Week 26

你好!

Well, this has been another good week.  As for things to write though, There probably is not as many things to write about this week.  To begin off, here in four days, I hit my 6-month mark on my mission, which is super crazy.  Time has really flown by.  It also means that I only have a year and a half left which makes me want to work even more.  With that being said though, the work is made so much better by the weather here.  This week has been really good, with the exception of yesterday.  There was a big fire over by the church, which caused the sky to be a little gray, but other than that, we get a lot of blue skies and sometimes a good amount of wind.

Last week, we got to celebrate Sister Singh's birthday on p-day.  We all went to 頭份 (Tou fen) to play games and eat at a hot pot, which was 吃到飽 (All you can eat).  Being an Okeson, the first thing I actually found at the 火鍋 (Hot pot) was the 冰淇淋 (ice cream) and 冰 (pretty much shaved ice).  Sadly, the 冰淇淋 (ice cream) they have here is nothing like American 冰淇淋 (ice cream), but their 冰 (shaved ice) really is pretty good.  On my mission so far, I have really found two things I love to eat (along with many other things), which are mangoes and passion fruit, and they had a passion fruit saved ice desert, which was super good.  Also, something I have seen on my mission, which is a little sad, is that I cannot eat as much I use to back at home.  So, even though it was a 吃到飽 (All you can eat), I don't think I was actually able to eat my money's worth because I physically couldn't eat as much as I use to.

This week, I also got to go on exchanges with the zone leaders, which was a good learning experience.  The elder I got to go on exchanges with will be going home here in a transfer, so he is really practiced in finding, which meant I got to learn a lot.  He is super hard working missionary in the aspect of he will contacted everyone on the street we are walking on and on the other side of the street as well.  With Elder Anderson, I got to watch how he would loop everything he talked about back to the gospel.  From that exchange, I could tell I still have a lot of learning to do, which is good.  Also, I learned from the exchange what it means to walk with purpose.  Between every contact, we would practically be power walking.  Well, at least he was, I was just taking longer strides.  So, with that being said, I don't know if Elder Ure and I power walk, but I don't know that because we have longer legs, we are able to cover larger distances in a shorter period of time.

This week, we also got to do a good amount of service, both for members and no members.  The two biggest services were for a member who works at a youth mental disabled home and then of course English class.  Both of which were super fun.  For with the youth, we played tic tac toe with them, which they seemed to really like.  The really challenging part of the game is that they would often switch from being 'x' to being 'o', so they really do keep you on your toes when you are playing.  As for English class, we have also started playing games using the vocab that they have learned through out the lesson.  So for this last week, we played charades, which was really good.  The little kids that came really loved it, and it was super fun to watch.  Also, after English class, I got to answer a few questions on math, which was fun.  And because if it, my math vocabulary is increasing pretty fast, but when you don't know any really, it is pretty easy to make progress. :)

As I mentioned, this week, in general, doesn't have that much to write on because we were spending a majority of the time contacting people. So Thursday during dinner, we decided that we should start keeping track of how many people we contact a day. So, we bought a counter and started keeping track.  And because of it, we are both pretty impressed with the results.  We have been told by the Presidents of the Church that as we keep track of numbers and report them, our results will continually increase.  So, we decided that we could start making more contacting goals.  Usually with in two hours of finding, we will have contacted around 40 people.  On Friday and Saturday alone (6 hours of finding), we were able to contact over 200 people, which was pretty amazing.  We both were pretty happy with the result.  The only problem is that now, we have pretty high standards to hit everyday, so we are just going to need to keep working hard.

Well, my time is about up.  Thanks for all the prayers and letters.

我愛你們,

柯長老

P.S.  Also, we started the measuring wall in 苗栗 (Miao li).  I have found out that I am 197.5 cm (about 6 feet 5 and 3/4 inches tall).  As for my companion, he recently has been studying humility, and measuring his height helped. After measuring, he found out that he was 198 cm (6 foot 6).  So, he no longer can say that he is 203 cm tall.