And a Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone! 

This week I had an experience that I've never had before as a missionary: Sister Wu and I crashed a wedding! The bride and groom live in Beitun, a nearby town, and we'd met the groom for about 5 minutes a few weeks ago when he and his family came to check out our chapel and see if they could hold the wedding there. Then, the night before we got a text from the Beitun missionaries saying they couldn't go, and their bishop wanted to know if we could attend instead. After some discussion, Sister Wu and I made the decision that no, we would not be able to attend a wedding of two people we'd never met. We called to tell the bishop our decision, but the picture he painted was incredibly tempting. He said that the bride and groom were recent converts, so there would be very few members and a ton of nonmembers who'd never heard of the gospel before, and had nowhere to run from us because they were expected to attend the wedding. After more discussion and messaging the bride to make sure she was cool with two missionaries she'd never met crashing her wedding to share the gospel, Sister Wu and I decided to attend. 

We arrived at the church all fired up to fulfill our missionary purpose and share the gospel with everyone there. When we got there however, we discovered that there was assigned seating. After some deliberation, the ushers put us at a table with a big group of church members from Japan. Who all had lovely English. So instead of sharing the gospel we just straight up attended the wedding and chatted with the Japanese members for an hour and a half.

 

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In the end though, it turned out that our special missionary services were needed, because we were the only ones at the church with keys, so we got to stay until everyone left so we could lock up. Thankfully it was a pretty lowkey reception, so we made it home by 10 pm. The bride stopped to take a picture with us on the way out the door: 

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Since we attended the entire wedding, we got to learn a lot about the Bride and Groom's story, which is adorable. They'd been dating for a while when they both met the missionaries. They took the lessons and got baptized together. Now, a year later, they were able to be sealed in the Taibei temple for time and all eternity. One of the sisters who taught them came back for the wedding. It was so cool to see the fruits of the work we're doing. Missionary work isn't just about baptisms. It's about helping people enjoy the wonderful blessings of eternity that Heavenly Father offers us. 

And now it's the new year! Last night Sister Wu and I went to bed at 10:30 as usual, but we woke up again at 11:50 to celebrate the new year. We went up to the roof of our apartment building to look at the city lights, and were surprised with about 20 different firework shows going off at 12 am. Our apartment building's the tallest thing in our area, so we had a wonderful view.  

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This morning when we woke up we went back to the roof to watch the first sunrise of the year. The sun had technically already risen, but there was a large, low hanging bank of clouds in the way, so we were able to watch it as it actually became visible. It was a gorgeous way to start the new year!

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I hope you all have a wonderful week this week! Happy New Year!

Lots of Love,

Sister Hull

Merry Christmas!

Hi Everyone!

It's Christmas! Wow. It feels like it came way to fast. I'm not quite ready for December to be over yet. It's been a wonderful month, and a great chance to focus even more on the center of our message: Jesus Christ. 

Yesterday I achieved an important goal: I finished Jesus the Christ. Jesus the Christ is an amazing book that uses the Bible, Book of Mormon, and modern revelation to go through the life of Christ, from the preexistence, through his earthly ministry, and into prophecies about his Second Coming. It's also 800 pages. I started it in my first month or two in Taiwan, and have made slow, steady progress ever since. It's been an incredible experience to read in such depth about our Savior, especially this month as we've been preparing for Christmas.

 As I've read, and then gone out to attempt to serve as He served, I've gained so much love for Christ. As I've been training Sister Wu, I've been slapped in the face with my imperfections again and again. I've had to learn to really pray, and to rely on the Lord. Christ has become my example, my guide, and my teacher. Studying his life has given me an even greater appreciation for how truly amazing he is, and how central to our lives, whether or not we recognize it.

Toward the end of Jesus the Christ, the author, Talmage, quotes D&C 76:22-24: And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives!
23 For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father—
24 That by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God.

I love this exuberant and certain testimony of Jesus Christ. I'm so grateful for this chance to celebrate His birth and life this Christmas. I hope you all have an amazing Christmas! Love you!

Love,

Sister Hull

Pic: We went to a Carrefour's (Sort of like Fred Meyer's) in Fengjia this week to sing carols. We were told everything had been set up and they were expecting us, but when we got there they had no idea who we were or what we were doing. Finally they just kinda stuck us in the basement and let us sing. We had fun though! This Carrefour employee lady took pictures of us the whole time, so when we finished we asked if she could send them to us. I don't know why they're so blurry.

This is not the Lego movie

Hi Everyone!

I saw this sticker at a 7-11 the other day, and it made me laugh:

Taiwan puts really funny English sayings on random things. My favorite so far: there was an adorable dress in a children's clothes shop with two words- Cheese Penguin.

