Christmas Can Still Live in Your Heart

What a week! I've got to tell you, I have had like the best Christmas ever.

 

Wednesday evening we had our English party/Ward Christmas party and it was CRAZY. It was like the biggest party I've ever helped put on. We expected like 50 people to come, maybe, and we ended up with 120 PEOPLE. The room was so packed. But it was so fabulous! We had the greatest decorations, including a cardboard fireplace with red rectangles glued on it in a brick pattern, and we made gingerbread houses (so funny. these Asians have never made gingerbread houses before so they didn't realize that the icing has to be made so that it hardens and the candy was not your regular gumdrops and candy canes, but everyone loved it.) and the best part, we put on a live Nativity. In December's Liahona magazine they had a script of how to help your children put on a Nativity so we did that, and since it was English class we aske the ward member to memorize their parts in English. So we had the missionaries do the narration and the ward members (with homemade costumes) act it out, while I played little musical interludes on the piano. My absolute favorite was Joseph, who got so into his part: "Please! There must be some way you can help us! My wife is about to have baby!" n his cute Chinese accent. Love it. Best Christmas party ever.

 

Christmas day was awesome as well. In the morning I woke up a few minutes early and played some Christmas music to wake up my companion, then we opened our presents and made a wonderful Christmas breakfast, including French Toast with maple syrup, fruit, sausage, and orange juice. Then we headed out to a member's house, Sister Zhuang, and used her Ipad to Skype with our families. That was so great, I loved getting to talk to my family. They are awesome. Then we went out to lunch with Zhuang Jie Mei (members are so generous! But I don't understand the thing where people eat meat that is like all bone and hardly any meat). Then we went tracting in the rain and wished everyone a Merry Christmas. In the evening the Bishop treated all of us missionaries to a restaurant where you order a steak and then there's an all-you-can-eat buffet with it. It was delicious. In the evening we had a gift exchange thing with some members then an awesome lesson with Taco. Then we had a crazy miracle; a girl named Claire who had come to the Christmas party called us and asked if we could meet with her, and I was going to set it up for a couple days later but she was like, "Can we meet tonight?" so we had a miracle lesson at like 8:30 at night. Seriously, the paragraph I just wrote includes like all of the things that could possibly make a missionary happy save someone walking up to you holding a white jumpsuit and asking where the font is.

 

So that's pretty much all I have to talk about this week! We have been working hard and biking a lot and trying to help people feel the Christmas spirit. We have hope for Claire and Taco (who says that baptism sounds like a big responsibility but she'll come around) and Sister Chen, which is awesome. We have figured out how to have hot water to shower with in the mornings (this has been an experiment over the week; turns out if you have two faucets going it will be hot, which means you have to turn off the washer and have both of us shower at once, or the washer and one shower, or one shower and one sink. Or you could put the stove on.) On Friday someone told me that the way I hold chopsticks is very good, like the standard way that chopsticks should be held. I knew I was Asian at heart.

 

I'm so glad that I was able to be here for Christmas, in the situation where I can realy focus on the Savior. I know that besides all of the fun activities and Christmas cheer, the most important reason we have Christmas is to remember the Savior and all he gave to us. All week I've been wanting to share this quote from a talk by Robert D Hales in the December 2013 Ensign, and hey now I have a chance to share it!

 

"Christmas is a time to share our gifts, strengthen others, and do our part in the kingdom of God. Christmas is also a time to express our love to others and to bear our testimony of the Savior."

 

I hope this Christmas (okay it's already past but Christmas can still live in your heart) you have a chance to share with someone your testimony of the Savior.

 

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

Don't Think About it Too Hard

Xiongdi jiemei, zao an! (that's where you respond, "zao!" That is how people start their talks in church. Yes, it is like the "aloha" thing in Hawaii. I love it.)

