Week 14

你好！

This has been a really busy week.  We have had plenty of opportunities to teach, which was really fun.  It was actually probably the best week we have had so far this transfer, in some aspects.

Probably the biggest thing that happened this week was on Thursday.  Everyone in the Taipei Taiwan Mission attended the funeral for Elder Xiong and Elder Thredgold.  It was really a good experience.  We all learned so much from it.  The biggest thing I learned from it was how great of missionaries they were, and the affect they they had on the people in their area.  For many of us, it was really inspiring and also a good thing for us to see things that we could improve on to become amazing missionaries just like them.

As for in Miaoli, things are really good.  This week, we had the chance to teach a lot.  There was actually only about 4 hours the entire week we we didn't have a lesson or meeting planned, which was cool.  So for those 4 hours, we did English boarding and a little bit of tracking.  English boarding is basically passing out fliers for the English class that we have each Wednesday at the church.  For tracking, we actually only knocked four doors.  On the fourth one, we got let in.  So, we didn't do that much tracking in the aspect of knocking a lot of doors.  As for where we can track, it is anywhere along the streets. Any of the high rises, we aren't really allowed to.  The only hard thing about tracking though along the street is that a lot of homes are on the second and third floor.  The first floors of a lot of the homes on the busier streets are actually family owned shops, which is really common here in Taiwan.  Because of that, we generally don't do as much tracking because it is a little less effective.  The most effective thing here is street contacting, which is pretty tiring, but it generally works a lot better.

As for the Moon festival, that is also pretty big here.  For this week and next week, they do a lot of barbecues.  We have only been invited for one barbecue so far, but I have been told by Elder Meeks, that this is one of the best weeks because the barbecues are always so good and yummy.  So, in that aspect, I am super excited for this next week because I know there are going to be some really good meals.

As for other things that happened this week, we did splits.  I was with an Elder from Tou fen, Elder Dickson.  He is really cool and I learned so much from him.  Recently Elder Dickson and his current companion, Elder Shelton, have been doing a lot of finding, so that short time I had with him, we did a little bit of finding so that I could learn from him.  He is really good with contacting people on the street.  I guess if you get to do a lot of contacting on the street, you get pretty good at it.  The biggest thing I learned from him was that you have to be bold.  If you are not, everyone will say that they are short on time and have to go.  If you are bold, they will generally stop and listen to you though.  I thought that was kind of interesting.

This week, was also had a two sweet qing ke (dinner invitation).  The first was with the Lee Jia Ting, a recent convert family, took us out to eat at a hot pot, which as amazing.  The thing about it too was that it was cheap.  It was about 7 USD, which is a little too expensive for our missionary budget, but in reality, for a large hot pot meal, you would never be able to find that in the states.  I know I will definitely miss that when my mission is over.  The other thing I have decided I will miss is coco.  The drinks there are so good.  My personal favorite at cocos is a passion fruit drink, but you have to make sure and ask them not to add the tea to it.  That's one thing that I have learn though.  A lot of the drinks at coco have tea in them, but for almost all of them, you can just ask them not to put the tea in them and then there are so many more options for drinks at coco.  As for the second qing ke, it was with the Chen Jia Ting.  They are less actives in the ward, but love to feed the missionaries.  The mom is also a really good cook and she also knows that the missionaries can eat a lot of food.  She had so much prepared, but with that being said, we still finished it.  She told us at the beginning that she didn't want any food left over, so we did as she asked.  My favorite part of that meal was actually the vegetables.  I don't know what exactly she did, but it was dang good.

As for something cool that happened this week, an investigator that we meet with a few weeks ago, called us last night and told us he wanted to be baptized.  He has been attending church in Taizhong because it is closer to where he lives, but because he can not actually get baptized there, he has re-connected with us and wants us to teach him.  So we will most likely be meeting with him about two to three times a week and he should hopefully be baptized here in the next two weeks, which will be cool.

As for fun things this week, for p-day, we just stayed in Miaoli and played ping pong all day.  It was really fun, and we are both starting to get really good at it.  We have also started playing ping pong in the morning for our morning exercise, which is fun.  It isn't a lot of exercise in the aspect of being tired at the end, but it sure is fun though which I guess is the important part.

Love,

柯長老

Elder Okeson

P.S.  Sorry about no photos this week. Were always busy with lessons, so we didn't have time really to get any photos, but next week, I will try to have some to send home.