​Life has been pretty good this week! We've been busy with Light the World and getting ready for Christmas. Monday we set up with the Du family. They planned the activity, and we just showed up. The activity turned out to be a fulfillment of my fondest dreams: we made green onion pancakes and gave them to their neighbors. So now I officially have a real, true taiwanese recipe. Green Onion pancakes are just about my favorite food in the world, so it's even more exciting. Ask me if you want the recipe.

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On Wednesday, we went and picked up trash with our investigator, Zou Jiemei, and her adorable daughter 

​Finally, on Saturday we went with the ward to carol at a nursing home near our church. It was really fun to spend time serving with several members in our ward. Most of the people in the nursing home only spoke Taiwanese, so I wasn't able to do much more than shake hands and smile, but it was still a really special experience. 

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Today is transfers (that happened way too fast!), and after 4 months of serving together, we said goodbye to Elder Councill. Our new Zone Leader is our previous District Leader, Elder Johnson. In our district, we're the only companionship that hasn't changed. It'll be fun to meet more missionaries and learn together this upcoming transfer!

Love you all!

Sister Hull

Taiwan might actually be in the arctic

Hi everyone!

Ok so this week it got actually cold for the first time. The last few weeks it's been chilly in the evenings, but this week it was truly, legitimately cold. Actually, it was only in the 50s, but Taiwan is extremely humid, and it was raining, so it felt like it was getting close to absolute zero. Thankfully, our wonderful Relief Society President has given us two massive boxes of Swiss Miss, so we're all set for the winter. Life is good.

The most exciting news of the week: Our mission got smart phones! Those of you who know me know that I'm not the biggest fan of technology, so this is the first smart phone I've had, ever. Needless to say, it's an adjustment. It's also an amazing blessing. We've only had the phones for about 3 days, but we're already learning so many more ways to connect with investigators and ward members. I love how our church is constantly looking for new ways to improve and progress Heavenly Father's work. We don't just stick with what we've done before; we're always trying to make things better. 

Ok buckle down, because the rest of this email is going to be Light the World pictures. It's been a jam-packed week!

Monday invited us to meet our neighbors. We introduced one of our members who lives near us, Tina, to our absolutely favorite neighbors, the Lin family. The Lin family is absolutely amazing. They live on a corner near our apartment and always wave at us when we leave in the morning. Sometimes they even give us food. They told us they know we probably miss our families, so they want to take care of us so we're not too homesick.

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Wednesday we went to the community center again and taught all the old people the Chicken Dance and played Bingo with them. They all really love to dance! After the part of the activity that we led, we joined them in more dancing. Please enjoy the video at the bottom of the Elders

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Sunday was jam-packed. The theme was sharing scriptures, so we invited a family in our ward to share their favorite scripture on Social media: 

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We also shared a lot of scriptures with our semi-investigator, Maybe Later. Maybe Later is a former investigator from around June. He's not ready to start taking the lessons again, but he's been reading the scriptures and praying almost every day since June, so he likes to meet every now and then to discuss what he's been reading and ask questions. Our friend Jenalyn helped answer his questions. This made for a very interesting lesson, as Jenalyn doesn't speak Chinese, Sister Wu doesn't speak English, Maybe Later only kind of speaks English, and I only kind of speak Chinese. The Spirit was definitely there in the meeting though, because we miraculously managed to all understand each other. The gift of tongues is real!

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I could keep going, but I think that's enough for this week. Hope you all have a wonderful week this week! Go Light the World!

Love,

Sister Hull

Taiwan might actually be in the arctic

Hi everyone!

Ok so this week it got actually cold for the first time. The last few weeks it's been chilly in the evenings, but this week it was truly, legitimately cold. Actually, it was only in the 50s, but Taiwan is extremely humid, and it was raining, so it felt like it was getting close to absolute zero. Thankfully, our wonderful Relief Society President has given us two massive boxes of Swiss Miss, so we're all set for the winter. Life is good.

The most exciting news of the week: Our mission got smart phones! Those of you who know me know that I'm not the biggest fan of technology, so this is the first smart phone I've had, ever. Needless to say, it's an adjustment. It's also an amazing blessing. We've only had the phones for about 3 days, but we're already learning so many more ways to connect with investigators and ward members. I love how our church is constantly looking for new ways to improve and progress Heavenly Father's work. We don't just stick with what we've done before; we're always trying to make things better. 

Ok buckle down, because the rest of this email is going to be Light the World pictures. It's been a jam-packed week!

Monday invited us to meet our neighbors. We introduced one of our members who lives near us, Tina, to our absolutely favorite neighbors, the Lin family. The Lin family is absolutely amazing. They live on a corner near our apartment and always wave at us when we leave in the morning. Sometimes they even give us food. They told us they know we probably miss our families, so they want to take care of us so we're not too homesick.