 

As I write this I am sitting in a computer cafe place about a two-minute bike ride from our apartment. It smells like smoke and is full of the noise of other people's computer games. For some reason they include passion-fruit juice in the price of the time on the computer. My juice is almost gone and I wish I didn't have so many mosquito bites. Weather-wise it is a lovely morning for about July 13th in Sammamish. It is December 1st. I can't read any of the signs posted in the building but they are playing American music. All in all, a regular p-day morning. (Is that enough detail for you, mom? :D)

 

Yes, another week in Taiwan has passed! It was pretty great. We had some good lessons and I didn't fall asleep in church quite as much as last week (which achievement a member felt the need to comment on yesterday. She said I looked a lot better than I did last week. A compliment? I think so.) We had some looong bike rides, which is actually pretty nice, gives you some time to relax. Our area covers the districts of Gangshan, Ciaotou, and Luzhu, and maybe a little bit more than that if you want to look it up on Google maps. So it's a really big area. And here's an interesting thing: in this mission sisters only teach female investigators and elders only teach males, unless they are part of a family for both ways. So our district has two sets of elders and us sisters all covering the same ward, we just split it up so we teach the girls and they teach the boys (I guess since there are two sets of elders they split up the area). So we see the other missionaries a lot more often than I did in Salt Lake. Also it means if the members want to invite the missionaries over they feel like they have to invie all six of us! But it's really nice of them. On Thursday a wonderful family gave us Thanksgiving dinner including a real turkey and a whole bunch of salad. Also, I discovered it is possible to eat ice cream with chopsticks. Frustrating, but possible.

 

Other things about food: My new favorite drink is dongguo cha, which is wintermelon tea. When it's plain it is essentially a liquid version of a buttered popcorn Jelly Belly. Add lemon and it is one of the most delicious things ever. Another thing I tried is rou song, which some missionaries call "fuzzy meat." It is powdered pork. I have no idea how they do that, but it is pretty good on rice. (Yes, I eat rice all the time.) For lunch we usually go out to a biandang place, which is like a buffet where you choose what you want to put in your box and they give you rice and it is tasty. I've decided not to think about how long the food has been sitting out under the lights. I made a goal that every time I get a biandang I have to try something that I am not particularly comfortable with eating. I haven't died from eaing seaweed tied into a bow, so that's something! Weirdest thing I've eaten at someone's house was fruit pizza. No, not the fruit pizza you decorate to look like an American flag on July 4th. Like, you get some circular dough and put tomato sauce, then decorate it with kiwis and apples and mozzarella cheese, then heat it up in a wok because ovens aren't really a thing here. Also, did I mention that guavas taste like Christmas?

 

Things about traveling: if I think about it too hard it is really scary to ride my bike in the crazy traffic. I decide not to think about it too hard. We went on exchanges with the sister training leaders on Saturday which means that we switch companions for a day, so I went up to Tainan and stayed overnight there. Tainan is MUCH bigger than Gangshan and I think I almost died inside while I was avoiding cars and scooters. Whenever we are at a stoplight we try to talk to someone and give them a handout thing with the addresses of all the churches in the area and a little message about the Gospel. Sometimes you have to be really quick to give it to people before the light turns green. In Tainan I had a conversation with a lady where she asked me if the church was nearby (umm I don't know I don't actually live here) and then I pulled out a tract to give her the light turned green so I was going to let her go but then she was like "Hey can I have that?" and I was like Oh yes of course! I wish everyone would ask if they could take our handouts. Most people take the light turning green as a chance to end the conversation. (We'll get you next time, never fear! Actually that happened, On Saturday evening we contacted a guy that Sister Grigg had talked to that morning. "Have you ever talked to missionaries before?" "Yes, this morning.")

 

Other random things: Apparently elections happened this week so everywhere we see these signs with a number on them and sometimes a picture of the candidate, like Number 3 is a nice looking lady with short hair and Number 5 is a dramatic picture of a guy in a suit. Well all week they have had these little trucks (and sometimes whole caravans of trucks and scooters) driving around and playing music to campaign. It's kind of fun! The other day on one of our long rides to Luzhu we were riding right along a Number 7 caravan and they kept waving at us. It was kind of fun. But I think Number 4 had better music. I would probably vote for them. I actually have no idea who won. But there were fireworks on Saturday, so I guess that means something? Actually that could mean nothing, people here just like fireworks.

