Exciting Things

Hello all! Well, this has been a pretty exciting week. Let me just list some exciting things.

1) I am officially a Facebook missionary! This means that I can use Facebook to do missionary work online. I will mostly be directing my posts to people in Taiwan and chatting with investigators here. I am not able to contact family and friends during the week and can only talk to immediate family members on P-day. I appreciate your support in following these guidelines!

2) We got to go to the temple twice this week and it was so neat! The first time was with a group of missionaries so we rode up to Taipei on a bus and went all together. It was really nice, especially nice to get a nap on the bus. I am constantly in need of a nap.

The second time we went was really awesome. Last year Sister King helped a cute girl get baptized, and this year she decided to go through the temple for herself, so we got to accompany her for her first time. It was so wonderful! It happened that Saturday was also our ward temple trip, so we took a 5am bus with our ward up to the temple, did a session with them, had lunch with Sister King's friend, then went back and did another session with the girl. Coolest part, other than the wonderful opportunity to be and learn in the temple, was that we got to do the session in Chinese! We had headphones with the English going but I totally learned some new Chinese words and it was seriously the neatest thing ever. Love the temple.

3) Ummm I know there were other exciting things this week but I forgot.

Basically still just doing the work! We have a few investigators who have a goal to be baptized on April 18th, which is pretty exciting. We are doing our best to find new people to teach. I am feeling pretty good about Chinese, which probably means there is a fall coming where I'll have a whole day where I can't understand anything. But that's okay.

The weather is off and on warm and cold. Food is still delicious. Recently we have been eating a lot of fried potsticker things called guo tie (ummm, gwo tyeh.) because they are cheap and fast and delicious. 

Basically it's just life as usual so, not sure what else to write about. Any questions or things you wish I would talk more about?

oh! Go watch this awesome video! http://www.mormon.org/easter It's pretty much the best thing ever. I'm so happy this week to be able to remember the Savior and His sacrifice for us. It really is because of Him that we have all of the wonderful things we have here on Earth. And because of Him we can become better people and overcome all of our challenges. I realized that I say that a lot to be people ("overcome our challenges" is a phrase I totally have down in Chinese) so sometimes I don't really think about what it means. But it's true! Christ can help us overcome all of the hard things we deal with. True facts.

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

PS I tried my best attach pictures but the computer was freaking out. Sorry!

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But the Gospel is Even More Contagious

We had the craziest Sunday yesterday; 14 people (and counting) in our ward have the chicken pox. Which meant that there was hardly anyone in church on Sunday (like, less than 50 people. The chapel was pretty sparsely filled.) and the people who were there had to wear face masks.s Which meant, of course, that they needed substitutes to play the piano. So I ended up playing the piano during all three hours of church, including Primary. It was actually really fun! I'm grateful I have the opportunity to serve in this way for the people of Taiwan. It's pretty convenient. Oh! And one of the elder's investigators got baptized on Saturday! So I played the piano for that too. It was a good weekend.

AWESOME miracle last night at 8:30pm when we decided to contact a few more people. We followed this lady with a dog until she stopped to talk to us and in the course of the conversation she told us that she had given up on God. I told her that God loves her and she said, "I believe he loves everyone else. But I'm the exception." Heartbreaking! I told her with all the fervor that I could that God definitely loves her, and even though she has given up on Him He will never give up on her. She has had a hard life including 13 miscarriages and even though she grew up in a Baptist church she doesn't believe church or God or anything can help her. Well, sister. Let me tell you. We tried so so hard to set up to meet with her again but she wasn't having any of it. "I know what you people are doing. You want to come over and make me believe what you believe." Me: "We want to come over and mop your floor. Is that okay? We can help you cook. We can draw you a picture. We can read with you. Will you give us your phone number? What's your phone number? Can we meet on Wednesday? Do you have time on Saturday? Will you take this Book of Mormon? You can take the Book of Mormon or tell us what time to come over. Two choices." Haha I was probably being kind of annoying. But she was laughing most of the time and said I was really smart. Also, I figure, I could not invite and she wouldn't come, or I could invite her a whole bunch of times and maybe finally she would say yes. We are going to try to find her walking her dog in a couple of weeks. It is going to happen. 