​

Wednesday we went to the community center again and taught all the old people the Chicken Dance and played Bingo with them. They all really love to dance! After the part of the activity that we led, we joined them in more dancing. Please enjoy the video at the bottom of the Elders

​

Sunday was jam-packed. The theme was sharing scriptures, so we invited a family in our ward to share their favorite scripture on Social media: 

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We also shared a lot of scriptures with our semi-investigator, Maybe Later. Maybe Later is a former investigator from around June. He's not ready to start taking the lessons again, but he's been reading the scriptures and praying almost every day since June, so he likes to meet every now and then to discuss what he's been reading and ask questions. Our friend Jenalyn helped answer his questions. This made for a very interesting lesson, as Jenalyn doesn't speak Chinese, Sister Wu doesn't speak English, Maybe Later only kind of speaks English, and I only kind of speak Chinese. The Spirit was definitely there in the meeting though, because we miraculously managed to all understand each other. The gift of tongues is real!

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I could keep going, but I think that's enough for this week. Hope you all have a wonderful week this week! Go Light the World!

Love,

Sister Hull

News video & article - female missionaries pick up dead kitten

This is the text from the website, translated using Google Translate.

https://tw.appledaily.com/new/realtime/20171126/1247929/#

Kitten was killed by no one 

female missionary pick up the corpse

[video]

At about 6 pm on the 24th, there was a traffic accident on the streets of the Taoyuan district, where a cat was killed by a car. The traffic between the car and the vehicle was either darkened or blown away, until a woman riding a motorcycle and two female missionaries riding a bicycle After three people disregard the danger of vehicle traffic, they crouched down the road and took the cat corpses. When the people saw the process and took the film, they provided the "Apple" with the film and said: "Super caring." 

In the movie, on the Xing Road in Daya District, two Chinese and foreign female missionaries crouched on the road to deal with the body of a cat despite the danger of getting in the car. One of them stood by and commanded the vehicle to avoid accidents. Finally, one female missionary , Straight cloth with the cat wrapped up, then put on the bicycle bag to take away. Lin said: "They are not touched by passers-by and they are quite compassionate and very touching. 

Environmental Protection Agency EPA environmental inspection team is Wenlong Luo said that the public found the body of animals on the road, you can immediately call the 1999 public green case report, the staff on duty will be invited to the cleaning team to deal with the area, if the public have to clean up, you can also report a clean The team arrived at the scene to take away the remains of animals. (Reported by Chen Shuihe / Taichung)

Foreign female missionaries step by step the body of the cat wrapped in a bicycle bag to leave. Readers provide

Three women cleaned the dead kitten in the street. Readers provide

This is the text of the original website:

https://tw.appledaily.com/new/realtime/20171126/1247929/#

小貓遭路殺沒人理　女傳教士徒手撿屍

[video]

24日晚間6時許，大雅區車水馬龍馬路上，有一隻遭車輛撞斃小貓陳屍街頭，往來車輛不是沒看見就是閃避通過，直到1名騎機車女子，及2名騎腳踏車外國女傳教士經過，3人不顧車輛往來危險，蹲在路上將貓屍包裹帶走，路過民眾看見把過程拍下後，將影片提供《蘋果》爆料大讚說：「超有愛心。」

影片中大雅區建興路上，本國女子與外國女傳教士，2人不顧車來車往危險蹲在馬路中處理小貓屍體，1人站在一旁指揮車輛避免意外發生，最後其中1名女傳教士，直用布將貓屍包裹起來，接著放在腳踏車包包內帶走。林姓民眾說：「她們讓貓死後不被用路人碾壓，相當有愛心也讓人非常感動。」

環保局環境稽查大隊技正羅文龍說，民眾發現路中有動物屍體，可立刻撥打1999市民專線報案，值班人員受理後會請該區清潔隊前往處理，民眾如已先行清理，也可以報案請清潔隊到場收走動物遺體。（陳世河／台中報導）

外國女傳教士用步將貓屍體包裹放進腳踏車上包包後離去。讀者提供

三名女子在馬路中清理遭撞斃的小貓屍體。讀者提供

We're famous

Hi everyone!

Ok so funny story, remember the cat incident from last week? We got a call from the Tanzi sisters earlier in the week asking if we'd helped a cat recently. Turns out that someone filmed us, and we were on the news. Here's the link:

https://tw.appledaily.com/new/realtime/20171126/1247929/#

So yeah, we're pretty much famous now in Taiwan. 

In other news, the big event this week has been the start of the Light the World campaign. Happy December! Light the World is a worldwide Christmas event for our church that goes from December 1 to Christmas. Each day there's a small video, and a scripture. The goal is to use the scripture to think of a small act of service we can do that day. Here's the link to the webpage: www.mormon.org/

Sister Wu and I decided to invite members of our ward to pick one day to do the service with us. So far it's been really fun! We've been inviting everyone we can think of- ward members, investigators, random people we meet on the street. It turns out everyone's interested in spending an hour or so to do a little act of service. So far we've given out oranges and water bottles, and we've visited the home of a very adorable ama who lives near us. 