 

My companion gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting yesterday, and from what I could understand (which actually was quite a good portion, despite my lack of vocabulary and my tendency to fall asleep after someone speaks Chinese for longer than 5 minutes) she talked about attitude and how it determines how well you succeeed. She told a story about when her mom was little she didn't want to eat peas and would sit at the table for hours because her grandpa wouldn't let her leave until she ate the peas (I had to get a translation from my companion later because I had no idea if her mom didn't want to eat beans or squash or maybe even watermelon, all I knew was she didn't want to eat something. See, I'm learning!). The point was, if she had gotten over her attitude and just ate the peas really quick then she could have gone and done other fun things instead of fall asleep at the table. Life is like that. Sometimes we get in the way of ourselves accomplishing all that we could. I have lots of times where I don't feel like talking to someone at a stoplight because it might be awkward or they might say something I don't understand or it's hot and I'm gross and I have no idea where I am BUT if I just get through that then I have invited one more person to learn about Jesus Christ. And if I learn to get through those moments then I will learn more Chinese and feel less awkward and get used to the heat (ha.) and most importantly, plant another seed of the gospel. So keep going! Don't give up! Eat those peas! (Do you feel inspired?)

 

Love you all, and love Taiwan.

The Sister Cardon in Asia

Tabula Rasa

Friday morning at about 7:30 I had a thought.

I thought, "You know, I really love this area. I don't think I want to leave. I would be pretty happy to stay here for the rest of this transfer. Maybe even a transfer after that."

At about 12:30 I got a phone call. "Sister Cardon," the office missionary lady said. "We have some news! You have received your visa. You'll be leaving at 8:30 on Tuesday morning!"

Thus is the hypocrisy of life.

Yes, it's true! I am finally leaving to go to Taiwan, in the middle of a transfer and at much inconvenience to pretty much everyone. Don't get me wrong, I am so excited to go. If this had been the situation six weeks ago I would have been ecstatic. Overjoyed. Ebullient. But now that I have been working seriously hard these past 8 weeks and so much work is finally coming to fruition (Ray's baptism. Lessons with Taylor. New investigators. Lists of names to find. Ward missionaries stepping it up. Lots of member trust.) it is really hard to leave! And there is so much going on in the next few weeks! Christmas parties and baptisms and pie nights and lessons and dinners and all sorts of awesome missionary things! Besides all that, the situation in the mission now is that there are no trios of sisters, which means that there's nobody extra to put in the spot I was in for the next four weeks of the transfer, which means that Sister Payne essentially companionless; she'll be living with the other sisters who serve in our stake and getting splits with members to come teach in our area. So that means so much coordination and stress for her, it will be hard to get the work done, people might not step up to help her, it will be difficult to be in a trio covering all 10 wards. She really has so many possibilities of what could happen and what might go well or wrong that it is a little overwhelming.

As for myself, however, my immediate future is a blank slate. I pretty much have no idea what is going to happen once I go to Taiwan. The only things I know for sure are that it will be Asian, there will be biking, and there will be food. I AM SO STOKED.

Seriously, I'm going to Asia tomorrow. I'll be flying through Seattle to Tokyo, then from there to Taipei. Total about 22 hours of travel. So excited! 

I'm not even sure what else I should talk about. This news has pretty much consumed the last three days.

We started the Stop Smoking program with Ray on Friday, and he is doing really great so far. We're settling his doubts about tithing and the Word of Wisdom and everything so hopefully he is still on track for baptism. Hooray! We had a couple of really good lessons with new investigators: one is 19 yo whose brother and sister joined the church last year, and one is a 10 yo from a less active family. I think they will both be baptized as soon as possible, I'm really happy for them. We also had an interesting lesson with a guy named Mel who was Very Baptist. We essentially sat there for an hour and listened to him tell us that our church follows a false prophet, the Book of Mormon came from man and not God, and that the King James Bible is the only true book. "But I really respect you girls and all you do." Um, thanks? Best part was when Sister Fletcher said, "Mel, I know that you have an open heart and are willing to listen--" before he interrupted her. "You don't know that! You are judging me, and I don't ever want to hear you say that again! Only God can judge us!" "...do you have an open heart?" "Yes I do." We decided to leave soon after that. In closing he prayed that we would read the Bible and not the Book of Mormon.

