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.