That last one was an accident. We were knocking on doors last night trying to share the gospel, and the first door we knocked on was this ama. She opened the door and invited us right in before we even got a chance to say who we were. She explained that she was Buddhist and didn't really have interest, then proceeded to talk for the next half hour about her life, kids, and youth. She spoke mainly Taiwanese, so I couldn't really understand, but she really connected with Sister Wu. Despite the fact that we didn't get to share the gospel very much with her, she seemed really happy to see us, so it felt good to lift her and share our time with her.

One final event of the week- yesterday our ward's single Filipina member, Jenalyn decided she wanted to bear her testimony during fast and testimony meeting. She was talking about it with one of our members, Bella, whose English and Chinese are both quite good, so I assumed Bella would help her translate. When Jenalyn got up though, she got up alone, walked to the stand, and started bearing her testimony in English. The first counselor in the bishopric pointed at me, and motioned for me to come translate. So I did. It was absolutely terrifying. She gave a very beautiful testimony, and then I tried to at least communicate the main ideas. At the very least, I think my translation was comprehensible. The gift of tongues is so real.

Hope you all have a wonderful week! Go light the world!

Love,

Sister Hull

Pics:

1: The Light the World day 1 scripture was 'freely ye have recieved, freely give'. Recently people have given us a ridiculous amount of oranges, so we gave them all away to a bunch of kids at a cram school. Sister Lin came with us.

2: Day 2 was 'I was thirsty and ye gave me drink', so we passed out water bottles at Daya park. Sister Huang came with us, and brought her adorable 2 year old grandson.

3: The adorable 2 year old grandson. 

 


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Miracles upon miracles

Hi Everyone!

Ok wow it's been an awesome week! First off- the most exciting news: Zhou Jiemei has a baptismal goal! Zhou Jiemei is the woman who came to our Plan of Salvation activity last week and then to church. We met with her twice this week. The first time we met, she had a lot of questions about things she'd heard at church. One of the things she asked about was temples. We explained to her that temples are our most sacred buildings. In them, we can be sealed to our families for this life and for eternity. We also do ordinances such as baptism in behalf of our deceased ancestors so they can have the same blessings that we have. She was very interested in learning more. I love seeing how much her family really is the center of her lives. The second time we met with her, we taught her about how we got the Book of Mormon, then asked her if she would be willing to follow the example Jesus Christ gave us and get baptized. She agreed without hesitation. When we asked if we could set a date for her to work towards, she not only set a date, she set a time! Then she started asking all sorts of questions about when her daughter could get baptized, and if her husband could baptize her, and more about the temple. It's really cool to see how she understands that baptism is just the start of our eternal journey back to Heavenly Father.

This week we also started service at a local Senior Community Center. It was really fun! We helped pour tea and serve rice and noodles for the old people. We also joined them in a form of exercise where we do interpretive dancing to Chinese songs. Since I can't really understand anything the songs are saying, I had to do a lot of guessing on the different dance moves. The oldest member of our ward, Huang Beibei, was there. He's the coolest old guy I've ever seen. He's 92, and has a full head of white hair. He often wears aviator sunglasses. When he was young, he played basketball in China. He said hi when we were there, and told us to eat more noodles.

We had a rather traumatic incident on Friday. It was late, we'd just visited a park, and we were biking back to our apartment, when we saw a woman who had parked her scooter in the middle of the road. We stopped to see what was going on, and found a cat that had just been hit by a car, lying dead in the middle of the road. We weren't sure what to do, but we knew we didn't want to leave it there, so with the combined genius of three confused young people, we decided the best course of action would be to bury the cat in the nearby park. We put the cat in a bag, and rode back to the park, where we proceeded to find a bit of dirt and start digging. The dirt was ridiculously hard, and all we had were a couple of rocks to scrape with, so it was very slow going. Neither Sister Wu and I nor the woman we had met five minutes before stopped to question the absurdity of digging a hole in a public park in the dark with a stranger in order to bury a dead cat. After about a half hour of futile rock pounding, we realized we weren't getting anywhere, and called a member nearby to ask if she had a shovel. She did, and brought it over. At first she started to help us, but then her common sense prevailed, and she explained that burying a cat in a public park was probably not the best course of action, as it would stink and get dug up by dogs and make a mess. She offered to take the cat and dispose of it. We agreed, though we were rather reluctant seeing as we'd spent a very long time digging the hole. 

After the member left, we spent a bit of time talking to the woman we'd been digging a hole with. She had just gotten married, and gave us some marriage advice that basically boiled down to don't get married because when you're dating it's just about you and your boyfriend, but when you get married it's about two families coming together and then you have to deal with in-laws. We thanked her for the advice, and parted as unlikely friends.