We've been doing these fun lessons with the YSA ward missionaries; we are teaching them the missionary lessons to help give them a good foundation so they can go and do their ward missionary work. Most of them are returned missionaries, so sometimes it's a little awkward to be teaching them things they've taught hundreds of more times than I have, but whatever. It was really good practice for me; I am glad I have gotten all this practice teaching in English, all I will need to do when I get to Taiwan is put the language in and I'll be like a pro missionary! Or something like that. 

We sometimes go over to this family's house to read scriptures with them. On Saturday we told them I was leaving and said goodbye, and took a picture with them. As we were posing for the picture the grandmother Joy leaned over to me, kissed my hair, and said, "This will be one of the last pictures before I die." How are you supposed to react to that?

So that's been our week. We've had some really good times and the work is going so well. I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have had to serve out here. When I first knew I would be getting reassigned to America I was hoping for somewhere exciting wherfe I had never been or something, but I think Utah was exactly the place I needed to be. I met people that I needed to meet and had the opportunity to learn how to be a missionary. One of the biggest things I've learned since I've been here, I think, is how important it is to stay strong in the gospel. So many people I meet were born in the church and have decided that they don't need to go anymore or that the people that have hurt them are more important than the truth of the Atonement. It's not true! God loves you and wants you to receive all the blessings he has to give. As it says somewhere in the Book of Mormon that I can't quite remember, All He requires of you is to keep His commandments. Just do that and life will be great! So that's one of the biggest things I have learned serving out here.

Next week I will be emailing from Taiwan! Remember that because of the time difference, you now have to email me on Sunday morning in order for me to get it that week. Oh, and don't send Christmas presents. 1) it probably won't get there before Christmas 2) it is way too expensive to send things from America and 3) I would much rather you invite a nonmember/less active to a Christmas event than send things to a missionary who already has the sun in the morning and the moon at night.

Love you all!

Pics: Goodbye to the Trailer Park! And shopping at Downeast. And my last good Mexican food for another 14 months. Gotta love Costa Vida.

Baptisms and Italians

So this week was pretty meh, not much exciting happened.

NOT. It was like the best week ever. RAY IS GETTING BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I don't usually use multiple exclamation points. You should take that for a testament to how excited I really am.)

It started on Tuesday. We had a lesson that did not start out very well; Ray had been talking to a former preacher at another church who had been telling him stories about Joseph Smith. Luckily Ray wasn't very inclined to listen to him, but we were still not sure where the rest of the lesson was going to go. We ended up just reading 1 Nephi Chapter 1 with him to hopefully get him to be more excited about the Book of Mormon. Then we kept chatting and he told us that his boss at work, who is a recent convert, asked him when he is getting baptized and who is baptizing him. Ray was a little leery of that, but it has really got him thinking. He thought it was really nice that his boss would want to be there when he got baptized then asked us, "Are you two going to be there?" Sister Payne and I looked at each other. "Well, if you get baptized before the transfer ends, then definitely. The transfer ends on December 16. That means December 13th is a Saturday. ...do you want to be baptized on December 13th?" He thought for a minute. "Yes." We couldn't believe it, we had to double check. "You're going to gt baptized on December 13th?" "Yes, I am." "How do you feel about that?" "Kinda tingly." That's totally the Spirit!

We had to hold it until we got to the car to really let out how excited we were that he said that. The rest of the week was great on his part; we went to Temple Square with him and a member on Saturday and watched the Joseph Smith movie, which he really loved, and then on Sunday morning we got a text from the Ward Mission Leader saying that Ray has asked Bob, a recent convert and one of Ray's best friends in the Trailer Park, to baptize him. This is going to get Bob on track, Ray and Bob are going to stop smoking together, then Sharon in the trailer park will want to get baptized too, then Ed Ray's best friend will come along as well, and we'll all end up going to the Celestial Kingdom together like one big happy Trailer Park family.

