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