lawrence, who spoke about the Spirit and how we can ask to know what ways we can improve. I loved all the examples he gave, even such little things such as interrupting people or complaining can hinder us from spiritually progressing. I think we can all relate that we have little quirks and habits that we can try to improve. And the cool thing is, we aren't alone in trying to change ourselves! We have the Savior and the Atonement by our side to help us get through it.

Love you all! Hope you have a great week and find ways to improve.

Sister Cardon

A Korean and an American walk into a barbecue...

First of all, Happy Mid-Autumn festival! This week has been full of barbecues and moon cakes and it has been great. There's also a typhoon happening today so the ward barbecue got cancelled. But that's okay. Mid-Autumn festival is another chance for people to take the day off when people don't really know what the holiday is about and get the family together. And I love a good Taiwanese barbecue; there's a distinct lack of hamburgers and potato salad but a whole bunch of anything else you could think of to barbecue: thin pork slices, sausage, mushrooms, baby bamboo, etc. It's pretty good. Yeah. Taiwan.

I love my new area! Shizhong is great. I've been pretty lucky to have served in a wide range of areas: rural rice fields, friendly neighborhood feel, college campus, and now the downtown. Seriously, if you're ever along and life is making you lonely you can always come to Shizhong. We've got glitzy malls and expensive hot pot and giant roads and a subway system. Hey this is the first time I've really had a subway system in my area! That's cool. Shizhong is also beautiful; we got the Love River running right through our area so we get to bike over plenty of bridges and contact people sitting along the river enjoying the lights in the evening. It's pretty great. The only downside is that our apartment (a super NICE apartment reminiscent of our apartment in Beijing 4 years ago) is like 20 minutes away from everything and we have to bike over a huge bridge to get home. Get some serious thigh burn every morning. It's great.

And I love my companion! She is Korean and cute. Oh I think I never mentioned her name: Sister Eo! (you say it "oh") But her Chinese name is "Yu Jie Mei": Sister Fish. She reads and writes English pretty well but doesn't speak it much, so we just speak Chinese to each other all the time. It's pretty funny sometimes. For instance (this was all spoken in Chinese):

Me: We could now grab the thing or go church grab the thing.

Sister Eo: ...I don't understand.

Me: ...yeah me neither.

Sister Eo: Grab the thing now or at church grab?

Me: Yeah.

Sister Eo: ...the same.

Me: Yeah.

Haha it's great. We're both doing our best. Her Chinese is awesome; she lived in Harbin, China for a year and speaks and reads really well. We're both learning!

You know, it is the coolest thing how just when you are kind of down or discouraged, Heavenly Father sends you some tender mercies to lift you up. Yesterday was kind of a low-key Sunday and we both had a bit of ennui. We had a lessons with some new investigators who weren't that interested and don't live in our area, and when we called a less active member she said she didn't want to meet with us and waste both of our time. Ouch! But we decided to go out tracting and try to find some families at home. Found a street, starting going down in and realized every single house had a giant Buddhist altar in the living room. Knocked on one door and a guy kind of angrily opened the mailbox peephole thing and said a Korean missionary came a few days ago, I didn't want it then and I don't want it now, why won't you guys leave me alone? (I'm not sure who is going around Shizhong parading as my companion, but we definitely did not knock on that door recently.)

BUT then we walked a little further and ran into the cutest scene ever: a family having a barbecue. They had two cute little kids and they immediately invited us to sit down and eat with them, you two are so beautiful where are you from, have some more pork, oh you are missionaries that's so great of you! It felt so nice to sit down and be a family with them. They brought out little sparklers and there were fireworks in the distance and for all intensive purposes it could have been a 4th of July barbecue with my cousins. Except, we were all speaking Chinese. And they offered us beer. But.

In conclusion, you know, God really watches out for all of His children. He cares about each of us and He wants us all to be happy. He knew I needed to have that virtual hug, and He knew that family needed to meet the missionaries and find out how they can be happy like that forever. We are going to go back next week and I can totally see them coming to church and learning about the gospel and getting baptized one day. Woohoo! Miracles happen.

Love you all! Hope you had a wonderful Mid-Autumn Festival as well.

Sister Cardon

Super Great

Sorry guys, shorter email this week because I am almost out of time!

We've had a good 10 days since I emailed. Tracting in the hot sun. Lessons on random doctrinal things. Stake Conference! I should drink more water.

Most humbling moment: Usually when I say something wrong in Chinese it is just with my companion and is not too big of a deal, because she knew what I meant to say, etc. Well, last week we were in Sunday School talking about missionary work, so of course the missionaries were called upon to share. And elder was talking about how even though it is hot and you are getting rejected and you are really tired, you can still be happy. For some reason I decided to pipe in, "or if you are really wet!" in the middle of his share. "Shi1 shi1 de", wet. Well, after I said it I realized that no one really gave any sort of response, not even like a pity chuckle. There was just sort of an awkward silence and then I heard someone behind me whisper to their neighbor, "what does that mean?" I turned around. "Shi shi de, like when it rains." Then the chorus of understanding was let out, "ohhhh shi shi de like when it's raining and you are all wet" "oh okay she was talking about rain" "yeah like really wet." I was super confused on why everyone had reacted that way when finally someone was like "we thought you said 'or if you're dead.' "

Super cool stake conference this week: Elder Wong of the Seventy came to visit Tainan and we had some awesome sessions on Saturday night and Sunday morning. He is super funny and was getting all involved with the audience asking question and stuff on Saturday night. The cool thing is that he is actually from Hong Kong so doesn't speak Mandarin fluently; he speaks it really well, but sometimes he would pause and say things a few times to get the tones right. It made me feel better that if a Seventy is struggling with Chinese, I can struggle a little too. The main theme on Saturday was keeping the Sabbath day holy and really appreciating it, so he had this thing where he asked everyone to tell him what sort of things are distracting during sacrament meeting and how to fix it, "so we can help those other countries that struggle with these problems." At one point he said that missionaries often worry about what the speakers in sacrament meeting will talk about in case their investigator would think it was weird, and I guess I nodded a little too emphatically because he called on me and said, "This sister is very brave, she is saying the talks in her sacrament meeting are bad! Why don't you tell us something that can help investigators and members in that case?" oops. So I stood up and started talking and said that we should remember to testify of Christ in sacrament meeting, not ourselves. Always a good thing.

