The End of an Era

Hi everyone!

​(Translation: Good morning   Happy every day)

This week was rather bittersweet, as we had our final Zone Conference with our mission president and his wife, President and Sister Teh. Our new President, President Card, arrives with his family on the 29th, and the Tehs leave on the 30th. We will be really sad to say goodbye.

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In the past 10 months in Taiwan, I have learned so much from President Teh. He is funny, goofy,  dignified, kind, and humble. He has an immense love for the Lord. I have been strengthened and inspired by his testimony and teaching. I have a strong testimony that he was called of God to preside over the mission at this time. He has done amazing things here, helping all of us to stretch farther in exercising our faith and drawing closer to our Heavenly Father. Personally, he has helped me learn to grow past pride into confidence, and has helped me see the blessings that come from following the counsel of the living prophets, seers, and revelators that guide the church today. I am so grateful for his sacrifice to come here and lead us for the past two years. 

One of President's favorite fruits is durian, so an elder bought one for zone conference, and afterwards we all stayed a little longer and tried durian. The best description I've heard of the flavor is bananas and onions. Still, it wasn't nearly as bad as I was led to believe. I actually enjoyed it!

This week I've learned a lot of new things. Here are a few:

1. The seats in Taiwanese trains can be rotated to face each other

2. Dumplings do not keep one full for very long (someone went on a rant about that in the middle of a contact)

3. The city of Gaoxiong used to have a series of five canals that provided irrigation and flood control, but then they enlarged the port and had to block off parts of the canals, and now Gaoxiong has flooding problems.

4. Because of misreporting in the media, most of the Taiwanese people have an incorrect ideas about reservoirs in Taiwan. (Those last two are from a 30 minute conversation we had in a McDonald's with a British guy who's lived in Taiwan for 13 years and is writing a book about Taiwanese reservoirs. A book which we now do not have to read, because we heard the whole thing from him. We had set a goal earlier in the day to learn something new from someone we contacted. Heavenly Father answers prayers.)

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Today is President Teh's birthday, so a few weeks ago someone in the mission came up with a plan for every companionship to send in a picture of them doing service while holding up a sign that said happy birthday to President Teh. The night that they all needed to be in by, Sister Hancock and I and the elders in our ward found ourselves in a bit of a predicament. We'd had plenty of service opportunities, but we never stopped to take a picture, so we weren't really sure what to send in. The elders decided to grab some tongs and a hat from the church and fabricate a service project. We helped them photograph it:

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Then, we figured helping them take the picture probably counted as service, so we had another elder help us document the moment so we'd have something to send in for President's birthday:

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Fabricated service aside, since President Teh urged us to put more focus on service a few months ago, we've seen so many blessings as we've reached out to help in our communities. When Christ was on the earth, He spent a significant chunk of his three year ministry reaching out and serving those around Him. He blessed the lives of those He met in many miraculous ways. While our service isn't quite as miraculous, it's so fun to be able to connect with the people we meet here, to serve them and serve alongside them. In Taiwan, the missionary stereotype is the tall foreigners in white shirts on bikes who talk to you for 30 seconds at stoplights and try to get you to come to church. We're working to change that stereotype, and help people understand that we really are here to serve. 

Have a great week!

Lots of love!

Sister Hull

Rainy Season

Hi everyone!

In Taiwan, the late spring rainy season is called 'Meiyu', or 'Plum Rain'. It usually hits beginning of May to Middle of June. This year though, it has been nothing but record breaking temperatures and blue skies. Until this week that is, when it hit in full force. I've subscribed to a weather account on Line that lets me know about any sudden changes of weather. Usually I get a couple of messages a week. This week I've averaged about five messages a day, complete with satellite imaging:

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Despite the torrential rain, we've managed to have a really good week! One highlight was that I once again got to go on exchanges with Sister Wu:

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While on exchanges, we celebrated my one year on a mission mark with ice cream bars and chocolate. It was so much fun to be with her to celebrate. She's funny and sassy and one of a kind and an amazing missionary. I love her so much!

I thought it would feel weirder to reach my one year mark, but honestly it just feels the same. The only real change is that I've realized just how short of a time I have left. It's added a larger measure of urgency to my mission as I try to savor every moment I have to spend in this beautiful country, and share the gospel with everyone I can. Being a missionary is such a unique experience because you are completely immersed in the country, it's language, culture, and people, but with the specific lens of loving people as Jesus would. My job every day is literally to go out and meet the cool people who live here and share with them something that will make their lives better. It doesn't get much better than that. 