Or something like that. Miracles happen! (as evidenced by Ray's baptismal date.)

So in conclusion, that made it a really great week. Other good things include an entire Less Active family being at church all together, the YSA ward getting really pumped up about all of their new ward missionaries (including putting them into companionships and telling them they need to live the mission rules as best they can. The companionships all include a boy and a girl so I'm not sure how well that's going to work out and whether this might just be a ploy to get them all married but whatevs), and getting to go through the Salt Lake Temple for my very first time this morning! It was really wonderful. All temples are beautiful, but the workmanship inside the Salt Lake Temple is just stunning. Do you think someday they'll let me explore the whole thing? Maybe if my husband ends up a General Authority. I'm going to start working on that.

Hmmm what else. Oh, funny moment. We saw a lady walking alone along the street and I felt like we should stop and talk to her. I'm a missionary and am trying to learn to follow those promptings so we pulled up alongside her (probably should have gotten out of the car, we may have looked a little creepy), rolled down the window, and said hi. *thoughts are in asterisks*

Me: Hello! How are you?

Her: Comesta? 

Me: *Oh, she's Spanish. I'm going to pull out the ten words of Spanish I know and try not to speak Chinese.* Bien! E tu?

Her: Bene! Balahbldfrhssdgnsjkdghioh amore anjsfgjbloaerbpsdinrhug.

Me: ....oh. *why did I do that. I don't speak Spanish. She obviously doesn't speak English. She said "amor" is she trying to tell me I'm lovely? Probably not. uhh... ni hao ma? no.* Como esta? *really? That's all you can come up with?* uhh... no hablo Espanol.

Her: No habla? Blaifoghsmksdgpaemrhle amore bnsdoroagollea.

Me: *She said amore again. Wait a second, I don't think she's speaking Spanish. It sounds like Italian. Wait! I know some Italian! I know how to say "I understand a little Italian"! ...That's all I can say. That would not be helpful. Just deceptive.* Uhh... espanol or Italiano?

Her: Italiano! bosdghmk ciao rmppolella. 

Me: ....molto bene!

Her: Ciao!

Me: Ciao! (she walks away and we drive off)

Both me and Sister Payne: What just happened?

In conclusion, I don't speak Spanish or Italian and should probably stick to Chinese.

In actual conclusion to this letter, missions are great. The work is wonderful. People should go to church. People should pray every day. God loves you.

Love, 

Sister Cardon

Soup and Eggshells

Hey Family!

Well, it's official! I have completed my first transfer in the field. Am I still a greenie? I don't know. My first transfer in the field is also my first transfer in America--but not my last. Yes, it's true. I have not received my visa to o to Taiwan and as a result, I am staying in Stansbury Park, UT for another six weeks. And as far as I know at this moment, Sister Payne is staying with me! So we get to have six more weeks of adventures together. In all honesty, I don't have much feeling towards excitement or disappointment. I knew my visa wasn't here yet so I wasn't really expecting to go to Taiwan yet, and I was happy to stay here in Stansbury or even go somewhere else in the mission (I was feeling Fruit Heights.) But here I am! And as soon as I finish this email we are going to Deseret Industries and Payless to find me some winter clothes and boots. We literally had snow on our car this morning. Awesome. #visaprobs.

Hmm what else. This week has been full of pumpkins, candy, and wind. Also soup. Seriously, is it a thing to make tons of different kinds of soup? We went to two trunk-or-treats and a Relief Society activity where they had everyone bring a different kind of soup to eat. (The chicken tortilla with avocados from Stansbury ward was the best.) Then on Halloween night a member invited us over for dinner where she had made broccoli cheese, potato bacon, and chicken tortilla soup. So delicious. She also made the best pumpkin bars I have ever had.

We also did a lot of contacting this week, as always. We still have long lists of names to knock on their doors and see how they are doing. One problem we have is we forget who the person is when we knock on their door, whether they are less active or just need somebody to stop by and give them love. So we do a lot of awkwardly standing on doorsteps until they invite us in or we ask to come back or they tell us to go away. But it's all good.