On Sunday his theme was talking about going from "great" to "super great" and it was a good reminder that no matter how great we are doing, we can always take that extra step to be super great.

Love you all! Have a good week.

An American in Tainan

This has been a pretty fabulous week, if I do say so myself. I don't really know how to organize this email very well, so I'm just going to have a bunch of little paragraphs of the funny and awesome things that make up my life right now.

My companion: I love being with Sister Shen so much. Her English is FABULOUS and she loves missionary work. She's hilarious and we can easily chat for hours. It's so cool to be able to speak Chinese all the time; I'm stuck between feeling like I'm really improving and feeling like Wow I really don't know a lot of Chinese. Because, like, her Chinese is awesome. Duh. So we are having a lot of fun.

Tainan is great, though a lot different from the areas I've served in before. It is actually the second smallest area in the mission. Like, we can bike from the north to the south border in 15 minutes, and east to west in maybe 30 minutes, and it's all city. Compare that to my first area in Gangshan where if we legitimately biked from one end to the other it would probably take 3 hours. Maybe 4. So it's super tiny and often when we contact people they don't live in our ward, but in the Tainan 1st or 3rd or 4th ward. There are a whole bunch of little streets everywhere and it's kind of like a maze. I can get to the church by myself now though! So that's fun.

I also am in a bigger missionary district now, with 5 companionships (3 elders, 2 sisters) and it's a blast. I'm serving in the same ward with an elder from my MTC district, which is fun, and his companion is also Taiwanese. So sometimes we are just surrounded by Taiwanese people and I'm like Wow you are all talking really fast. I'm not sure my head can fit quite that much Chinese in it at once. But I'll get used to it. 

People here are so nice! Some people say that the further south you go in Taiwan, the more relaxed and nicer people are. I don't know how much that's true, but the first few days here I was really impressed with how nice people are. Like, in Taizhong on the street maybe 70% of people will take the flier you give them, but here it's more like 90%. So that's cool! And our first day tracting we met two people who were happy let us come back. And the ward is super nice; we actually live on the floor above some really strong members and they invite us to dinner every Sunday.

Someone told me the other day that they have a joke; when someone is taking a long time doing something the other person will say, "Come on hurry up, we don't have American time here!" So the other day I said that to the other American and everyone laughed.

There was a baptism on Saturday that we went to and a lady came up to me, pulled up her skirt to show me she was wearing purple shorts and said, "I wear these for safety. When I ride a scooter the wind blows my skirt around. But it's not for my safety; it's for everyone's safety so they don't see me and get in an accident!" Hahahaha. I love old Taiwanese ladies.

Yep, life is good. I'm excited about my area and my companion and I love Taiwan. 

Oh, I almost forgot! I officially hit my year mark on my mission last week. I think I might be an old missionary. So weird! I'm down to a little more than 6 months. Crazy.

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

PS Pathetic that this was the only picture I have of the two of us. I will strive to take more pictures next week.

Proud to Be an American

Happy Fourth of July weekend from Taiwan! No, no fireworks. No one put their American flag out. No striped bunting. Only a few people sporting red, white, and blue. Indeed, the only patriotism I felt on Saturday was the America that we brought in our hearts.

ACTUALLY that's not true because we did end up having a super awesome American Style Barbecue for a ward activity! Last month the missionaries in Daya and Tanzi got together and decided we wanted to hold a church tour and barbecue together, just like they did on the District. So we made it happen and it was super great! It was also a good example of problem solving, because we had a lot of random little problems come up that we just had to figure out, For example:

We planned a sponge-and-bucket relay game but no one bought buckets. Let's ride to the junk store and buy them right now!

Ran out of water balloons in the middle of the game. Fill up some more!

The tour was supposed to start at 10:45 and last an hour, but they actually started at 10:30 and were done by 11:15. We told everyone to go up to the chapel and just started singing hymns, and the elders made an impromptu a capella men's quartet. It was great.

Games were supposed to last until 1:30. but everyone just decided to go home by 1:15. More clean up time!

Overall, it really was a great activity. A member brought his food truck and made a bunch of hamburgers that tried SO HARD to be real American hamburgers but didn't quite make it. Also, I'm not sure why Taiwanese think a dark green drink made out of leaves with black tree fungus in it makes an appropriate beverage for a barbecue but like, whatever totes your goat. After we were done cleaning up a memeber asked all of the missionaries to come into a classroom and sing The Star-Spangled Banner for a random class that was happening. We sounded pretty stellar. And don't worry,. we sang lots of Neil Diamond in the apartment. And biking on the way to church.

So, it was a successful weekend. Other highlights of the week include Zone Training meeting (which for some reason always includes missionaries doing a ridiculous skit that's pretty hilarious) and interviews with President and Sister Blickenstaff. Every three months we get to have a 12 minute interview with our mission president and it's really nice, you always learn a lot. I always sort of wish I could record the whole thing so I could remember all of the fabulous advice he gave me. One thing he told me was that one of the best gifts you can give to your companion is to just be happy and have a good attitude all the time. Duh! Attitude is everything. I know that when we are happy in doing the Lord's work (and just like, all the time) then life really is good. Gray skies are going to clear up! Haha gray skies would be really nice right now. It's hot.

Love you all! Hope you had a good American weekend.

Sister Cardon

Pictures: 

Water balloon toss! A Fourth of July favorite.

Impromptu missionary choir! 'Murica.

Cows and Marriage

This was one of those weeks when you are like, super tired at the end of Sunday night, and you're really ready for P-day, but that just makes it so you feel like you accomplished the things you needed to! We had a good week this week. We found some awesome new investigators, including a cool young mom from China who was super direct in the lesson. "What is it you want me to do when we are meeting?" "Am I supposed to memorize scriptures every day?" She was seriously super cool. And willing to set up for next week! Yay! 

