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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