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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Are There Even Groundhogs in Taiwan?

Hello all!

 

Still here in Taiwan! And still here in Gangshan. If everything had gone according to plan today would be our transfer/move call day, but unfortunately things don't always go according to plan. We still don't have any new missionaries! Seriously. The group who was in the MTC after me has now waited for their visas in America for three months, and now this week another group of our Taiwan Taizhong missionaries will be going home with no one to replace them. We hear all sorts of things like they are 90% coming this week or we'll be stuck here forever, but until we know for sure we just have to wait. So Sister Grigg and I are just hanging out here until we know more, and in the meantime they will probably have to close a few areas because they don't have enough missionaries to replace them. At this point maybe when we finally get new missionaries they will have so few people left that I will have to train someone. (that would be really awful I don't want to train anyone right now we would have so much trouble teaching lessons it would be like the MTC all over again)

 

Things that happened this week:

Last P-day we went to Costco! It wasn't very fun. It felt like we were in America except things were way more expensive and there's no point in buying Brussels Sprouts if you don't have an oven to roast them in. And I ate six muffins in six days. But it was still nice to get out and go somewhere interesting!

 

People took us out to eat/fed us a feast so many times I was excited to fast on Sunday so that I didn't have to politely eat until I was stuffed past the rafters. Seriously, the members here are so generous. And everybody loves to give us fruit. Once we got seven zaozis (the little appley things) in one day. 

 

We helped someone paint their house on Saturday! It was fun. But kind of hard; we painted three floors of their stairwell but we couldn't really reach a lot of places and it was hard to tell the difference between the original white and the slightly off-white color we put on. Turns out here most people try to paint their house before Chinese New Year, and they do it every year. That sounds exhausting to me.

 

Miracle Sunday! Every week we set goals for the number of lessons we will have, the number of new investigators we will find, etc. On Sunday we were so close to reaching our goals, but it was going to be hard to get all of them. We still had to get one other lesson, a lesson with a Less Active member, a lesson with a Recent Convert, and find 2 new investigators. Well we had a miracle day! We went tracting and ran into two cute girls who were willing to let us teach them about prayer and let us come back, we went over to a LA's house with a member and were about to leave when the LA came outside, and we went to a fireside with a Recent Convert! It was really great to have that sense of accomplishment (hey I know how to say that in Chinese) and to know that because we worked hard during the week the Lord helped us accomplish our goals. There can be miracles when you believe!

 

One of the dinners we went to was with a member and Claire, our investigator with a baptismal date. She is so great! We taught her the Word of Wisdom over dinner right after she ordered some little rice flour things with green tea in them and after we explained that we don't drink tea she was disappointed that she couldn't eat her tea things, but she was willing to start living the Word of Wisdom right then and there! Coffee will be something hard for her to overcome but she is so willing and ready. Now she just needs to come to church! That's kind of an important thing.

 

In conclusion, miracles happen and people change. The Gospel is good and if we have faith we can overcome anything. Yesterday I ran into this scripture in the Book of Mormon, Mormon 9:21 (and proceeded to gasp aloud when I found it because I thought it was so great, which made my companion think I had had some sort of great realization or epiphany when really it was just a good scripture).

 

Here it is: "Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth."

 

Isn't that great? Ask God with faith, and he will give it to you.True facts.

 

Love you all!

Sister Cardon of Gangshan

 

PS If anyone was wondering if we would still have 6 weeks of winter or not the answer is no, what are you talking about, winter never even happened.

PPS I've been a missionary for more than six months now yay

 

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Contacting with Charity

This week the main theme seems to have been contacting and strange experiences from talking to people. We are really focusing on finding new investigators and are practicing the missionary lifestyle of talking to everyone. It's hard! You really have to get out of your comfort zone. And we have had some interesting moments, like the lady who couldn't remember her last name and gave us a phone number for someone living in Taipei, or the guy waved at us like he knew us and then asked "Do you know who I am?" like twenty times (we didn't). But most of the time we have had some cool miracles where we have been in just the right place to talk to someone who is willing to listen and give us their phone number and set up to have a lesson. A lot of those lessons are next week, which is sad because we would like to teach people now. But you have to sow a little before the reaper comes! Or something like that.

 

Other things that happened this week:

we ate lamb soup for the second time and I didn't like it any better. I wish people would recognize that there is such a thing as too much ginger.

 

Exchanges! I got to stay in Gangshan and Sister Fernley, our Sister Training Leader, came with me. It was fun! I got to be leading the area for the day, which was fun. Turns out I really do know where I'm going! And I'm pretty good at Chinese. But don't tell anyone that because I actually just mostly figure out what people are saying from context and if they think I can speak Chinese they will start talking faster and then it will come out that I actually don't speak Chinese. But in the meantime I mostly get what's going on. I still am not sure what the difference between mother-in-law and wife is.