Hmm what else. Ate some good food this week, the members are always so generous and willing to invite us over to eat. We have a new Ward Mission Leader, who is a member who works closely with the missionaries to help do missionary work in the ward, and we are helping him get settled and ready to work. Our ward really is awesome! I was thinking the other how great it is to have good relationships with the members in Daya and how we all work together and I know that they support us. And our district is working well together in helping our investigators get baptized. Tracy is still on her way to being baptized on Friday; we had a bit of a scare when we couldn't figure out a time that President Blickenstaff and her both had free to do an interview. I think I made like 12 phone calls about the same thing yesterday. Maybe that's why I was so tired.

It's still hot and sweaty, I'm realizing again that there's a lot of Chinese I don't know (and that it's super hard to understand people from Northern China), and sometimes I forget to drink water. I've got a super fabulous farmer's tan. Little 70-year-old Taiwanese grandmas are like my favorite people ever. My companion and I are pretty hilarious together.

Funny thing that happened in Chinese this week: the word for "finish" is "jieshu" and the word for "marriage" is "jiehun," which are super different to Chinese people but easily mixed up for Americans. So after we finished a game in FHE the other day one of the elders said, "alright, we're married!" He's going home next month. The other elders teased him pretty hard about it.

Last Monday we had a fun day and went to a place called Donghai to take pictures in front of a cool church. We met up with the sisters over there (SO fun, man I never get to hang out with sisters) and took cute pictures and ate Korean food and ice cream. We were walking around the college campus there where they have a college dairy and homemade ice cream. The outside of the building is painted like a cow and you can go and see the cows. It was super funny though because the Taiwanese girls we were with were like, "Hey, we can go see the cows!" "Yeah that sounds fun, let's see the cows!" and we're like, "...yes. Cows." Cows are not a super common thing here, it turns out. But chickens are! And turns out they have chickens that have black meat. Like, literally the bones and meat of the chicken are black. We ate some last night. It was a little disconcerting.

So that's about it! I've been working on improving my teaching skills and being nice and working with my companion. We are having a good time. We've figured out that it is possible to give your companion a bite of the doughnut you were eating while you are both riding in motion, so I guess you could say our bike skills are pretty serious. Except for the time I swerved to avoid a guy sticking his cigarette out the window and I accidentally bumped into her and we both went AAHH for a bit. Life is good!

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

sorry no pictures this week because this computer is struggling.

Re: A Pretty Solid Week

Ellyn was for some inexplicable reason unable to send her email to the normal recipients, so I have been charged with forwarding this to all of you:

This week's interesting start to my email is a list of things I've
eaten recently.

a lot of dumplings
multiple variations on noodles and soup
super delicious mangoes
really really sour tiny plums
pink dragonfruit
super cheap steak that might not be steak
pickled cow stomach
lychees that kind of look like alien fruit and have to be peeled to be eaten
various leafy vegetables I've never seen before
and last but not least
barbecued chicken butt.

In other news, it's been a pretty regular week. We had a district
meeting on Tuesday where we talked about the importance of church
attendance and how to get our investigators to come to church. We
decided to take it to heart and work super hard to get people to come
to church. We invited like everybody, we set up rides for people, we
called them on Saturday and Sunday, we called them on Sunday
afternoon... and most people bailed out at the last minute. Donny
Osmond lady, bless her heart, told me every excuse from My Son is
Going to School Today to I Need to Do the Lunch Dishes. "He can go to
school, and you can go to church!" "We will come and do the dishes
with you and then you can come to church with us." Finally she called
back and said she really couldn't come today, but I made her promise
(...almost) to come next week. It's gonna happen. It's gonna work.

It's rained a few more times but not too badly this week, lots of
people tell me I should wear long sleeves so I don't get sunburned. A
lot of Taiwanese people wear more clothes during the summer because
they are so afraid of getting tan. The rice fields are getting taller.
We're meeting with some pretty cool investigators who need the gospel,
and a girl named Tracy finally decided to be baptized on June 19th!
We're super excited for her and her brother to be baptized together.
Woohoo!

Chinese phrase of the week: Zhen de jia de?! it literally means "true
false", and I have picked up saying it whenever something is
surprising, like "no way, man!" But you have to say it really
exaggerated, with the "zhen" really high in your voice and the "jia"
kind of low. Plus the best aghast look you can muster. Side note I
legimately have some sort of dramatic filter when I translate Chinese
now, like people say things in a normal voice but if I try to tell my
companion what they said later it comes out like a cheesy movie. It
makes life fun.

So yep, that's about it. Nex week is the end of this transfer, which
is weird. Life goes by fast! Sister Findlay and I will be staying
together for another six weeks for sure, because we are in training.
We're having a good time and looking forward to the hot, sweaty
summer.

Love you all!
Sister Cardon

On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 8:35 PM, Ellyn Cardon <ellyn.cardon@myldsmail.net> wrote:

I think I would classify this week as "pretty solid." 

We had zone conference on Tuesday, which was super awesome. All of the missionaries in Taizhong got together and were able to learn from our mission leaders, which is always a neat opportunity. I was definitely inspired to be a better missionary; this week I have been studiously studying Preach My Gospel and working on following up with our investigators, from which we have already seen a lot of success.

Other highlights from zone conference:

-Sister Blickenstaff asked me to be in charge of a musical number, so I wrangled some missionaries together and we sang "Seek This Jesus," written by my aunt and mother! It went really well and definitely brought the Spirit into the meeting. Extra cool was that we sang it at the beginning, and President Blickenstaff's closing remarks at the end were focused on the scriptures from Alma 32. Totally wrapped it all together.

-got to see a lot of the missionaries from my MTC district! It's cool to see how much the missionaries I knew at the beginning have grown, and that helps me recognize that I have learned a lot too.

-because I am training a new missionary I got to introduce my companion to the rest of the mission! I only remembered that I was doing so likie 5 minutes before the meeting so I wrote a few haikus and told everyone how awesome she is. At one point I said, "We work hard together, we laugh together, we have fun together..." and from behind me President Blickenstaff said, "You get hit by cars together..." It was pretty funny. BTW we're all good now, just a few minor bruises left.

My favorite person we've met with this week is Tracy, who has been meeting with missionaries for over a year now. There was a little bit of a mix up with where she lived and what ward she should be going to, but for now she and her brother are coming to Daya so we are teaching her. Last September she and her brother both had a dream that they would be baptized on August 1st of this year, so we are doing everything we can to make sure she does that. Satan doesn't want her to. But Satan will lose. But we had an awesome lesson with her about faith and I think we are really going to help her.

