Great People

Hey folks!

It's been a fairly cold and rainy week up in Shalu, but we sure have seen a lot of miracles! It's been a great week.

Pretty much all I want to talk about all day every day is our AWESOME investigators Titan and Vivi. They are a couple we have been meeting with for a few weeks and they are just fantastic. Let me tell you some of the awesome things about them:

They came to church last week and someone gave Titan the Howard W. Hunter book we are using in church; he read all of it this week.

When we asked them if they had heard about tithing he said he had read all about it in the book and was totally willing to try it, sounds like a test of faith but it's great.

Last week when they came to church they were 10 minutes late because of the times of the bus they took. Yesterday we called them at 8:30 to see if they had found a ride to church and they said "Oh, we're already here, we took an even earlier bus!"

Titan set a goal for himself to be baptized in two weeks and announced it when he introduced himself in priesthood class.

Vivi was comparing the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon in her personal study in order to understand what the HWH book was talking about.

At church I overheard a member say to them, "Oh, you're investigators?! I was sure you were members who had just moved in from another ward!"

In conclusion, these are the greatest people ever. I am so grateful that I have the chance to come to Taiwan and meet people like this! The church is true.

Other things about this week... I went on exchanges to Zhongming, which is more in the middle of Taizhong. It felt like such a big city! Sometimes I forget that Shalu really doesn't have very many people. I went with Sister Gonzales, who is super cool and full of sunshine. It was a really fun exchange. The only downside to going on exchanges is that we have to ride the bus forEVER. But it's fine. I like buses. 

The saddest thing that happened this week was that my super awesome $11 watch from Target finally decided to fall off my wrist as I was stopped at a stoplight in Zhongming. I have worn that watch nearly every single day of my mission, but finally the pressure was too much. We came into this world together, but it didn't quite make it out of the world with me. RIP silver watch. 

Wow I wish I had some more exciting things to share. Ooh! I bought a really comfy sweater thing that I've worn like every day this week. It's really cold. But I have my cozy sweater and it's all good. 

Ooh here's an awesome quote I read in the Liahona the other day and LOVED: "God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the glories of creation." Thomas S Monson. https://www.lds.org/ensign/1988/03/in-quest-of-the-abundant-life?lang=eng

Yep! Love you all! Have a fabulous week. 

Sister Cardon

Picture: by the National Art Museum in Taizhong where went contacting on exchanges. That's my new sweater!

It's a New Year, it's a new start

Well, it's finally come! I am officially at the start of my last 6 weeks as a missionary. AAAGGGHHH. Okay I'm good let's not mention it anymore.

Happy New Year! Hope you all had an exciting New Year's. We... did not. We went to bed. But someone was putting off fireworks near our house last night (January 3rd?) that were nice and pretty, so we celebrated a little bit. By "celebrate" I mean "looked out the window and aahed a little".

It's been a fairly good week for us! Not much going on. It rained super hard last night, man it's been a couple of months since I've been that soaked. It was great. Had to wring out my skirt when we got home. We went and visited a less active couple who were super nice; they were just getting dinner ready when we came by so they invited us to eat with them. We had soup with potatoes and black tree ears (hmm I wonder what that is actually called in English) and she was worried about it not being flavorful enough so she brought out the most beautiful sight in the world: Montreal Steak Seasoning. I think I almost cried. oh MAN I was going to ask if I could bring some home. I guess we'll have to go back.

I also accomplished another one of my life goals this week. Let me back up though; we were visiting a member whose dad is essentially a Traditional Chinese Medicine Man. He was working with a patient (in the living room) as we were chatting with the member and I casually mentioned that my shoulder had been hurting recently so she volunteered for her father to look at it for me. yessss

So then I sit down on a stool. I kind of expected him to look at my shoulder immediately but no. He takes my hand and feels for my pulse in a few different spots, closes his eyes and breathes deeply. Other hand. Then he looks at me: "Your heart isn't very healthy. Your liver and stomach aren't doing so well either; like 50%. Your thighs are probably sore, and you get exhausted easily." me in my head: ...I just want my shoulder to feel better.

He then proceeded to prove to me that my body was not functioning correctly. I had to hold up one arm and resist while he pressed down on it, then place the other hand on whatever part of my body was ailing; over my liver, stomach, heart, etc. When I could resist with more strength it meant that body part was doing good; if I was weaker though, man it's serious. We determined that my breathing was doing okay but, as he suspected, when I had my hand on my liver I could hardly put any resistance with the other arm. Then came the solutions, which involved scratching my head (REALLY HARD) with a comb, me rubbing my sternum, him stepping on my foot with his heel, and him poking my back (also really hard) to fix my heart problems. Finally we got to the aching shoulder; he determined that my shoulder was hurting because my head right above my right ear was struggling. Arm up, hand on head: yep, I couldn't resist for even a whole second. The solution for this problem included hand massage, punching my arm, and me going "ow ow ow bu yao BU YAO" and as a result I've got a gnarly bruise on my bicep.

In conclusion, Chinese medicine is awesome.

As for how missionary work is going this week, man Shalu is awesome. We are meeting with an AWESOME couple named Titan and Vivi. They just love reading the Book of Mormon together. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and they had tons of great questions and it all totally made sense to them. They did a lot of "ohhh I see" during the lesson in unison, it's pretty cute. Seriously, it just builds my testimony so much that no matter how many times we get rejected and people don't want to meet with us, there are still people who are so prepared to listen to the gospel.

oh also don't forget to make New Year's resolutions! One of my goals is to say something in Chinese every day this year and to not get married.

Love you all! Hope you have a great week. 

Sister Cardon

Picture: There's like a Seaport Art Museum right next to our house with really pretty architecture!

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