 

I had a bike accident for the first time! Here's what happened: For the past couple of days the brake on my front tire has been struggling and on Saturday morning I realized it was missing a bolt. We didn't really do anything to fix it and the on the way to Luzhu I was noticing the different things that get left on the side of the highway (the greatest common denominator is gloves. I saw like at least 8.) when suddenly I noticed a bolt on the ground. That sparked the brilliant idea that I could pick up a bolt from the ground and fix it myself, saving both time and money! It was too late for that particular bolt but I kept a keen eye out for the future road. Finally I saw one! I stopped and got off my bike, then due to the restrictions of the narrow shoulder determined that the best course of action would be to run backwards holding my bike in order to get the bolt. My companion kept going. I trotted backward. My bike fell over. I fell over. A knee was skinned, a bolt retrieved, and we decided it was probably best to stop by a bike shop where some nice guys drinking tea put in a bolt for free in like 2 minutes.

 

This week I have been trying to focus on charity, and I have awesome quote that has been hanging in a cupboard in my mom's kitchen for years, from Marvin J Ashton: "Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don't judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone's differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn't handle something the way we might have hoped. Charity is refusing to take advantage of another's weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other."

 

I love that! Charity is expecting the best of each other. I am trying to expect and hope the best for everyone I meet instead of thinking they won't be interested or will never change. If you think like that you won't be willing to try, and that's just dumb. So give people the benefit of the doubt and have more charity for everyone.

 

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

Baptisms and a Bicycle

Another week gone by! Still here in Taiwan. Still love it. Still have new interesting things happen every day.

 

Last week after we emailed we experienced one of those new and interesting things. We went to have our hair washed. Yes, that is a thing. No, it is not a simple shampoo and conditioner thing. For us it was a two hour process where the lady generously soaped and massaged my head for much much longer than she needed to, then rinsed and massaged for an additionally long duration of time, then blow dried it very thoroughly. Then she ran into a problem; she herself had grown up in Vietnam and lived in Taiwan for a number years, and this was the first time she had ever worked with my American hair which does not like to be blow dried in humidity. ("Your hair is so frizzy!") When she didn't know what to do with it I suggested a straightener, mostly meaning that I could straighten the front part myself and then go because what's the point it's just going to be wavy again tomorrow. But no, she insisted on giving my hair the most thorough straightening it has ever received, including separating it into at least 8 layers. And guess what? It was wavy again on Tuesday. But at least my head felt clean!

 

On Wednesday we had a pretty exciting day where we had 4 lessons with a member present! It was really wonderful. In the morning we met with Chen Li Zhu, who has already learned so much and the gospel is helping her so much. She is struggling with a few things in her family right now so most of the lesson was spent listening to and comforting her. Sometimes when that happens as a missionary it is hard to know what to do. I have limited life experience and don't know how to help her on one hand, and on the other hand we're not here to be counselors. But we are here to help people feel the love of Christ, and that's why I still felt like it was a good lesson; we were showing her that we love her and care about her, and we were able to share with her a Family Proclamation to help teach her some of the gospel principles that will help her family improve. I often think about how we are called to comfort the afflicted. It's a really wonderful role for me right now.

 

Then later on Wednesday we taught English class, where we are teaching the xiaopengyou class (literally "little friends", it's what they call kids). It's a little exhausting. And embarassing; it would be one thing to do the hokey pokey with just seven year olds, but it's another thing to do it with seven year olds and their parents. But I'll get over it. Then after English class we had 4 different investigators, two sets of friends, meet with us for lessons, so we split up and had two members be our companions for a lesson. It was cool for a little while to be the only missionary in the room where I knew that I was there to bear my testimony and help the investigator progress towards baptism. And I was grateful for the member who bore her testimony really well (and helped me understand what the investigator was said because I wasn't entirely sure if she said she thought she could get baptized when she was 18 or if her mom was opposed to it right now or what)(details like that are important). So overall it was a crazy day but was really wonderful.

 

AND the best part is that yesterday we had a lesson with one of the investigators Sister Grigg taught on Wednesday, Claire, and set a baptismal goal with her! It's been about a month since we've had anyone make a baptismal goal and I feel really good about Claire. All day Sunday I kept thinking about how we needed to set a goal with her in the evening, and even though our lesson was going late and we kept getting off subject we finally were able to talk to her about it and she is very willing to keep learning and pray about it. I know that God will answer her prayer and she will be baptized in February! And cool thing; she told us that she hadn't been sure if she wanted to come to dinner with us (we invited her to a dinner with a member that she hadn't met before) and she called us to tell us that she didn't feel comfortable coming. When she called us we were on our way out the door and the phone only rang once before it didn't pick up so we just decided to call her back in a little bit. When we didn't answer the phone she decided to pray to see if she should go to this stranger's house and had a really peaceful feeling that she should go. So she went and met us there and we didn't hear about this until later. What a miracle! God answered her prayer, we had a nice time with the member, and she now has a goal to be baptized. This is the kind of thing that makes being a missionary really worth it.

 

I did have a little bit of trouble eating the mini shrimp with their eyes still attached that the member gave us. And I'm not entirely sure what that fruity squishy plum-looking thing in the soup was that I ate, but I don't really intend on eating it again. The dumplings were good though!

 

And by the way, the answer to the question "Can both companions ride on the same bike at the same time?" is yes.

 

Love you all!

Sister Cardon