Friday was a pretty cool day! We had a district meeting in the morning and then a special meeting with just our district and the mission president, President Hansen. We were all a little bit worried (is chastisement upon us?) but couldn't figure out anything we had done wrong. Is my visa here and President needs to talk to all of us to tell me? Are we finally getting iPads? The answer to all of these questions is no. President and Sister Hansen are starting a thing where they go around to different districts literally to do a Q&A session. We were allowed to ask President anything we wanted. So that was awesome, he told us all about how deciding transfers goes and talked about how to recognize personal revelation. Then at the end they were about to leave and you could see President having an internal debate. Finally he goes, "Oh, I'll just tell you. No one in this district is going to be moving this transfer." So we knew that we were all staying, but couldn't really tell anyone until Sunday night. So that was kind of fun.

In the afternoon we stopped by the house of an older couple (still not sure why their name was on our list. They are less active?) and hcatted with them for a bit. Shared a scripture. After that the husband goes, "Well, now that we have religion done with, do you guys like Sudoku?" He was doing a really hard Sudoku and asked us to help him. Then he told us that he had been given all these Sudoku books by someone and that he had so many, "I'm not going to be able to finish all these before I die!" so he gave them to us. Nine of them. We decided we would make a goal to finish completely one book so we could bring it back to him and tell him we had helped him with his goal. So on Halloween night when we had to stay in after 6 pm we did our weekly planning, then did Sudokus. It was pretty fun.

Saturday was good too! Sister Payne has had this deal going with one of our less actives that he wouldn't drink until November 1st and she would give up McDonalds. They both made it, which is awesome! So he took us out to McDonald's in the afternoon, it was pretty nice. We decided we probably shouldn't take him out for a drink.

Saturday evening was way interesting too. We went to dinner then walked around the same neighborhood to contact some of the names on our list. The first people were an older couple who were way nice and very happy to see us. They told us about their ex-daughter-in-law who had remarried to an Irishman named Stephen and they lived just two doors down. They warned us that he was very straightforward but loved talking to the missionaries. So we took a deep breath and knocked on his door; boy, was he Irish. He was way nice, very friendly, and very smart. And very stubborn. After talking about who we are, where we're from, etc, I mentioned that I studied Anthropology. He wants to be a history teacher once he can do his schooling in the US and was very interested to hear that I study that. "Tell me this," he said. "with you studying anthropology, how does that tie into your belief in the Book of Mormon?" What a wonderful way to open the door to a gospel conversation! Well, let me tell you. Stephen is very interested in proof; other religions have so much evidence of their scriptures but the Book of Mormon has nothing (says he. I could have pulled out some Proofs of the Book of Mormon but I knew it wouldn't go anywhere.), so how can you believe it's true, with you studying the science of peoples and archaeology and all that? I basically told him this: the lack of archaeological evidence about this giant battle or that city in the Book of Mormon being found in Central/South America doesn't bother me at all. Archaeology is awesome, but it is so hard to get anything definite. If we were to take your garbage can and bury it for 1000 years do you know what would be left? Eggshells. Literally only that. What can you find out from that? Somebody ate an egg. No, not even that. Somebody cracked an egg. So pretty much nothing. So the fact that we haven't found giant battlefields and a "Welcome to Zarahemla" sign means nothing to me; all it means is that I want to study it more. Instead of making me doubt that the Book of Mormon is a true record, it makes me want to go be the person that finds that evidence (I don't really plan on going into archaeology directly, but don't tell him that). What it really comes down to is whether or not I believe Joseph Smith was a prophet. To believe that I have to believe that God called prophets in ancient days. And to believe that I have to believe that God loves us. Guess what? I believe all that. I know that God called a prophet to restore His church upon the earth again and that that prophet was Joseph Smith. I know that God brought forth the fullness of His gospel through the Book of Mormon, and that it is the truest record that can be found. So what if we haven't found the temple Nephi built 2600 years ago. That was a really long time ago. My testimony of the Book of Mormon is not dependent on the work archaeologists, it is dependent on my faith in God and the Holy Ghost telling me it is true.

So there.

