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.
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.)
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:
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:
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
No comments:
Post a Comment