So yep, that's about this week! We are still grounded from biking so have been doing a lot of walking and bus riding this week, but it's been going fairly well and we've still managed to get to appointments on time. So life is good! Still doing the work, saving souls, etc.

Love you all, hope you have a great week!

Sister Cardon

Picture: This is a cute girl we went to visit the other day who ALSO got in a car accident a few weeks ago. Their family is really awesome and every time we go over there she tells us we are pretty.

A Pretty Solid Week

I think I would classify this week as "pretty solid." 

We had zone conference on Tuesday, which was super awesome. All of the missionaries in Taizhong got together and were able to learn from our mission leaders, which is always a neat opportunity. I was definitely inspired to be a better missionary; this week I have been studiously studying Preach My Gospel and working on following up with our investigators, from which we have already seen a lot of success.

Other highlights from zone conference:

-Sister Blickenstaff asked me to be in charge of a musical number, so I wrangled some missionaries together and we sang "Seek This Jesus," written by my aunt and mother! It went really well and definitely brought the Spirit into the meeting. Extra cool was that we sang it at the beginning, and President Blickenstaff's closing remarks at the end were focused on the scriptures from Alma 32. Totally wrapped it all together.

-got to see a lot of the missionaries from my MTC district! It's cool to see how much the missionaries I knew at the beginning have grown, and that helps me recognize that I have learned a lot too.

-because I am training a new missionary I got to introduce my companion to the rest of the mission! I only remembered that I was doing so likie 5 minutes before the meeting so I wrote a few haikus and told everyone how awesome she is. At one point I said, "We work hard together, we laugh together, we have fun together..." and from behind me President Blickenstaff said, "You get hit by cars together..." It was pretty funny. BTW we're all good now, just a few minor bruises left.

My favorite person we've met with this week is Tracy, who has been meeting with missionaries for over a year now. There was a little bit of a mix up with where she lived and what ward she should be going to, but for now she and her brother are coming to Daya so we are teaching her. Last September she and her brother both had a dream that they would be baptized on August 1st of this year, so we are doing everything we can to make sure she does that. Satan doesn't want her to. But Satan will lose. But we had an awesome lesson with her about faith and I think we are really going to help her.

So yep, that's about this week! We are still grounded from biking so have been doing a lot of walking and bus riding this week, but it's been going fairly well and we've still managed to get to appointments on time. So life is good! Still doing the work, saving souls, etc.

Love you all, hope you have a great week!

Sister Cardon

Picture: This is a cute girl we went to visit the other day who ALSO got in a car accident a few weeks ago. Their family is really awesome and every time we go over there she tells us we are pretty.

Fire in Daya (like the fire of the GOSPEL)‏

(Ellyn was having email issues, so I am forwarding this week's letter)

I would call it a solid week this week! Well, at least a not-too-bad week. We were so happy that Jill was baptized last week, but now it suddenly seems like we don't have any investigators to work with. But that's okay, we are going to go find new people and invite them to be baptized and it's going to be great. Oh wait we do have one awesome girl named Monica who is one of our English students and is willign to try praying and reading and she is making progress. It's so cool to be able to share with someone that they can pray to their Heavenly Father and the next time you talk to them hear them say that prayer gave them a really happy feeling. Yeah it does!

Hmm other things this week. The area we live in has a lot of factories and the other day we saw a lot of smoke coming from a couple blocks away from the church. We kind of just stood there and looked for a little while but then a member who was meeting with us came in and said "We have to get out right now, that's a toxic chemical fire!" so we left and biked a little farther away (I wasn't sure if going outside was safer than staying inside or not...) and eventually got where we didn't smell smoke anymore and then it cleared up pretty fast and in conclusion I'm not dead yet.

It's pretty much 85-90 degrees like every day now but I actually don't mind very much. I'm probably going to mind a little more in July. Hey wait I just remembered there's a cake store called 85 degrees. I should get some cake on a day when it is that temperature. It's super humid and our study room does not have an air conditioner but we're surviving. You know what, I actually do love it. I'm really not much of a summer person but I really am just so happy to be here in Taiwan and speaking Chinese and helping people find the gospel that it just doesn't matter that much to me. 

Well, in all honestly I can't think of much else to say. There was a Buddhist parade the other day. We go to this one Teppanyaki place so often that the workers are our friends (and made sure we didn't drink the black tea). My companion is super awesome and willing to talk even though Chinese is hard. I was able to read three whole sentences in Chinese this morning where I only didn't know one character. Life is good!

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

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生日快樂

One exciting thing this week is that I am no longer a teenager! I finally get to tell people I am 20. This past week a few people have asked me how old I am and I've had to do the internal debate of, Do I say 10? Do I say 20? Is that a lie? Do I say my birthday is next week? Fine I'll just say 19. No more! I'm 20. Yay.

This week I wanted to just explain a whole day to give you a picture of a day in the life. Thursday was pretty awesome. We packed a lunch in the morning then headed out. On the way we ran into one of our members, went to a Family Mart convenience store, and she bought us ice cream. We were planning to head up to a farther area to find some people and teach a lesson. But, we try to have a member come with us to every lesson so we needed to call someone to come with us. We probably called 25 different numbers and FINALLY someone could come, but not until later in the afternoon, so we had to call the investigator back and tell her we were coming later. It was hot. But we decided to head out. On the way out we were stopped at a light and tried to talk to a girl that was walking across the street, but she walked away. Well! Try the next person. So we started to bike, then turned around and talked to a girl at the other light. She was willing to pull over to the side and seemed interested in the gospel. Well, might as well go for it! "Would you like to sit down with us for a few minutes and we can share a message with you?"

So we went back to the Family Mart and had a lesson right there! it was really cool. She totally needs the gospel. She didn't really wnat to get baptized though. After the lesson we headed back up, but it was super stinking hot and we have to bike like 20 minutes straight uphill so we took another break and got some juice. Actually, I got a taro milkshake. It was delicious. Then we kept riding and stopped by a cute little house that had cats painted on their porch. So fun! So we knocked on the door and it turned out to be a lady we had met at a Buddhist temple like three weeks ago! Coincidence? I think not! She was nice and we took pictures and went on our merry way.