Stephen says he doesn't like to read and won't read the Book of Mormon until he knows it is true. (Anyone have any articles about evidence of the Book of Mormon in Central America?) But you know what, I am here for another six weeks, and maybe the reason I'm staying is so that I can help Stephen see that science and religion can totally go hand in hand. I knew I couldn't have been this smart for nothing :)

Well, love you all! You are great. Stay awesome!

Love,

Sister Cardon

PS bonus pumpkin carving pic.

Just Another Manic Sunday

Hey Everybody!

Another week has gone by and now we are at just one week left in the transfer! I can't believe it. Next week I could be on a plane to Taiwan! Or I could be shopping for warm clothes to survive the cold in Utah. Whatever happens, though, I will be doing the Lord's work! No matter where in the world it is, it is important that I am helping to bring people to Christ.

And what a work this is! I may have mentioned before that we work with 6 wards out here in Stansbury Park. Count them. Six. In pretty much everywhere but Utah, missionaries usually work in one, maybe two wards, or maybe there are like 6 missionaries assigned to just one ward. But no, we are the missionaries for six whole wards. That means we work with six bishops, six ward mission leaders, six Relief Society presidents, six ward councils, and on. I am so grateful that I have been blessed with a good memory because boy, it is hard to keep all these names straight! But I love it so much. We always have something to do. Let me tell you about our schedule for Sunday yesterday:

8:30am Ward Council #1

9:30am Meet with Relief Society presidency of Ward #5

10:30am Ward Council #2

11:30am Ward Council #3

11:50am Make sure our investigators actually go to church, go to Gospel Principles with them

1:00pm Ward Council #4

2:00pm mingle around the end of sacrament meeting for ward #6, set up lesson with investigators for later

2:30pm sit in the car and eat goldfish.

2:50pm go to Sacrament meeting in Ward #2

4:15pm Stake Correlation meeting with all the Ward Mission Leaders and the other sister missionaries in the Stake

5:00pm Dinner at a member's house

6:15pm Go to the trailer park to see how Ray liked church

7:15pm Go to a LA house to set up appt for tomorrow

7:40pm Go home to make pumpkin seeds and organize the 70+ names we have gotten from WCs and Relief Society Presidents.

9:15pm finally get too exhausted after looking at all these names

9:30pm collapse into bed.

No joke, that is what every Sunday is like! It was crazy. But so good that we have so much work to do! During the week we met with every Relief Society president and asked her who we could help, and now we have so many names that we didn't know about before. I am so doing this at the beginning of every transfer from now on, it's just ridiculous that we waited until the last week of the transfer to get the work going like this! But it's great. I love it so much. I'm just glad I have P-day today haha!

Oh of course I need to mention that Ray finally came to church! And he brought his best friend from the Trailer Park, Ed. They didn't stay for Sacrament meeting but they are both totally planning on coming next week. It made yesterday pretty much the best day ever. We love it when things actually go how they were supposed to! I think our hard work over this week was really paying off and the Lord definitely helped us get through that crazy Sunday. I love this work!

Side note Thursday was like the coolest day every because there was a solar eclipse. And I made sure I knew what time it was going to be and I came prepared with my sunglasses and a paper with a hole cut out of it and in conclusion I might be an astronomer when I grow up.

Another side note I feel like I have knocked on more doors this week than my whole life combined. We did this awesome thing on Saturday where we went on splits, we got two nice ladies from the ward to go with us to start working on the names we had gotten. Sister Payne and a girl about to go on her mission took the car and went around a few neighborhoods while I and an awesome lady who just moved in to the area walked ALL the way down this street of houses. There weren't too many straight-up rejections (except for this guy. Me: What ward do you go to? Him: Umm... this one. We don't really go that often. Me: Oh, why not? Him: Because we don't want to. Sister Payne: Why not, it's the best! Him: If you start talking like that I'm going to shut the door on you.) (in retrospect we probably could have handled that one better. But he was kind of just grumpy.) though a lot of people weren't home. Still, good times! I feel like a real missionary.

That's about it for this week! I love you all!

