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

 

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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