Well, things here in Taiwan are good. A lot of little things happen everyday so I'll try to give you the highlights. Just to put things in reference this is how things usually go on a day to day basis. Wake up 6:30 exercise where we either use the tiny weights in our apartment or go to the nearby track to run. Have breakfast, get ready for the day and then study until 11:30. I know kind of a surprise, the church is doing this new 12 week program that for the first 12 weeks of you being in the mission you do 2 hours of companion study. You do an half an hour of language study which in all honesty never feels like enough. After that we go out on a daily schedule which includes visiting less actives, new converts, investigators and tracting. Taiwan is a little bit on the polluted side and everybody rides scooters so the air is constantly filled with a light haze of exhaust. When you tract at all the stoplights you try to talk to people on scooters. Let me just say this is HARD, yeah really really hard and feels super awkward. For one EVERYBODY knows exactly who you are and as such tries to avoid any form of eye contact ever when you try to shake there hands. Speaking mandarin makes an already kind of nerve racking situation even more nerve racking. Why? because not only is the situation already slightly awkward but your stammering and struggling to speak their language and then when they say something you can't understand it's hard to know what to say or how to respond. Teaching and speaking Mandarin is hard, it kind of feels like running a 100m dash with one leg and your arms cut off. In the MTC you only really learn gospel words so an interaction goes something like this. "Ni hao ma" how are you? "Nin gui xing" what's your name "Wo shi Wang Zhanglao"I'm Elder James "Women you yige hen kuai le de xunxi guanyu Yesu Jidu""Zhege xunxi zhende nenggou bangzhu nide shenghuo he gei nide jiating hen duo de zhufu" We have a message about Jesus Christ, this message can help your life and give your family a lot of blessings. At that point you hand them a pamphlet and the light turns green and they speed off on their little scooter as fast as possible. Anyways, so i'm still working at that. After tracting all day (we ride bikes everywhere) and doing all kinds of other things you come home soaked in sweat and in a thin layer of dirt, and exhaust. Anyways this week had quite a few eventful and cool things that happened along with QUITE a few embarrassing moments. So, this past week we were riding through the Taiwanese countryside on a bright, warm, and humid Taiwanese day, soaked in sweat and riding past all these rice fields and we come to this little town. My companion told me that we were stopping for lunch at his favorite noodle place. So we stop go inside and I ordered a bowl of noodles and they bring out this delicious steaming bowl of super soft delicious noodles with vegetables and so beef. It was just cool, sitting there in a little Taiwanese restaurant in the middle of no where eating a bowl of noodles. So... embarrassing things this week we went to the night market one night to try to tract and I was parking my bike and my companion was talking to these people who owned some kind of food stand and I overheard them say what I thought was "fojiao" (which means buddhist), so me wanting to make some good conversation went over there and asked them what buddhist believe. They just kind of stared and went back to work and my companion explain that they said they sold soy milk. So um....yeah that was pretty embarrassing. Also me and my companion were riding down the street and he slowed down and I clipped the back of his bike and ate the concrete (don't worry i'm fine no scratches or anything) and my pamphlets and tract flew out of my pocket and all over the place. Oh yes and the best one, So we're having dinner with a recent convert Brother Joe and his family, he is a super nice 19 year old who joined the church a year ago and wants to go on a mission but his parents are not members and don't really want him to go. So he wanted us to come over and talk to his mom about why we chose to go on missions. So, we go over and it's been a long day and i'm already kind of sweaty. So, we go into their small and dark kitchen which is REALLY toasty and humid and sit down. So we're talking and we have these hot steaming rice bowls in front of us and the steaming is wafting in my face and i'm sweating PROFUSELY, like sweat is dripping off my chin and my nose. His mom just looked visibly uncomfortable as I made small chat and wiped my dripping face off with my tie. Asian people do not sweat, I don't know how, but they never ever sweat. Anyways so that was that. Taiwanese food is delicious, seriously that have the best food ever and everything is fresh (well not everything) and just really good. Some missionaries have digestive problems with it just since I grew up eating rice my whole life i'm pretty use to everything. Taiwanese people are nice but they are unhappy and need the gospel, no one smiles or looks pleasant. So I try to always smile and wave and I think it brightens their day as they usually smile back. A lot of people chew something called Bing Long or Betel nut which is this slight addictive nut from southeast asia. It's basically like there chewing tobacco and is blood red and they spit it everywhere. Taiwanese mentality is different, It's interesting when you ask them what the most important thing in their life is they almost unanimously say making money it's a little sad. They very much have a here and now mentality which makes it difficult for them to find an appeal in the gospel. Oh, this past wednesday we taught English class at the Church. I taught the advanced class which is basically like nothing more than a conversation time. It basically consisted of me talking about the United States. One brother told me maybe 30 times how he likes canadians more than americans. So, I just nodded my head and said "hey that's fine" and smiled it was kind of awkward though. They were surprised when I told them in the US it's rude to tell people they're fat or that they're old. On Sunday I had to get up and introduce myself and bare my testimony. It went fine and I got to meet a lot of very nice members after. Anyways, so that pretty much sums up the week! The mission is challenging and probably the most challenging thing about it is feeling like i'm ineffective because of my language skills. But, that's okay as long as I'm doing my best to communicate and working hard i'm sure the lord will work through me somehow.
Anyways sure love you all!!!
Have a Great week!!!
Elder James (Wang Zhanglao)
No comments:
Post a Comment