That's about it for today! Hope everyone has a wonderful week!
Love, 

Sister Hull

Pics:

1-2: For P-day the Daya and Tanzi missionaries celebrated thanksgiving with a ridiculous amount of amazing Indian food at this hole in the wall restaurant in Fengjia. It was just about the best day of my life. There was so. much. naan. We tried to get a picture outside the restaurant, but this is the best one we got.

3: Sister Wu dancing with the old people at the community center.

4: Our amazing relief society president, Huang Jiemei, took us and the elders out for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. Our ward takes such good care of us!

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Hey Everyone!

Hi Everyone!

Miracles are happening in Daya, and it's fun to see them start forming. This week's highlight was our ward's Plan of Salvation activity. The goal of the activity was to help the ward members invite their friends to come and learn about the church. We started with a potluck dinner. After dinner, we had everyone go down to a room set up to look like the inside of an airplane. We showed a video of the airplane taking off, then crashing. Then two guys dressed in white came in and explained that they were angels and everyone had died in the crash. They then proceeded to give them a tour of what happens to us after death. 

I realize that this sounds extremely morbid. In reality, the crash video was cheesy, and two of the goofiest guys in our ward- the Ward Mission Leader and the Young Men's President- were the angels, so it was pretty lighthearted. There were also masses of screaming children with very short attention spans.  On the tour, the angels took the audience through different rooms  representing the spirit world, resurrection and judgement, and the three kingdoms of glory. In each room we had one or two ward members pretending to be an inhabitant of that area. They introduced what each place was like, and why they were there. We ended the tour in the Chapel, which was supposed to represent the Celestial Kingdom. A member of the ward bore his testimony of the Plan of Salvation, and we sang 'I Am a Child of God' and 'Families can be Together Forever'. It was a really cool way to end the night. 

I was a little unsure of how the activity went over with the ward, mainly because of the screaming children, but on Sunday I got my answer. They liked it so much that they want to do it again as a part of our Christmas celebration with the Tanzi wards. Which means we get to do this all again.... yayyy... The activity was a lot of fun, but it was also a crazy amount of work to get it all together. 

We had a cool little miracle come out of the activity. A few days before, we were contacting at the park, and I had a thought to invite a lady sitting near the playground to come to the activity. We chatted for a few minutes, gave her a flier, and left. Miracle number one: she showed up, and brought her 3 year old daughter! One of our amazing members sat next to her the whole time, chatted with her, and made her feel welcome. She said she really has interest in finding a place for her daughter to make good friends and stuff, so we invited her to church the next day. Miracle number two: She showed up to church, and stayed the whole three hours. I think she really enjoyed it, despite a rather interesting Sunday School lesson in which our teacher went on for an hour about how food was scarce in Taiwan during World War 2, and also gave us incorrect information about the health benefits of fasting. At the end of church, we had miracle number 3: She set up to meet with us on Wednesday! She seems super interested in the church, so we're really excited to share all the amazing blessings of the gospel with her. It's amazing to see how Heavenly Father led us to her. 

Hope you all have an amazing week! 

Love, 

Sister Hull

Pics: 

1. Us preparing for the activity. We made signs for each room, and the Elders printed out scriptures to go with the signs. It turns out that Sister Wu is amazing and can write in block characters.

2. We celebrated Sister Wu's first week in Daya with ice cream. It's only been a week and a half, but I can already tell we're gonna be a wonderful companionship! Sister Wu's awesome! Funny and lighthearted and dedicated to the work.

3. I hit an important milestone this week: I tried stinky tofu. After all the things I've heard about it, I was more than a little nervous, but it's actually not too bad. I ate four of the five pieces happily, though by the fifth one the flavor was a little overbearing. 

4. Unfortunately, I took no pictures of the actual Plan of Salvation activity. Here are pictures of the flier we handed out, as well as the plan ticket everyone got as they entered the plane. The QR code links to the church's website, and on the back is a picture of the Plan of Salvation, complete with scriptures. Both flier and ticket were designed by our extremely talented members.

Meet Sister Wu!

Hi Everyone!

This week has been a crazy one full of different emotions. On Monday, I dropped Sister Smith off at the Mission Home. She moved down to Zhang Hua, which is right below Taizhong.

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We also said goodbye to Elder Moh, who has finished his mission and was going home. It was weird and a little sad to say goodbye to half our area. Sister Smith was a great trainer. She made sure I had everything I needed to survive in Taiwan. Her jokes and sarcastic comments kept me from getting too down when things got difficult. Elder Moh, as Sister Smith said, is 'sunshine and all good things personified'. He was always laughing, which made us all laugh too. It's sad that the Taiwan Taizhong mission no longer has him as a missionary.