Finally we made it to the lesson, our member was there on time, and we were able to start teaching the Plan of Salvation to a nice Christian lady. Halfway through the lesson her neighbor walked in, and when we asked her if she believes in God she said, "I'm in my 40s and not married yet, how can I believe in God?" Well, sister! We can tell you how. And the Gospel can help you find happiness in your life whatever your situation is. So we set up a time to come back and teach just her! So awesome. 

Umm I don't really remember what we did after that. Probably something involving eating and talking to people on the road. Then we went and did some Facebook missionary work, and in talking to our investigator we found out that the other day she had a dream that involved both Jesus Christ and baptism. What??!! We haven't talked to her in person yet but she is so going to be baptized.

In the last half hour of the day we decided to go out and find someone wearing a purple coat. So we started biking and talking to everyone wearing purple. Of course, suddenly it seemed like EVERYONE was wearing purple. But, they were on scootersn and we were still on our trusty bicycles. So we literally started chasing people down the street to try and talk to them. The last person we talked to involved some heroic effort on my part; I biked SO HARD to catch up with them, prayed that there would be a red light at the end of the road, awkward followed them to the front of the light and, gasping, offered them a little card with the Because He Lives video on it. The purple-coat wearing lady looked at me, raised her eyebrows, and said, "No thanks." But can I just *gasp* give you this card? "No, I really don't need it." 

BUT then my companion pulled up to the girl behind me. In my rush to get the the purple coat lady I had biked past a girl who was very interested in my concerted effort to talk to the lady and when my companion talked to her was super willing to take a card and learn more! In conclusion, all effort is worth something. 

Well, I have to get going with other stuff. I hope you all have a wonderful week and see some miracles in your lives!

Sister Cardon

Pictures the wonderful invention of a selfie stick. Asia is so cool.

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Grandma's Perfect Dumplings

This has been a pretty happy week! We were able to watch all of General Conference, so that was pretty fabulous. I love conference so much. We watched it in English with all of the missionaries and it was super fun. Except for how like half of the talks were about marriage. Super important and I learned a lot--but I think I'm going to hold off thinking too deeply about it for another year. Basically, I loved how one of the themes of conference was the importance of families and how the gospel and families work together; one of the essential elements of the plan of redemption is the setting we were born into, with families to help us learn and grow. (See Elder Christofferson's awesome talk.) So true! Loved it. I super loved Elder Kevin W Pearson's talk about what we can learn from Lehi's dream, and Elder Uchtdorf's talk about grace, and Elder Bednar's talk about Godly vs worldly fear. Seriously, conference. Love it. If you don't know what I'm talking about you should go to https://www.lds.org/?lang=eng and do some spiritual feasting. Meanwhile, I'll be eating some potsticker things I got for like $1.50.

Lots of miracles this week. We met the epitome of the traditional American grandma making apple pie while we were contacting, except she was the Chinese version and she taught us how to perfectly fold dumplings. Although it turns out we have the handicap of genetically long thumbs that can't quite fold it just right, so our dumplings weren't super pretty. Or we just need to do it for another 50 years. Probably that too. But she was so sweet and actually super interested in the gospel; she is good friends with another lady from China in our ward (who, according to the first dumpling lady, "really does fold dumplings.") (that sentence sounds more impressive in Chinese.) and wanted to know about how to pray. So we are going back this week and she is totally going to get baptized.

I feel like something I have been focusing on this week is talking to everyone, and I've discovered that when I do I feel a lot more successful. The days when I'm kind of tired and it's super hot or mildly chilly and I'm hungry and don't feel like I can speak Chinese very well, as soon as I decide to perk up and talk to the next young 20-something girl getting off of her scooter at a store, everything just goes better. Except for when she walks away or gives you the silent treatment. But! Then you move on and go and talk to the next lady getting off of her scooter, and it turns out that she went to church when she was little and feels like it's time for her to try it again and you get her phone number and it's all really happy. Then you figure out that she doesn't live in your area. But! It is still a good day. Basically, when we are willing to work and keep going, the Lord blesses us with a happy countenance. Hey that's actually pretty good advice. I should figure out how to say that in Chinese.

Interesting things I've eaten recently:

loquats. They are little orange fruit things that are only in season for like 1 month of the year. Super delicious. 

I forget that this is something different because we eat it all the time; a staple vegetable here is sweet potato leaves. Like, why stop at eating the thing that grew in the ground? Let's eat the leaves too.

One of my favorite fruits here is called a lianwu in Chinese, wax apple in English. It's way good; it kind of looks like a wax apple my mom would use to decorate, but you can actually eat this one. And it's way juicier than regular apples and super delicious.

There's a shop next to the church that makes these little meat roll things, and how they cook them is they have this big stone/metal pot thing that they heat with coals, then stick the rools on the sides of the oven thing so they are like hanging upside down. Oh! Kind of like how they make traditional naan in a tandoor oven in India. You can look it up. I don't know what the roll thing is called. But it's tasty!

Well, I need to get going on other computer things. I hope all of you have a great week!

Sister Cardon

Picture: You thought sister missionaries already looked fabulous... but you hadn't seen our awesome rain ponchos yet. Yes, we have matching ones.

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Exciting Things

Hello all! Well, this has been a pretty exciting week. Let me just list some exciting things.

1) I am officially a Facebook missionary! This means that I can use Facebook to do missionary work online. I will mostly be directing my posts to people in Taiwan and chatting with investigators here. I am not able to contact family and friends during the week and can only talk to immediate family members on P-day. I appreciate your support in following these guidelines!

2) We got to go to the temple twice this week and it was so neat! The first time was with a group of missionaries so we rode up to Taipei on a bus and went all together. It was really nice, especially nice to get a nap on the bus. I am constantly in need of a nap.

The second time we went was really awesome. Last year Sister King helped a cute girl get baptized, and this year she decided to go through the temple for herself, so we got to accompany her for her first time. It was so wonderful! It happened that Saturday was also our ward temple trip, so we took a 5am bus with our ward up to the temple, did a session with them, had lunch with Sister King's friend, then went back and did another session with the girl. Coolest part, other than the wonderful opportunity to be and learn in the temple, was that we got to do the session in Chinese! We had headphones with the English going but I totally learned some new Chinese words and it was seriously the neatest thing ever. Love the temple.