Sister Cardon

We're Not Crazy, We're Awesome: October 20, 2014

Another week gone by in Stansbury! Good times. Love it.

Yesterday a man said to us that our job as missionaries is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." I have actually seen that so much this week. I had the chance to talk to several different people who were struggling and I shared scriptures with them and listened to their problems and tried to find ways to serve them, and it was so neat for me to see that I can really be out here to help people, not just teach them the missionary lessons. (That does help people, but you know what I mean.) We had the opportunity to do service in several different ways; we volunteered helping with kids' games at a community event called the Pumpkin Walk, and we helped a lady clean her house (10 missionaries all cleaning baseboards at once meant it was a really quick job) and on Thursday we'll be setting up tables for a Girl Scouts event. It's so cool to be able to do real things to help people, not just testify about how Christ can help them (which is way awesome in its own right.) So life is good!

We are also here to afflict the comfortable. We've been teaching this man named Ray that I've mentioned and the other day we had a really good lesson with him where we talked about change. He doesn't think he is ready to change but we asked him "Why not?" and he really had to think about it. We told him that he can decide now to choose to come closer to God, and asked him what he thought God would ask him to do if He were right here. "Well, probably stop smoking." "Then why don't you?" "..." He didn't really have an answer for that. We are asking him to pray and find out for himself if what we teach is true, and he's said that he already knows that we must be telling the truth because we wouldn't lie to him, he just needs to really know it. Haha we wish he could know a little faster, but we can't really complain because he is making good progress.

Hmm what else was exciting this week. We had new missionary training on Wednesday and somebody bought us lunch at Rumbi Island Grill, which was nice. We've had a few rough days where we prepared so well for a lesson only to knock on the door and someone else (not the person we were trying to teach) answering the door and saying "Do you need something? No, he's not here. Don't come back." So that's a little discouraging. But we've been working hard and having lots of good contacts, and if we are not seeing success in numbers then we are at least seeing that by our example we can bring other closer to Christ.

Haha we had an intersting experience on Saturday; we went back to the house with the Caucasian lady and the Chinese husband, and this time Mr Zheng was home! So I got to practice Chinese for a bit, which was good for me. It was hard though, he is fgrom northeastern China and so had a different accent than I am used to. A lot of the time I was catching most of the words he was saying and having no idea what he meant. Is it a thing when you learn other languages that it is hard to tell when people are asking questions or making statements? Or is that just a Chinese thing? Because I was having a really hard time figuring out if he was asking me questions or just saying things half the time. Neither of them are really interested in the church, but I totally took the opportunity to teach a little lesson when he asked if I had anything else to say. When I finished testifying about families he only commented on my Chinese on not on the message (except to say that In Taiwan they are probably more open to religion than he is) but hey, we're bringing people to Christ little by little. He did say that my Chinese is at an intermediate level and I shouldn't worry about when I go to Taiwan, so that's something. And he understood everything I said, but sometimes he just started laughing when my grammar was way off. But hey, I'm learning. 

Wow I almost forgot to say that we had the coolest opportunity on Friday to go to my cousin Anna's wedding at the Salt Lake Temple! You can get permission pretty much just once on your mission to see your family, especially if they will be at the Salt Lake Temple, which is essentially in our mission. Since I'm only here for six weeks I decided to take full opportunity to do that so my companion and I got to go to my cousin's sealing. It was so wonderful to see many of my aunts and uncles and grandparents and of course to see that ordinance. I do not want to get married anywhere else except the temple, it was such a wonderful experience. And now Anna and Taylor will be married for all of eternity and receive so many blessings because of it. Why would you want anything else? I loved getting to be there, and I needed that boost of love and hugs to get me through the next few weeks. I love my family. They are great.

So that was my week! Good times and not-as-good times, but I'm here to learn and I'm here to learn to rely on faith. We spoke in church yesterday about our personal conversion, and it was neat for me to look over my life and notice how well I've been prepared to serve and how strong a foundation I have. I cannot imagine ever wanting to leave this church, it had blessed my life so much. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a missionary.

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

Picture: Diva picture from the temple because we like to take model shots.