For the next few days, I stayed with the Sister Training Leaders in Tanzi while I waited for the new trainees to arrive. It was a weird few days. I was in a sort of limbo- no area, no companion, lots of stress to come but nothing to really stress about in the moment. The Trainees arrived at the mission home Tuesday night, had instruction and stuff Wednesday, and then we picked them up on Thursday. On Wednesday they ask some of the closer Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders to come take the missionaries out for an hour to go contacting for the very first time. Since I was with the Sister Training Leaders, I got to tag along. I ended up being paired with the two Taiwanese sisters in the group. We had a good time walking around and talking to everyone.

The next day we went back to the mission home to pick up my new companion. There's a Chinese tradition of putting money and small gifts in a red envelope for the New Year and for special occasions like weddings. The Tehs had a red envelope for each trainee, and they had them come up one by one to open the envelope and find out who their trainer would be. I think that was the most stressful five minutes of my life. After a long time of waiting, my new companion is.... Sister Wu! Here's a picture:


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Sister Wu is from Tao Yuan, which is just below Taipei. She's already an amazing missionary- fearless and enthusiastic. I've only known her for four days, but I can tell we're going to be a great companionship. I'll keep you all updated on the adventures and miracles to come!

Love you all!

Sister Hull

The Good, the Bad, and the Absolutely Insane

Important note: If you're pressed for time, skip to the absolutely insane bit. It's important.

If you're not pressed for time, buckle up because it's been an absolutely insane week.

First, The Good: Halloween! Halloween was completely amazing. Sister Smith and I planned really lowkey costumes that we'd be able to wear all day. Here's a picture, see if you can guess who we are:

​Actually it turns out I don't have any full pictures of us. Just this one. Give up? I'm Alice in Wonderland and Sister Smith is Kiki from Kiki's delivery service. We didn't look much different than usual, but on the inside we knew.

The Tanzi missionaries threw a Halloween party for their wards, and invited our ward too. Other than Sister Smith and I, only one member of our ward came. It was super fun though! There was bobbing for apples and pumpkin bowling, and cookies, and even pumpkin pie!

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One of the Tanzi elders, Elder Petersen, taught the members how to play the game Ninja. We had a wonderful time playing it for most of the party. It turns out Sister Smith is really good at it!

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All in all, it was an amazing first Halloween in Taiwan! Which is impressive seeing as Taiwan doesn't really celebrate Halloween.

Next up, The Bad. We have a less active member, Lin Jiemei that we meet with every now and then to read scriptures with. We were scheduled to meet this weekend, but a few days before she called and asked if we could meet the next morning instead. We agreed, naively thinking she was rescheduling our original appointment. When we got to the church, there was another member there that she'd also invited to the appointment. Then Lin Jiemei rolled up on a scooter piled high with camera equipment. She's a professional photographer, so we figured that she just had a job after this. It wasn't until she started unloading, and told us to go find a whiteboard, that we realized we'd been tricked into helping with a photoshoot.

At first it wasn't too bad. The other member, Xiu Ru, was the model, and Sister Smith and I just held flashes and reflectors at weird angles while Lin Jiemei tried to get the effect she wanted. It was quite the production: There were christmas lights and everything. We figured we were getting in some good service hours, and building member relations. Then, Lin Jiemei told me to go stand in the picture with Xiu Ru. To get the right effect, Xiu Ru and I had to stand very close. By the time Lin Jiemei was satisfied, Xiu Ru and I had our arms around each other, and were staring at each other's eyes. Sister Smith was dying of laughter. Karma hit though, and Xiu Ru had to leave, so Sister Smith got to take her place. Lin Jiemei also added a parasol. And that's how we got tricked into a gay photoshoot. I don't think that was Lin Jiemei's intention, she just needed us close to get the right flash effect, and we needed to be looking at each other to get the flash on our eyelashes. Nevertheless, it was extremely awkward. We kinda lost it towards the end.

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...Not our proudest moment.

Ok now, finally, The Absolutely Insane (bom bom bom). Transfers are today, and I'm finally done with training! (that's not the insane bit). On Saturday, we got out of a lesson, and saw that we'd missed a call from President Teh. That's always a scary thing, so we rushed to the nearest 7-11 to return the call. The line was busy. We sat at a table in the 7, nervously staring at the phone. We figured the call was probably for Sister Smith, and she'd be asked to be a Sister Training Leader for her last transfer. President called back, and Sister Smith answered. She talked to him for a bit, then passed the phone to me. Long story short, I'm training. I'm trying really hard to be honored and excited for this opportunity, but at the moment I mainly feel panic. Hopefully by the time I meet my trainee, I'll be mainly excited. These next few weeks will be an adventure. I'm still pretty new, but I know how to buy zhuabings and baozis, and I can say 'do you want to fight?' in Taiwanese, so we'll probably survive. Stay tuned, next week I'll know who my companion is!

