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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Conference weekend is the best weekend

Hi everyone!

We've had a whirlwind of a week- zone conference, exchanges, and two blissful days of General Conference. In Taiwan we have to wait for conference to be translated into Chinese, so we watched it a week late. Thankfully, we didn't have to watch conference in Chinese, because I still struggle to understand basic conversations, let alone lengthy discourses on Eternal Salvation. The talks were absolutely amazing. It felt like a giant firehose of spiritual knowledge was turned on, and we were all thoroughly drenched for 10 hours straight. It was awesome. I love this opportunity to hear from the leaders of our church that we sustain as prophets, seers, and revelators. I think it's so amazing that we believe that God still talks to man and directs His church today, and that we can be recipients of new wisdom and insights as we follow the prophet. I especially enjoyed Donald L. Hallstrom's talk about miracles. When I was serving in Logan, a lot of people asked why bad things happen to good people if God is real. I think Elder Hallstrom helps answer this question really well, and remind us of the incredible miracles that all of us are a part of. Here's the link: 

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2017/10/has-the-day-of-miracles-ceased?lang=eng

I invite all of you to listen to this talk if you haven't gotten a chance yet. It's really good!

I had my first good language mixup this week. During training we have a language study program where we study the vocab we need for the missionary lessons, then practice teaching them to our district and zone leaders. Yesterday, I was teaching Elder Moh, and he was pretending to be an investigator. Partway through the lesson, I wanted to reference a previous concern he had. What I meant to say was "Nǐ shàng cì shuō" which means 'last time you said...' but what I actually said was "Nǐ shàng cèsuǒ" which means 'you go to the toilet'. We had to stop the lesson for a bit until Elder Moh and I could regain our composure. Chinese is hard.

This week I want to introduce you to a place that Sister Smith and I spend a lot of time: Daya Park. During the day, this park is just a normal, rather empty park, equipped with basketball courts, a stage, a small playground, and various trees. At night though, the park comes alive with an amazing variety of people. We spend enough time there that we've started to get to know the regulars. I've already told you about the dancing Amas who show up in force every evening to dance to standards such as 'I love Rock and Roll', 'Casablanca', and 'Ni shi wode xiao pingguo'. 

Next to the Amas are the basketball courts, which attract a large number of young men of all nationalities. We usually wave at them, but they're too far into their intense game to really talk to us. We like to practice our minimal amounts of Tagalog on the Filipino players though, so they usually wave at us now. 

Further down on the other side of the Amas is the Pokemon Go group. They are extremely dedicated, and show up almost every night to stand in a silent circle, furiously poking their phones. Among our favorites are Two Phones Guy, who is so into it that he carries two phones, and Sassy Guy, who, after 5 weeks of agressive waving, we finally got him to wave in response. We figure on our 300th visit he might actually talk to us.

 Other favorite people include Violin Guy, Singing Guy, and Grown Up Sokka. Violin Guy is an ancient man who shows up with an erhu and a loudspeaker, then sits on a mat, turns on traditional Chinese music, and plays along on his Erhu. He's got a very wise looking face, and his beard is in a ponytail. Singing guy is also ancient. He wanders the park singing very loudly, and likes to walk up to us and stare at us while singing emphatically. He's not very creepy though, it's more like he just really, really wants us to join in with his song or something. One time a little kid translated for us, and he's singing about rice dumplings. We usually nod along encouragingly for a bit as we walk by. Finally, our absolutely favorite person is Grown Up Sokka. According to Sister Smith, he looks very much like Sokka from the tv show Avatar. He has a long ponytail with the sides of his head shaved, and he always wears an all black outfit of a t-shirt and basketball shorts. He might be the coolest person we've ever seen. He shows up every now and then to play badminton with his daughter. It's really cute to see him hopping around, passing the birdie back and forth, and striking funny poses with each swing to make her laugh. We're more than a little in awe of him, and we're kind of afraid to talk to him because he's just so cool.

The park is probably one of my favorite places so far in Taiwan just because of the sheer variety and vitality of the people there. You never know who you'll meet, and it's always and adventure. 

Anyway, hope you all have an amazing week this week

Lots of love,

Sister Hull

Pics:

1. Wednesday was the Mid-Autumn festival, so we got invited to a barbecue at a ward member's house. Barbecue is something that they take very seriously here, and they can often last from early evening until midnight. I didn't get any good pics of us, but here's a slightly blurry pic of the bishop's kid, Doubi, with a hot dog. He was very proud of his hot dog.

2. Since the missionaries were the only ones watching Conference in English on Saturday, we set up our tv in the kitchen and made cinnamon rolls while we watched. Or more accurately, Elder  Councill and Sister Smith made cinnamon rolls. Here's Elder Councill with the finished product. 

3. Here's an up-close image of the glorious cinnamon rolls. We gave a bunch to the members who were also here for conference, and they were very impressed.

4. On Sunday we made pizza between sessions and it was similarly delicious. Pesto pizza is definitely the best kind of pizza.

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Hi Everyone! 

This week has been a week. Most of it's been long and boring, but there have been a few random moments of extreme bizarre-ness.

The Taiwanese Amas are as inexplicable as ever. We tried going bus contacting the other day, and got stuck in a clump of Amas. The Ama I sat down next to immediately took possession of my arm, and proceeded to stroke it, squeeze my hand, and compare my skin tone to her own for the next ten minutes. Meanwhile the Ama on my other side went on a long spiel about how skin tone doesn't matter as long as we're healthy. Sister Smith and I vigorously agreed, but I still didn't regain possession of my hand until we got off the bus.

This week has been a little rough, because we spent a long time every day contacting without a single person wanting to talk to us, so Saturday we made a goal that by the end of the day we'd find someone who wanted a tour of our church. We worked really hard all day, but by 7:30 pm we still hadn't found a single person who was interested. We were at a park trying to talk to people, and we thought we saw a member at a nearby building, so we decided to go say hi to them. On our way over, we started a conversation with a Filipino guy on a bench next to the basketball court. His friend came over, and we started telling them about our church. They seemed kind of interested, so we invited them to come to our Sunday meetings. Then one of them asked if they could see our church now. Apparently I'm just really bad at noticing things, because I completely missed the fact that they were both fairly drunk, so I said "absolutely!". Sister Smith gave me a death glare, but it was too late at that point, so we grabbed our bikes and all headed over to the church. On the way over, they both picked one of us to ask if we were dating anyone. I said yes and left it at that. Sister Smith specified that she's engaged, and he's studying to be a doctor. Once we got that cleared up though, the tour went very well. A baptism had just ended at the church, so there were a ton of members. As soon as we got in the door, the Stake President hurried over to welcome them in in his broken English. Other members also welcomed them throughout the tour. I'm pretty sure one of the guys was too drunk to really notice, but the other guy really seemed to like the atmosphere, and said he'd try to come back when he has time off work. God really does answer prayers, if sometimes in weird ways.

Hope everyone has an amazing week!

Sister Hull

Pics:

1. Daya has a gorgeous bike path going through it, so for Pday we joined the elders in biking a part of it. This statue is located next to a map of the bike path. The little guys are a potato, a wheat berry, and an airplane. We're not sure why.

2. Another pic while on the bike path. Sorry if it's upside down. Please note my ability to take an in-focus selfie on a point and shoot camera while riding a bike without crashing. This is only one of the many extremely specialized skills I'm in the process of picking up.

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