3) Ummm I know there were other exciting things this week but I forgot.

Basically still just doing the work! We have a few investigators who have a goal to be baptized on April 18th, which is pretty exciting. We are doing our best to find new people to teach. I am feeling pretty good about Chinese, which probably means there is a fall coming where I'll have a whole day where I can't understand anything. But that's okay.

The weather is off and on warm and cold. Food is still delicious. Recently we have been eating a lot of fried potsticker things called guo tie (ummm, gwo tyeh.) because they are cheap and fast and delicious. 

Basically it's just life as usual so, not sure what else to write about. Any questions or things you wish I would talk more about?

oh! Go watch this awesome video! http://www.mormon.org/easter It's pretty much the best thing ever. I'm so happy this week to be able to remember the Savior and His sacrifice for us. It really is because of Him that we have all of the wonderful things we have here on Earth. And because of Him we can become better people and overcome all of our challenges. I realized that I say that a lot to be people ("overcome our challenges" is a phrase I totally have down in Chinese) so sometimes I don't really think about what it means. But it's true! Christ can help us overcome all of the hard things we deal with. True facts.

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

PS I tried my best attach pictures but the computer was freaking out. Sorry!

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But the Gospel is Even More Contagious

We had the craziest Sunday yesterday; 14 people (and counting) in our ward have the chicken pox. Which meant that there was hardly anyone in church on Sunday (like, less than 50 people. The chapel was pretty sparsely filled.) and the people who were there had to wear face masks.s Which meant, of course, that they needed substitutes to play the piano. So I ended up playing the piano during all three hours of church, including Primary. It was actually really fun! I'm grateful I have the opportunity to serve in this way for the people of Taiwan. It's pretty convenient. Oh! And one of the elder's investigators got baptized on Saturday! So I played the piano for that too. It was a good weekend.

AWESOME miracle last night at 8:30pm when we decided to contact a few more people. We followed this lady with a dog until she stopped to talk to us and in the course of the conversation she told us that she had given up on God. I told her that God loves her and she said, "I believe he loves everyone else. But I'm the exception." Heartbreaking! I told her with all the fervor that I could that God definitely loves her, and even though she has given up on Him He will never give up on her. She has had a hard life including 13 miscarriages and even though she grew up in a Baptist church she doesn't believe church or God or anything can help her. Well, sister. Let me tell you. We tried so so hard to set up to meet with her again but she wasn't having any of it. "I know what you people are doing. You want to come over and make me believe what you believe." Me: "We want to come over and mop your floor. Is that okay? We can help you cook. We can draw you a picture. We can read with you. Will you give us your phone number? What's your phone number? Can we meet on Wednesday? Do you have time on Saturday? Will you take this Book of Mormon? You can take the Book of Mormon or tell us what time to come over. Two choices." Haha I was probably being kind of annoying. But she was laughing most of the time and said I was really smart. Also, I figure, I could not invite and she wouldn't come, or I could invite her a whole bunch of times and maybe finally she would say yes. We are going to try to find her walking her dog in a couple of weeks. It is going to happen. 

Every week we teach English class and split up so that each companionship of missionaries teaches a different class. We have the kids class, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. We teach the beginner class here and we decided to do something different for our spiritual share last week (at the end of every class we share something about the gospel.) We had the elders come in with the kids class and everybody sit in a circle. I cut up some paper stars (because we forgot the candy) and asked everyone, "Do you want this?" if they said yes, Elder Osborne had to do 5 push ups in the middle of the room. At first I was just asking kids so they all said yes because they thought it was funny for him to have to do all these push ups. But then we got to an adult who took pity and said no--but Elder Osborne still had to do 5 push ups. "But he said no," someone protested. This is an example of Christ's Atonement. He already paid for all of our sins, weaknesses, infirmities, everything. If we don't accept the gospel or Him as our Savior, He still paid the price and suffered for us, but it was a waste because we didn't get the gift that we could have received.. But if we do accept and value the gift that He has already given us, then His sacrifice means a lot more. Eventually Elder Osborne was too tired to go on; his arms were trembling, he couldn't even get back up after the last few push ups and we just decided to stop there even though there were still more people in the room. It made the Atonement have so much more meaning for me, to imagine that Christ suffered even more than that, and He kept going even though He was tired and didn't want to go on. As missionaries we are just the people standing there and offering, "Do you want this?" Do you want to accept Christ? Do you want the eternal blessings that His sacrifice has brought to you? I personally am going to strive to appreciate the gifts that I have been given so much more now.

So that's been about what my week has been! Contacting lots of people and inviting them to come unto Christ. Striving to accomplish our goals. Figuring out how to teach better. Trying to get to things on time. It's great! I love Taiwan. I love missionary work. Life is good. 

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

Picture: I feel as if this is the most Asian I have ever been in my life. Face masks are not comfortable with glasses because they steam up all the time. Also, I bought a new dress on P-day. 

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The Missionary with the Power

Hello all! It's been a week of miracles here in Daya, and to top it off it was POWER WEEK! So that was exciting.

 

Basically we have power week because after Chinese New Year everyone is 10 lbs heavier and we need to add some serious oil (like fuel oil, not cooking oil) in order to get the work done! So every day this week we had different challenges that we had to accomplish. If we did so successfully we could call the mission president in the evening and say "Mission accomplished!" And we were totally able to do some of them! On Monday night we went tracting and completed the challenge of getting into two homes and sharing a gospel message with them. The first lesson was wonderful, I literally felt like we were dreaming and Daya was this magical place where people were happy to see us and would get baptized within the week. Then at 8:55 (note that we are supposed to be home at 9)(we really wanted to get into one more house) a lady let us in and let us teach her about prayer. Then she gave us candy with alcohol in it and told us she didn't want us to come back. But we accomplished the mission!

 

Tuesday was Zone Conference, which is always awesome. Always makes you feel like you can be a better missionary.