Speaking of the cool people who live here, let me introduce you to some of my favorite cool people: 

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You may recognize them from previous pictures I've sent. Sitting on the outsides are Sister He and her 90 year old mom. We were teaching her mom, and we had to take a break for a bit, but she came to church on Sunday and we're going to her house on Tuesday! She is the cutest thing ever. She's 90 years old, and her main goal right now is staying healthy. She wakes up every morning just after five, eats a small, light diet, and dabbles in stocks to keep her mind active. Sister Hancock and I are convinced that she's secretly a multi-millionaire, and is just too modest to show it off. 

The other person in the picture is Jiang Mama, a living legend. She is 80+ years old and our relief society president. She's tiny and prim, with a quavery little voice and super stylish glasses. Her faith is unbelievably strong, and she will lay down the law about gospel stuff. She can write out whole verses of scripture from memory, and her bag always has little candies and chocolates hidden inside. The other day we were at her house, and I was eating some pineapple. The piece that I was eating had a couple of seeds on it, and she leaned over, whispered to me, 'Those are it's children', then giggled and rejoined the larger conversation. She is incredibly strong and has faced a lot of challenges, and I hope one day I can be as cool as she is.

The main social media platform we use in Taiwan is called Line. By far the most active people on it are the elderly. One trend that is way too popular among old people here are 'good morning' messages that they spam everyone they know with. You have to be careful not to friend too many old people, or you could end up getting five or six of these every. single. morning.

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This one says 'good morning. Drink more water'. It's one of the less flowery ones. 

I'm out of time for this week, but I hope everything's going well for everyone! Have an amazing week this week, and drink more water!

Love,

Sister Hull

Pioneer children sang as they walked, and walked, and walked...

Hi Everyone! 

We just finished the first week of the new transfer! Time feels like it is more and more on fast forward. I don't feel like I even had time to experience last transfer before it was gone! Despite how quickly things are moving though, life is jam-packed and memorable experiences are plentiful. 

We had a little mishap the other night when we decided to go explore one of the farther parts of our area. Our area is actually massive, but the vast majority of the people live up in this one tiny corner, so that's where we spend most of our time. We had several hours one day though, so we decided to take the bus down to one of the smaller towns further South. When we got off the bus, we were a little disappointed to realize that Google Maps had lied to us about the distance, and we were only a little bit past a college that we routinely bike to. We felt like we'd kind of wasted our bus fare and should have kept going, but the bus was already gone, so we just walked into the town. We spent an enjoyable afternoon walking down the streets talking with anyone we could. Then we grabbed some dinner at a restaurant selling Traditional Tainan food. After eating, we headed back up to the bus stop in order to make it back for a lesson at the church at 7. 

We got to the bus stop, read the schedule, then sat down to wait. After several minutes though, I decided to practice my Chinese by reading the bus schedule more in depth. In doing so, I noticed a little asterix I hadn't  noticed before. As I stared at this new message, identifying the characters I knew and trying to make sense of the rest, I realized that it was telling me on weekdays the bus stops running after five pm. I don't think even buses in rural Southern Oregon stop running that early. Suddenly, Sister Hancock and I were very glad we hadn't gone any further south. After 45 minutes of frenzied speed walking, we arrived at the church, and were able to make it to our lesson and ward correlation afterwards. We both slept very well that night. 

​We went to dinner with Susan, a member who was baptized right before I got here. She's amazing. She has really good English and she's funny and sarcastic, but she has a really strong testimony. One thing I've learned is that baptism is really only the very first step in conversion. The amount of things you need to know to get baptized is very small. Mainly you just have to understand what kind of thing you're committing to do. It's after baptism that the real learning begins. This catches a lot of new members off guard, because they just spent several months learning all about the church, so they feel like they already have a good handle on things. I've learned just how important it is for members to reach out and befriend new people entering this church. The change is big and sometimes scary, and a good friend can make all the difference.

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Our elders like to make sure we know they exist or something. We always know when they're nearby when we're out contacting because we come back to our bikes and our helmets are switched. It happens at least once a week. Last week we came out from doing our studies and saw that they'd gotten slightly more creative this time. They think they're really funny.

