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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