Conference weekend is the best weekend

Hi everyone!

We've had a whirlwind of a week- zone conference, exchanges, and two blissful days of General Conference. In Taiwan we have to wait for conference to be translated into Chinese, so we watched it a week late. Thankfully, we didn't have to watch conference in Chinese, because I still struggle to understand basic conversations, let alone lengthy discourses on Eternal Salvation. The talks were absolutely amazing. It felt like a giant firehose of spiritual knowledge was turned on, and we were all thoroughly drenched for 10 hours straight. It was awesome. I love this opportunity to hear from the leaders of our church that we sustain as prophets, seers, and revelators. I think it's so amazing that we believe that God still talks to man and directs His church today, and that we can be recipients of new wisdom and insights as we follow the prophet. I especially enjoyed Donald L. Hallstrom's talk about miracles. When I was serving in Logan, a lot of people asked why bad things happen to good people if God is real. I think Elder Hallstrom helps answer this question really well, and remind us of the incredible miracles that all of us are a part of. Here's the link: 

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2017/10/has-the-day-of-miracles-ceased?lang=eng

I invite all of you to listen to this talk if you haven't gotten a chance yet. It's really good!

I had my first good language mixup this week. During training we have a language study program where we study the vocab we need for the missionary lessons, then practice teaching them to our district and zone leaders. Yesterday, I was teaching Elder Moh, and he was pretending to be an investigator. Partway through the lesson, I wanted to reference a previous concern he had. What I meant to say was "Nǐ shàng cì shuō" which means 'last time you said...' but what I actually said was "Nǐ shàng cèsuǒ" which means 'you go to the toilet'. We had to stop the lesson for a bit until Elder Moh and I could regain our composure. Chinese is hard.

This week I want to introduce you to a place that Sister Smith and I spend a lot of time: Daya Park. During the day, this park is just a normal, rather empty park, equipped with basketball courts, a stage, a small playground, and various trees. At night though, the park comes alive with an amazing variety of people. We spend enough time there that we've started to get to know the regulars. I've already told you about the dancing Amas who show up in force every evening to dance to standards such as 'I love Rock and Roll', 'Casablanca', and 'Ni shi wode xiao pingguo'. 

Next to the Amas are the basketball courts, which attract a large number of young men of all nationalities. We usually wave at them, but they're too far into their intense game to really talk to us. We like to practice our minimal amounts of Tagalog on the Filipino players though, so they usually wave at us now. 

Further down on the other side of the Amas is the Pokemon Go group. They are extremely dedicated, and show up almost every night to stand in a silent circle, furiously poking their phones. Among our favorites are Two Phones Guy, who is so into it that he carries two phones, and Sassy Guy, who, after 5 weeks of agressive waving, we finally got him to wave in response. We figure on our 300th visit he might actually talk to us.

 Other favorite people include Violin Guy, Singing Guy, and Grown Up Sokka. Violin Guy is an ancient man who shows up with an erhu and a loudspeaker, then sits on a mat, turns on traditional Chinese music, and plays along on his Erhu. He's got a very wise looking face, and his beard is in a ponytail. Singing guy is also ancient. He wanders the park singing very loudly, and likes to walk up to us and stare at us while singing emphatically. He's not very creepy though, it's more like he just really, really wants us to join in with his song or something. One time a little kid translated for us, and he's singing about rice dumplings. We usually nod along encouragingly for a bit as we walk by. Finally, our absolutely favorite person is Grown Up Sokka. According to Sister Smith, he looks very much like Sokka from the tv show Avatar. He has a long ponytail with the sides of his head shaved, and he always wears an all black outfit of a t-shirt and basketball shorts. He might be the coolest person we've ever seen. He shows up every now and then to play badminton with his daughter. It's really cute to see him hopping around, passing the birdie back and forth, and striking funny poses with each swing to make her laugh. We're more than a little in awe of him, and we're kind of afraid to talk to him because he's just so cool.