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This week I've been studying a lot about the Restoration. We started watching the movie, Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration with Roy, and it's made me think a lot (watch the movie here). After all, the Restoration is the reason I'm here in Taiwan. We believe that the heavens aren't closed, but that Christ has once again restored His full and complete church to the earth today. We believe he reveals His will to His prophet, just as He did in biblical times. We believe that God's priesthood power, given to man to act in His name, perform miracles, and complete the ordinances necessary for salvation and eternal families, has been restored in its fullness to the the earth. This message is too powerful and important to be kept quiet. I am so grateful that God loved us enough to not leave us in the darkness. I'm so grateful that He called Joseph Smith to be His prophet and restore the church. My life has been blessed in countless ways by the Restoration, and I am so grateful that I have this chance to share its joyful message so that others can receive the same blessings. 

Have a fantastic week this week! Love you all!

Sister Hull

Taiwan doesn't know what blue cheese is

Hi Everyone!

This week has been slower, which has been a nice change of pace from the last 5 weeks. We had more time to reflect, refocus, and try some new things. It has also been very, very hot. May and June are supposed to be the rainy season, but instead summer just set in early. This week broke the record for high temperature in May in Taibei when it hit 38 degrees Celsius (that's over 100 in Fahrenheit). We've been working hard to stay hydrated, spending way to much at drink shops, and looking for ways to stay out of the sun as much as possible. Thankfully, everyone else is also trying to stay out of the sun, so we can still go where the people are. 

Our mission collaborated with the Taibei mission to develop a new website for our nation-wide English classes. Missionaries all over Taiwan teach free English. It's a great chance to provide service. We also have a 20-30 minute spiritual share after each lesson, which is a good way to share the gospel in a relaxed, non-threatening setting with a large number of people. Since we started sharing our new website and getting members to do the same, we've seen a large jump in numbers in our English class. Several of our new little students are either too shy to speak, or are so small they don't even really speak Chinese yet let alone English, so a lot of the time we end up teaching the parents. We have a fun, noisy, high energy class, and it's great! 

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This week was the last week of the transfer, and we were almost positive that at least one of the four missionaries serving in our ward would be leaving. Sister Hancock and I were pretty sure we were staying, so that left one of the elders. To celebrate the last dinner in Tainan for at least one of us, we went and got ginormous burgers. Taiwan's not big on a lot of American food, but they love hamburgers. I think there's a high end burger place on just about every street in this city. The burgers here were so tall you either had to eat them with gloves or squish them a lot and put them in this envelope thing to catch all the juice, sauce, and vegetables dripping out the bottom. They were delicious. Mine said it had blue cheese on it in the menu, but there was nothing of the sort on the burger. Still good though

Transfer calls came that night, and Elder Smith is moving to my very first area, Daya! I find it interesting that every transfer since I've left, someone from my district has been moved up to Daya. Considering that there are only four missionaries serving there, I think that's pretty impressive. We're sad to see him go, but I'm excited that he's headed up to a place I love so much. 

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On Sunday, our investigator, Claire, showed up with her two kids, Ray and Fiona, whom we are also teaching. Fiona made us beautiful paper snowflakes. We love teaching this family. They are super cute, and love to learn about the gospel. Fiona brings her own scriptures with sticky notes and pens so she can mark anything she likes that we talk about in the lesson. I love them so much! At church, Fiona had us each fill out a page in her Frozen themed address book. It was a very in-depth questionnaire, that asked not only for your name and contact information, but also your star sign, blood type, favorite food, favorite movie, which celebrities we liked, and if we 'liked' anyone at the moment. There was also a place to record your first impression of the owner of the book, and a bit that was supposed to tell your future. 

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Life has been good this week! We had a cool moment in a contact at a park the other day with a young mom. We were talking about God, and she asked how we can know for ourselves if He is real. We talked about prayer, and then Sister Hancock pulled out a scripture in Alma 30:44 that says all things denote there is a God. She handed the Book of Mormon over to the woman to read. I was really touched as I watched this woman take the scriptures and read the word of God, probably for the first time in her life. I'm so grateful that I get to serve in a place were we have an opportunity to be a person's first introduction to their loving Heavenly Father. 

Have an amazing week!

Sister Hull