 

Thursday we got kind of lost in a farther away area but we totally met a cute girl who we are meeting with again tonight. And we were riding along minding our own business when this guy started honking at us and told us to pull over. "Are you church people?" Yes, yes we are. "I have someone you need to meet. Their son does drugs and they've tried everything to help them. I told them that now the only thing they can do is use the power of religion. Will you come over to meet them?" Heck yes we will! So we skedaddled over and met the parents an tried to tell them how the restored gospel can help their son turn his life around. They didn't really want to hear it. We left a Word of Wisdom pamphlet anyway. Then as we were leaving the man himself came up and we got his number to give to the elders! So hopefully something will come of that. Miracles happen!

 

Friday we completed the challenge of telling 20 families how the gospel can bless their lives. It involved a lot of stopping really fast and turning around when we noticed a family, or awkwardly riding right up to the scooter with two people on it in the hopes that they have some sort of family relationship. Worked sometimes.

 

Saturday we gave out 17 COPIES OF THE BOOK OF MORMON. The original challenge was to give out 13 and get the person's information. We accidentally gave a few out to people who didn't leave their number, but luckily we brought extras. Then we ran into the problem that we still needed to give out one more and we only had an English and a Tagolog copy of the Book of Mormon because we had planned to give one to a Filipino lady who wasn't at home. So we gave the English one to someone and said it could help them learn English. And another girl earlier in the day wouldn't take a copy because she said downloading the app would be more environmentally friendly. So it totally counts.

 

So overall it has been a good week. We've seen lots of miracles, the ward is really wonderful, we aren't getting lost very often even though the addresses have changed since the maps we have were made, and we have a few investigators who are willing to get baptized soon. So life is good as a missionary!

 

Love you all, hope you have a good week!

 

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Daya: Big and Elegant

New adventures happening here in Taiwan! On Sunday morning we got a phone call from our District Leader telling us what would be happening for transfers, and I got the shock of my life when I found out I would be moving up to Taizhong to whitewash! I was definitely expecting to stay in Gangshan for another little while: Sister Grigg is going home in two weeks so it made sense to me for us to stay together for that time, then I would get a new companion so she could learn the area and then I would be off. But luckily, what makes sense to me isn't the deciding factor in where missionaries go! With the influx of new missionaries we are able to open up a few new areas for sisters (they sent all of the sisters who had been waiting for visas but there are still a bunch of elders in the states waiting to come to Taiwan)(we ended up with 13 ladies and 5 gentleman)(too many ladies) and so I am whitewashing in Daya, an area almost to the northernmost side of the mission, with Sister King. Wow! I am so stoked.

It was a pretty good last week in Gangshan. We had a miracle Sunday where 3 investigators came to church! Claire, who hasn't met with us for a while, for some reason decided not to return home to her parent's house in Tainan this weekend and so she came to church! Yayy! It was really exciting. Plus Chen Li Zhu came with her two kids; she hasn't been able to come for the 4 months we have been meeting with her but she came! And I was totes prepared and brought paper for her two children to play with so they wouldn't be bored during sacrament meeting. It was a really great day, and the members were so sweet and excited for me. One member, Sister Guo, gave me a beautiful paper umbrella from a famous place called Meinong, so thoughtful.

Another fun thing is that this weekend we had a third companion. Sister Porter, who was in the MTC a few weeks before me, came and joined us in Ganghsan for three days. So we got to be a little trio for a little while, that was fun. We biked out to one of our furthest areas, Alian, and visited a member there. Funniest lesson: some of the things she said included "No, I don't fast during fast Sunday. It hurts my soul. Why does God have to test whether you can eat or not?!" and (after we had shared a scripture from Enos 1) "Did you bring anything better to share?" hahaha. It was a good little lesson for me though because it was easy to think like, What the heck, you can't just not fast because it is hard, that lady has got some serious issues with the commandments. But you know what, we all do! Maybe she has trouble giving up two meals once a month. But I have a problem with that one that goes "Love one another," and that's like #2 on the list of Greatest Commandments. It was a reminder to me that you know what, nobody is perfect. It is wonderful that this sister is doing the best she can, because God loves her and in the end, my opinion doesn't matter even a little bit.

Have I mentioned how excited I am to be serving here in Daya? Our chapel is SO NICE. Like, a parking garage, 2 floors and a Family History Center, and it's only a 5 minute walk from the apartment. Seriously awesome. It is going to be so great! Daya means big and elegant; I feel like that describes our chapel very well.

Oh that reminds me last night we went to a fireside about Family History and we went with a cute lady from Palau, who speaks English but not Chinese. So I tried to interpret for her, which was way hard because 1)interpreting is just hard and I didn't know a lot of words and 2) I really had the urge to make things up and embellish whatever the lady was saying. For instance, she told a story about how they went to the area where her mother's family used to live and they found a guy who has a lots of records and they asked if he knew about this one name and he said that person didn't exist but then they went and found someone who was really old who knew the person. So I tried to interpret this story and ended up with, "They went to find the....information. The guy they went to... knew lots of names. So then they asked the guy if he had their relative's name. But he said, No, that person doesn't exist. I know this book really well and if that name existed I would know it! But the spirit told her that they were in the right place and she said, He has to exist! I know it in my heart!" Basically, I should go into some sort of field where you get to interpet what peole say and then make dramatic plays out of it.

That's about all I got for this week! I am looking forward to this new adventure.

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

PS I would send pictures but my USB is being kind of weird :(

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Yang Rou Hao Chi!

This week I will introduce to you how to wish someone a happy new year in Chinese: Xin nian kuai le! Yang yang ru yi! The second phrase is in reference to the fact that it is the year of the sheep (yang). They have these little sayings for every zodiac year, and I learned to say "yang yang ru yi" (I would tell you what it means but I really have no idea) but messed up a couple times and now we say "yang rou hao chi", which means Mutton is delicious. Fun fact Gangshan is famous for mutton (despite a distinct lack of sheep in the area) and yet I think I've only eaten mutton once this week, even though it is the year of the sheep and seems like the perfect opportunity to eat as much sheep as you want. I don't think anybody actually likes the mutton soup though.

Basically this entire week could be summed up in eating. We have had members feed for us for lunch and dinner every day since Tuesday night, and every meal has been a feast. Not just the kind of feast where there is a lot of food on the table, but the kind where they make you eat all the food on the table and then you go to the living room where they bring out candy and then bowls of sweet soup and a banana and a piece of cake and have you ever tried this sesame cracker thing? Then they make you take home the leftovers. Our numbers for key indicators this week were pretty sad. 

