Week 52 - New Area

你好!

Well, this was quit the exciting week, but also a little sad. It has been fun being able to serve in 
新埔 (Xinpu) with Elder Brinton, but that has been brought to a close as I have moved again. I will get more into where I am at now in a little bit, but to share a few fun things from the week.

So to begin the week, since I let it leak that I Elder Brinton or I could be moving, the YSA (Young Single Adults) said they wanted to 情 (Feed us) before one of us left, and to say the least, it was amazing. They had fresh Mangos! I don't know why before my mission I didn't really like them, but all I can say is that they are truly amazing. Along with that, we were also able to say some good byes and get some photos too.

Moving forward to Tuesday, it was pretty interesting with Elder Willis having moved, our beloved District leader. The interesting part was that he told me that I would be in charge of running district meeting. Lets just say, that took some work to prepare for. As for the rest of Tuesday, it was spent finding in the rain. We have been told by the members that for the next two weeks that it will be raining all day everyday. And looking back at the week, it is doing pretty well keeping that promise.

Now for one of the bigger things from the week, English class!

So every 6 weeks (the last week of the transfer), we hold a English party. Just from the history of things, it usually is pretty bad, but we were able to break that trend this time. We did a good amount of planning and had four amazing activities. We had all of the students break into four stations, and then every 15 minutes rotate. The four stations were Human Battle Ship, The Cup Song (where you are like clapping the cups on the table, everyone in America does it apparently), Bingo, and Musical Chairs. The purpose of the English party is suppose to give the teachers and students a fun environment to practice English along with us getting to know our students a little better. After all of the rotations, we came together into the chapel for a big share, which also went pretty well and then also got a big group photo. After we finished English class, I got the call from the Zone Leaders. At the end of each transfer, the zone leaders will call to let you know if you will be moving or not, and they said I was moving.

Thursday, in my opinion was a very quite day, but that was because I lost my voice. I have thought through what could cause it, and have come to having to be one of three reasons. I will explain each, but please don't laugh too hard. The first reason was due to biking home Tuesday night. With biking, there are always those little accidents that occur where you are just biking too fast, and you see it coming but it is just too late to stop it... I ate a fly. Ya, that a little awkward while biking because I was trying to cough and bike at the same time. It was just super weird, and left my throat hurting a little. So, that was the first reason. The second was because of how warm it was starting to get. Elder Brinton had the smart idea of sleeping in front of the AC, so Tuesday night I thought I would try it out. I think I woke up with a little bit of a cold from it in the morning, but was fine by lunch time. [Note: I am sure at this point, I am sure Mom is rolling her eyes :)] As for the third reason, which is more of a reasonable one, I was doing a lot of talking at English class, so part of it was that I think I was trying to talk too loud for too long at English Class. So, to describe how the day went, it was pretty much Elder Brinton talking all day, which was a good learning opportunity for him. We also were able to meet with a few investigators so that I could say good byes, or at least try my best to.

Now for the point where everything changed, Transfer meeting. Side note, my big suit case wheels on the bottom broke, so that made all of the transfer stuff pretty interesting trying to carry my big suit case around because wheels broke. Anyways, I am back down in my original zone, or in other words the zone with 苗栗 (Miaoli). I am now serving about a 30 minute train ride north of 苗栗 (Miaoli) in 香山 (Xiangshan) with Elder Huang (黃長老),

who is from 台南 (Tainan). So, I am pretty sure you can guess from the name, I get the opportunity to serve with a local which I have been hoping for since the start of my mission, and which is a pretty rare opportunity too. There are only nine Taiwanese Elders in the mission, so it is a pretty cool opportunity. As for the ward, it is pretty small. There are about 60 actives from what I understand and about 400 members on the ward list, so there is plenty of work to be done, but it really feels like the ward is super supportive, so I am super excited to be serving here.

As for kind of a bigger experience from the week, I feel like I am in training again, in the aspect of understanding what is going on. On Saturday night, we went to go visit a part member family and the minute we step through the door, I started 听不懂 (not able to understand what we being said) everything. Explaining one of the benefits of having a local companion is that they can really help your language get better, on the other had they also know the local dialects, like Taiwanese. Because some of the older people never learned Chinese as a kid or have since forgotten it, they have to use Taiwanese to communicate, which is a language that I completely 
听不懂 (not able to understand what we being said). So, to say the least, it was a very interested experience of my companion having to translate Taiwanese to Chinese and then I had to translate it to English so that I could understand. So it really was a pretty funny lesson.

Well, that was pretty much the week in short terms. Thanks for all the emails and prayers! Have a great week!

我愛妳們,

Love you,

柯長老

Elder Okeson