Have an amazing week!

Love,

Sister Hull

 

Guard your toothbrushes

Hi everyone!

This week has been jam packed with stuff and I'm going to tell you about a bunch of it, but first, I need to make a public service announcement. Fun Fact: About a month ago, Elder Councill informed us that cockroaches are so resilient, they can survive on nothing but the residue on your toothbrush for a week. Another Fun Fact: This was not just an amusing and hypothetical statement on how resilient cockroaches are. Thursday night I got home to discover a massive cockroach chilling on my toothbrush. What followed was a shocked scream and a lot of indignant yelling (me) and some rather unhelpful suggestions to hit it (Sister Smith). I managed to herd it off my toothbrush and into a corner, and I was steeling myself emotionally to squish it, when it darted down a hole in the base of my toilet that I didn't know existed. Thus, the saga of horror continues. I sanitized my toothbrush thoroughly, and we bought raid today. Be aware, cockroaches like toothbrushes.

On Saturday, we had an experience that made the few cockroaches we've encountered in our apartment pale in comparison. We cleaned out a hoarder's house. When the Relief Society President told us earlier in the week that it was incredibly disgusting and to wear long protective clothing, we figured she might be overreacting a little. When we actually arrived at the house, we still thought it wasn't that bad, and were a little amused by the gloves, face masks, and long protective poncho dress things the ward had brought. It wasn't until one of the relief society members went in without a poncho dress, then came running back out and rushed to put one on that we started to realize just what we'd gotten ourselves into. I won't go into too much detail, but I will say that there were several bones, broken glass, millipedes, cockroaches, and dog poop unearthed from the mounds of dirt encrusted trash. We had to leave early, but we heard that in the three hours they worked, they didn't even manage to clean out the first floor. It was a good experience to work with the ward members though, and it was fun to all work together while looking like ridiculous discount  surgeons. 

On a slightly more cheerful note, we had Stake Conference yesterday, and it was awesome. President and Sister Teh attended, and spoke in English with a translator, so I even understood some of it! They gave really good talks, both talking about the importance of encouraging youth to serve missions. Sister Teh said her daughter recently emailed, saying 'you're the best mom. I never understood why you always insisted on scripture study and made the gospel the center of our family's life. Now I understand.' President Teh talked about how when parents send their kids on missions, they are putting them in the Lord's hands. This is the best thing they can do, because the Lord knows the kids even better than their parents do. He will use the time on the mission to mold them and start them on the road to reaching their limitless potential. I can really attest to what President and Sister Teh said. I've not been out for very long yet, but already my testimony has grown and stretched a ton. I have to rely on the Lord every single day if I want to do His work. My relationship with Him, and my understanding of the Atonement have grown so much in the last couple of months. There's so much joy and hope to be had from following Christ, and it's an incredible privilege to discover it and share it with others. 

That's all I have time for this week! Hope everyone has an amazing Halloween! Please send lots and lots of halloween pics!

Lots of love,

Sister Hull

Pics:

1. Us and the Elders in our cleaning gear. We all looked very terrifying, but we were extremely grateful for the protection.

2. Taiwan doesn't want to deal with extra costs because of copyright stuff, so you can only find sad discount superhero costumes. Halloween doesn't really have the same meaning here...

3. I was rather excited the other day to find a box of chocolate covered almonds for a reasonable price. Most chocolate here is either gross or insanely expensive. I was a little worried that the almonds would be covered in gross fake chocolate or something. Upon opening the box, I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were in fact, quite decent chocolate covered almonds. They were also individually wrapped. There were eight almonds in the entire box, each with its nice shiny gold cover.

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Cinderella and the Three Little Pigs

Hi Everyone! 

Ok so fun fact it turns out Taiwan is not a tropical island. Sister Smith informs me that is in fact subtropical, which basically means it can actually get kinda cold in the winter. This week we actually got some fall weather- it was as bright and sunny as usual, but it was super windy, and we had to put on sweaters in the evening. We saw many Taiwanese people in full winter coats, and they were very concerned that we would freeze in our light clothing. While wind and bikes and skirts have been an adventure, it's been absolutely amazing weather. We've done a lot of walking though, because as skilled as we've become at catching our skirts before they actually fly up, it gets really tiring after a while. 

