Week 13

Sorry loyal followers!  The mom forgot to post earlier!

你好！

I hope everything is going well at home.  This has been a pretty good week for me and my companion.

To begin off, just wanted to answer some of your questions.  For food here in Taiwan, everything is really cheap.  So we generally eat out.  We worked it out and found out that we get around 210 NTD per day, which is about seven USD per day.  And with the average meal being about 2-3 USD, it is pretty easy to just eat out all the time.  With that being said though, there is only one thing that we cannot eat here in Taiwan, but everything else is up to you.  The one thing we are not allowed to eat is the food from convenient stores that is in the metal boiling box.  I'm not actually sure what the name of it is, but I am sure those who have lived in Asia know what it is.  I wasn't too sad to find out we weren't allowed to eat that.  I don't think I would have wanted to eat it anyways.

Also, I get to be with my trainer for the full two transfers, which I am really happy about.  I have been able to learn so much from my companion, and it really is fun.  He has similar views on how things should be done, and that is really pretty nice.

For Sister Benson, we were able to contact her friends that live here in Miaoli.  We were not able to find a time that worked this week, but we were able to set up a time to visit with them this coming Sunday.  We are both pretty excited to meet them.

As for the apartment we are in, it is a four elder apartment, and is two floors.  The only thing right now is that it is just Elder Meeks and myself.  So there is a lot of space for the two of us.  We also have a washer and drier at our house, which is pretty nice.  The only thing is that the drier doesn't actually work right now so we just hang out cloths up to dry during the day.  And also, for beds, they are pretty good.  They are twin size beds and are pretty good.  They are not hard wood beds, but they aren't memory foam either.  As for our bikes, they stay outside.  We are on the fourth floor, so none of us want to carry our bikes up to our apartment.  The other thing is that Miaoli is pretty safe, so we don't have to worry as much about our bikes being stolen since there are security cameras all over outside out apartment. The only thing that is hard about our apartment is the shower situation.  First of all, the shower part of it is broken, and the second part is that I can't actually stand up.  My head hits the sealing in the bathroom, which is always fun in the morning.  

And by the sound of it, you have all heard about the death of the two elders in Taipei, one Taiwanese and one American.  The Taiwanese Elder was two transfers older than my trainer and was pretty good friends with him.  The American Elder just barely came out on his mission.  This was his third transfer.  We all found out about it Saturday afternoon, which was pretty hard, especially for my companion, but it seems like he is doing ok.  It was just really kind of a shock for all of us.  Biggest thing is, we all know they are in a better place now.

As for the week, we luckily did not get too much rain.  There was actually only one day were it rained on us, and we had appointments set up, so we were not out in the rain the entire time.  But there were days that we were out the entire time.  On Friday, we went to Tou Fen to help the elder outs.  Recently they have not been able to get any new investigators and have just been finding all day.  So we went up along with the sisters in our district to do finding with them in their area.  I think the biggest thing I learned, and I have been learning over the past few weeks, is how nice referrals are.  It is so much easier to do missionary work if the members are helping you find lessons.  If you are just out finding, the days feel a lot longer, just because you are always out in the sun.

For fun things this week, along with teaching, we got to go to the beach and we made pineapple sorbet.  For p-day last week, we went with some elders from our zone to the beach and just played some foot ball and talked.  It was really fun.  The only thing was that a lot of us got some sun burns from it.  My neck was the bad part for me, but it didn't end up being too bad.  And the sorbet, was soo good.  That is one of the few recipes that I can actually make from my recipe book because I don't have spices here.  It was the recipe that Dad makes, and it was so nice to have it when we got home from doing missionary work.  We also are planning on trying a few new ones this week with different fruits to see what we like best.  The first one my companion wants to try is a mango sorbet, so next week, we will let you know how it went.

Elder Meeks and Elder Okeson

This week was the first time that we did service.  It was for an old lady named Su Mi.  She owns a bunch of houses on the side of a hill here in Miaoli.  It was good to do service, but the after affects of the service was a little annoying.  Both Elder Meeks and myself were covered in mosquito bites, which was no fun at all.  I had about 15 bites on the outside of my left ankle alone.  It was a pretty painful night because of that.  But with that being said, being able to do service for people is always fun.  That is one thing President Day has been pushing for, is to find as much service as possible while doing missionary work.  A lot of times, they say no, just because they see we are missionaries, but every now and then, we are able to and it is always fun.

As for lessons this week, they have all been going really good.  We currently have three investigators, but we are trying to decide if some of them are turning into eternal investigators and if we need to focus on finding new investigators this week.  But, we will let you know how that is next week when I email you.

Thanks for all the prayers and emails.  And I am excited to hear about all of the things that happen over the next week for all of you.

Love,

柯長老

Elder Okeson