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 :(

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.