This weekend we had a service project in our ward! Everyone in Taiwan is super self-sufficient, and doesn't like to ask for help, so every service project is a precious and rare opportunity. A sister in our ward was moving, and she needed help cleaning her apartment and moving her stuff out. We showed up on Friday, and she asked us to clean her balcony. It was really gratifying, because there was a lot of sediment that looked really bad and washed up with just a little bit of scrubbing. I felt a bit like Cinderella, with my skirt tied up into pants, scrubbing the floor with a sponge and liberal amounts of baking soda. This sister lived on the fourth floor of her building, across the street from the butcher's shop. In breaks between scrubbing, we watched in morbid fascination as two muscular, tatooed men in black tank tops dismembered whole half pigs on a truck bed below us. It was absolutely captivating. I now know the proper procedure for cutting a pig's head in half. In three strokes of a cleaver. It was so cool. 

This week, I also turned 20, and guys, I love my area so much! Elder Council brought Blueberry Cheesecake to our District Meeting, Elder Provard looked up how to say 'happy birthright day' in Chinese (?), and Elder Moh secretly texted the sisters in our ward and told them it was my birthday. From the ward I got a plethora of calls and texts, and the family we visited that night gave us cake and sang happy birthday, accompanied by their small son on a ukulele. This week I've learned that miracles are most often in the form of other people. The little things each of those people did to reach out to me probably seemed super small to them, but to me they were expressions of love and kindness that made my first birthday in a foreign country seem a little less foreign. 

This week I came across D&C 81:5: Wherefore, be faithful; stand in the office which I have appointed unto you; succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees.

I love the imagery in this scripture, because it's so human. Each of us are asked to simply love, help and strengthen one another. I've learned that even the smallest gestures of love can make a world of difference in someone else's life. 

Hope you all have an amazing week!

Sister Hull

Pics:

1. In English class we asked our students who their favorite superhero is. Tom said, "moneyman. He just throws money at problems. Like Trump." Another student, Daniel contributed moneyman's face to this drawing. 

2. Daniel had two favorite superheroes: Wonder Woman and his wife. His wife gave birth to triplets 9 months ago, so we decided they're basically the same person and drew his wife as Wonder Woman.

3. We got a little lost the other day trying to find a FamilyMart that didn't exist, and found the COOLEST PART OF OUR AREA. It's a massive science park with this mysterious large domed building next to it. The sign says it's an environmental resource center. We definitely need to go back and investigate.

 

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This has been a rather slow week. Tuesday was 10/10, which is a holiday here, so everyone got a four-day weekend and left Daya. Then it rained the second half of the week. Taiwanese people fear the rain. They all drive scooters, so their fear is understandable. I don't particularly enjoy being soaking wet either.  However, it also meant that no one ventured out of their house for three days, so we spent the week wandering through a strange ghost town. Even the 7-11s were empty!

I've spent a large portion of the week panicking over language learning. In training, we have a language study plan called phase one where we have to learn all the language necessary to teach the missionary lessons. Phase one is a good thing, but it's also evil and everyone hates it because the words we learn are pulled straight from the Preach My Gospel Chinese translation, and a large quantity are really weird, or only really used in written language. After we learn the words for each lesson, we are tested by our trainers, then we have to teach the lesson to our District Leader. It's slightly stressful. I'm almost done, but the lesson I'm currently working on is the commandments, which has an insane amount of vocab. I'm pretty sure I can say abundant about 4 different ways now. I know I'll be glad to have studied all this when I'm done, but right now it's awful. 

The area we share a chapel with, Tanzi, had a baptism yesterday. It was the bishop's daughter's boyfriend. Tanzi is cool, because church starts at 1:30, so whenever they have a baptism, they hold it right before sacrament and pretty much the whole ward attends. It's really neat to see the whole ward rally around the new member that way, and welcome them in. 

Happiest news of the week- we found a legit zhua bing stand on a road near the church! Zhua bing translates to 'green onion pancake', but that doesn't do it nearly enough justice. Instead of a thick, spongey consistency, zhua bings are made of a flakey, fluffy pastry that is drenched in oil and cooked to crispy amazingness on a grill. Then the lady adds a bunch of sauce, an egg, bacon, and cheese, and wraps it up into an incredible, greasy, savory sandwich. Life is good. 

That's about all that's happened this week. Hope you all have an amazing day today!

Love,

Sister Hull

Pics:

1: I discovered this week that if you lean off our 11th story balcony and crane your neck weird, we have a gorgeous view out the back of our apartment. Taiwan really is an amazingly beautiful country.

2: When Sister Smith and I aren't eating out, we survive mainly off of this Indonesian brand of ramen that's actually seriously incredible. We've eaten it so much, I felt like it deserved mention.

3: For P-day, we convinced the elders to do face masks with us while we watched the church's addiction recovery videos. They're really quite good. The Tanzi elders came up while we were doing this, and asked us which banks we'd robbed today.

4: Rain days mean rain clothes. This poncho was originally purchased for my trip to China in 2014. It has served me well ever since.

5: This is me attempting to study phase one yesterday. On Sundays we have a solid 3.5 hour block of studies with language study at the very end, and it's quite an endurance event to get through.

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