Every week we teach English class and split up so that each companionship of missionaries teaches a different class. We have the kids class, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. We teach the beginner class here and we decided to do something different for our spiritual share last week (at the end of every class we share something about the gospel.) We had the elders come in with the kids class and everybody sit in a circle. I cut up some paper stars (because we forgot the candy) and asked everyone, "Do you want this?" if they said yes, Elder Osborne had to do 5 push ups in the middle of the room. At first I was just asking kids so they all said yes because they thought it was funny for him to have to do all these push ups. But then we got to an adult who took pity and said no--but Elder Osborne still had to do 5 push ups. "But he said no," someone protested. This is an example of Christ's Atonement. He already paid for all of our sins, weaknesses, infirmities, everything. If we don't accept the gospel or Him as our Savior, He still paid the price and suffered for us, but it was a waste because we didn't get the gift that we could have received.. But if we do accept and value the gift that He has already given us, then His sacrifice means a lot more. Eventually Elder Osborne was too tired to go on; his arms were trembling, he couldn't even get back up after the last few push ups and we just decided to stop there even though there were still more people in the room. It made the Atonement have so much more meaning for me, to imagine that Christ suffered even more than that, and He kept going even though He was tired and didn't want to go on. As missionaries we are just the people standing there and offering, "Do you want this?" Do you want to accept Christ? Do you want the eternal blessings that His sacrifice has brought to you? I personally am going to strive to appreciate the gifts that I have been given so much more now.

So that's been about what my week has been! Contacting lots of people and inviting them to come unto Christ. Striving to accomplish our goals. Figuring out how to teach better. Trying to get to things on time. It's great! I love Taiwan. I love missionary work. Life is good. 

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

Picture: I feel as if this is the most Asian I have ever been in my life. Face masks are not comfortable with glasses because they steam up all the time. Also, I bought a new dress on P-day. 

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The Missionary with the Power

Hello all! It's been a week of miracles here in Daya, and to top it off it was POWER WEEK! So that was exciting.

 

Basically we have power week because after Chinese New Year everyone is 10 lbs heavier and we need to add some serious oil (like fuel oil, not cooking oil) in order to get the work done! So every day this week we had different challenges that we had to accomplish. If we did so successfully we could call the mission president in the evening and say "Mission accomplished!" And we were totally able to do some of them! On Monday night we went tracting and completed the challenge of getting into two homes and sharing a gospel message with them. The first lesson was wonderful, I literally felt like we were dreaming and Daya was this magical place where people were happy to see us and would get baptized within the week. Then at 8:55 (note that we are supposed to be home at 9)(we really wanted to get into one more house) a lady let us in and let us teach her about prayer. Then she gave us candy with alcohol in it and told us she didn't want us to come back. But we accomplished the mission!

 

Tuesday was Zone Conference, which is always awesome. Always makes you feel like you can be a better missionary.

 

Thursday we got kind of lost in a farther away area but we totally met a cute girl who we are meeting with again tonight. And we were riding along minding our own business when this guy started honking at us and told us to pull over. "Are you church people?" Yes, yes we are. "I have someone you need to meet. Their son does drugs and they've tried everything to help them. I told them that now the only thing they can do is use the power of religion. Will you come over to meet them?" Heck yes we will! So we skedaddled over and met the parents an tried to tell them how the restored gospel can help their son turn his life around. They didn't really want to hear it. We left a Word of Wisdom pamphlet anyway. Then as we were leaving the man himself came up and we got his number to give to the elders! So hopefully something will come of that. Miracles happen!

 

Friday we completed the challenge of telling 20 families how the gospel can bless their lives. It involved a lot of stopping really fast and turning around when we noticed a family, or awkwardly riding right up to the scooter with two people on it in the hopes that they have some sort of family relationship. Worked sometimes.

 

Saturday we gave out 17 COPIES OF THE BOOK OF MORMON. The original challenge was to give out 13 and get the person's information. We accidentally gave a few out to people who didn't leave their number, but luckily we brought extras. Then we ran into the problem that we still needed to give out one more and we only had an English and a Tagolog copy of the Book of Mormon because we had planned to give one to a Filipino lady who wasn't at home. So we gave the English one to someone and said it could help them learn English. And another girl earlier in the day wouldn't take a copy because she said downloading the app would be more environmentally friendly. So it totally counts.

 

So overall it has been a good week. We've seen lots of miracles, the ward is really wonderful, we aren't getting lost very often even though the addresses have changed since the maps we have were made, and we have a few investigators who are willing to get baptized soon. So life is good as a missionary!

 

Love you all, hope you have a good week!

 

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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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