But life is still good! It's been a happy week, if nothing else, and we really have wonderful ward members who love love love the missionaries. We are ready to get back into gear and work extra hard this week, because now that New Year is over people have no excuse that they are too busy because of Guonian. Probably they will say they are busy now because they have to get back to work after Guonian. But! We will keep trying. And we will bring souls to Christ and have lots of fun.

We do a lot of spiritual shares while we are at members' houses. Today we are going to share about humility and the one-up syndrome, that it is really easy to want to be better than other people but it makes you a lot happier if you are nice to people. Then we're going to do a roleplay where people have think of a situation where they could have been more humble. When someone tells you they are going on a cool trip, be happy for them instead of tell them about all the cool things you've done. So that's my challenge for you today: resist being a one-upper. 

Love you all, hope you have a good week and find ways to be a missionary at home!

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Wow Those Girls are Really Xingku

I am going to start off this week's email with some very important announcements:

1. In exactly a year from this week, I will be taking a very long trip back to America. So see you all then! 

2. I finally made it out of training! I am so happy. There's a missionary training program called "12 weeks" that you do for the first 3 months of your mission. I was in it for 20 weeks. I was so done. And now I am actually done! Well, I was done a week ago. But I forgot to mention it last week. And now I'm a real missionary!

3. If you ever wondered if it was possible to crush up fish eggs and dry them like fruit leather, the answer is yes. But it doesn't mean you should try to do it. And you don't have to give it to your friends.

4. I've officially been through an earthquake! Well, that had already happened. But I was like 5 years old last time and I don't really remember it. But on February 14th, 2015, at about 4 in the morning, I was woken up by my bed being firmly shaken. After I determined that it was not my companion playing a trick on me, in my sleep-addled state I decided that the wind outside was very strong and for a moment was concerned that the building was going to fall over. Then I realized it was an earthquake. Then I went back to sleep.

5. We are getting new missionaries, finally! 12 of the 19 missionaries in the group after me are coming next week. Please pray that the rest of them can come and we can finally get things in order in the mission!

That is all of the important announcements for today. Chinese New Year is upon us and we are preparing ourselves to be thoroughly fed for the next week straight. We are struggling a little bit to set up lessons and get people to actually want to be baptized. "Could we meet with you and share an important message about families with you?" "Maybe after New Year's." "...okay :( " But never fear! We are still working hard and doing our best to help people come unto Christ. That's all we can do!

There's a Chinese word "xingku" that means like, when you work really hard. Difficult? Man, there's just not a way to explain it. But basically, we had a really xingku day on Friday where we rode for more than an hour out to a town call Yongan, which is right next to the ocean, to find a less active member only to discover that she lives in Kaohsiung. "Why didn't you call her before you came out here?" her brother asked. Ah. Good question. Probably should have thought of that. But it was a really nice bike ride! And there had to be a reason we were out there. Maybe someone in Yongan saw us biking and thought, Those girls are so xingku, I should start going to church. Or something like that. Well, at least we totally looked like we were in a missionary movie.

Hope everyone had a nice Valentine's Day and are spreading love and peace everywhere. You are all great!

Sister Cardon 

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Every Member a Missionary (No, seriously!)

Good times in Gangshan this week! Living the life. The missionary life. It's great.

Last P-day we went shopping at a clothing market, which is always fun. Except that they don'yt really plan for tall American girls to shop there, so selections were few. But it was a nice adventure, and we went with a cute lady in our ward, Sister Zhuang. She is so nice, and loves to take us places and take us out to eat and is always willing to serve. Last night we had a lesson with a recent convert. The ward has asked that we only meet with this woman when we have another member with us, so we set up a member to come to the church, but she cancelled last minute! So we called Sister Zhuang who was happy for us to all come over to her house and have the lesson there, and she fed us dinner as well. She is way cute about studying English, too, and tapes English words around her house. Love her!

Seriously, members are so great. It's so nice to have the support of the members around who are willing to fellowship investigators and help them feel comfortable, and it's great to have someone who speaks better Chinese than you along to explain what you can and can't do on Sunday in order to keep the Sabbath Day holy. Being on a mission has definitely taught me that I want to be a much better member missionary when I get back. One reason is the examples of good members here. Another is because as a missionary, you want to be people's friend, but you just can't do it the same way you would at home. I would love to watch movies with investigators and spend time with them doing fun things so they could see that the gospel really is fun and happy, but I can't because I'm a missionary. But if I were a regular member here I could do that! So when I go home and am actually a regular member I am going to try to be a good example and be people's friend and do the work that the missionaries can't do but really wish they could. This is a new life goal I have. It is also a reminder to you to see how you can be a missionary at home! Go and do likewise.

The lady at the counter of the internet cafe place we are at right now is using a mop to wash the ceiling. I'm not sure I've ever seen someone do that before. But it's not a wet mop, it's like a duster thing. I wonder how successful it is. 

Gearing up for the Chinese New Year right now. In church yesterday they passed around a sign-up sheet for people to feed the missionaries. I've heard the whole week of Chinese New Year as a missionary you just eat and eat and eat. I keep wanting to make goals to eat healthy. But then my companion reminds me that New Year is coming and there's no point in being healthy now, let's go get some ice cream. Maybe after next week I will have more of a desire to change. There's a lesson in there somewhere. 

Ah! I know. It's easy to put off changing yourself: "I'll do it after the New Year" "I'll stop smoking when my house is clean" "I'll get baptized when school is over" (yes these are things I've heard people say recently). But the truth is, change is always going to be hard. No matter when you start, it's not going to be easy. So you should start now so you get it over with! And the Atonement has power to get you through anything. It's true. I am resolved. I am going to eat healthy this week. Until my companion reminds me they have strawberry ice cream at FamilyMart.

OH WAIT most exciting thing: a General Authority came to our sacrament meeting yesterday! Elder Gong of the Seventy, who is in the Asia Area presidency. A counselor in our mission presidency, the whole stake presidency, and Elder Gong and his wife all came and spoke. It was so cool! I got to shake his hand, and chatted with Sister Gong for a few minutes. So that was exciting.

Hope you all have a good week!

Sister Cardon

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