The park is probably one of my favorite places so far in Taiwan just because of the sheer variety and vitality of the people there. You never know who you'll meet, and it's always and adventure. 

Anyway, hope you all have an amazing week this week

Lots of love,

Sister Hull

Pics:

1. Wednesday was the Mid-Autumn festival, so we got invited to a barbecue at a ward member's house. Barbecue is something that they take very seriously here, and they can often last from early evening until midnight. I didn't get any good pics of us, but here's a slightly blurry pic of the bishop's kid, Doubi, with a hot dog. He was very proud of his hot dog.

2. Since the missionaries were the only ones watching Conference in English on Saturday, we set up our tv in the kitchen and made cinnamon rolls while we watched. Or more accurately, Elder  Councill and Sister Smith made cinnamon rolls. Here's Elder Councill with the finished product. 

3. Here's an up-close image of the glorious cinnamon rolls. We gave a bunch to the members who were also here for conference, and they were very impressed.

4. On Sunday we made pizza between sessions and it was similarly delicious. Pesto pizza is definitely the best kind of pizza.

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Hi Everyone! 

This week has been a week. Most of it's been long and boring, but there have been a few random moments of extreme bizarre-ness.

The Taiwanese Amas are as inexplicable as ever. We tried going bus contacting the other day, and got stuck in a clump of Amas. The Ama I sat down next to immediately took possession of my arm, and proceeded to stroke it, squeeze my hand, and compare my skin tone to her own for the next ten minutes. Meanwhile the Ama on my other side went on a long spiel about how skin tone doesn't matter as long as we're healthy. Sister Smith and I vigorously agreed, but I still didn't regain possession of my hand until we got off the bus.

This week has been a little rough, because we spent a long time every day contacting without a single person wanting to talk to us, so Saturday we made a goal that by the end of the day we'd find someone who wanted a tour of our church. We worked really hard all day, but by 7:30 pm we still hadn't found a single person who was interested. We were at a park trying to talk to people, and we thought we saw a member at a nearby building, so we decided to go say hi to them. On our way over, we started a conversation with a Filipino guy on a bench next to the basketball court. His friend came over, and we started telling them about our church. They seemed kind of interested, so we invited them to come to our Sunday meetings. Then one of them asked if they could see our church now. Apparently I'm just really bad at noticing things, because I completely missed the fact that they were both fairly drunk, so I said "absolutely!". Sister Smith gave me a death glare, but it was too late at that point, so we grabbed our bikes and all headed over to the church. On the way over, they both picked one of us to ask if we were dating anyone. I said yes and left it at that. Sister Smith specified that she's engaged, and he's studying to be a doctor. Once we got that cleared up though, the tour went very well. A baptism had just ended at the church, so there were a ton of members. As soon as we got in the door, the Stake President hurried over to welcome them in in his broken English. Other members also welcomed them throughout the tour. I'm pretty sure one of the guys was too drunk to really notice, but the other guy really seemed to like the atmosphere, and said he'd try to come back when he has time off work. God really does answer prayers, if sometimes in weird ways.

Hope everyone has an amazing week!

Sister Hull

Pics:

1. Daya has a gorgeous bike path going through it, so for Pday we joined the elders in biking a part of it. This statue is located next to a map of the bike path. The little guys are a potato, a wheat berry, and an airplane. We're not sure why.

2. Another pic while on the bike path. Sorry if it's upside down. Please note my ability to take an in-focus selfie on a point and shoot camera while riding a bike without crashing. This is only one of the many extremely specialized skills I'm in the process of picking up.

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This week was a weird whirlwind of food and introspection, and I'm not really sure what happened, so I'm just going to use the pictures I took to narrate the week. Because honestly I don't really remember the rest. It was good though! 

This Thursday was an Elder in our District, Elder Geary's birthday, so on Monday we made him nachos and cookies to celebrate. In this picture, Elder Councill is cooking the chicken, Sister Smith is spooning on the beans, and I'm about to check the cookies. 

I just kind of left my camera on the counter for most of the day, and let other people pick it up, so photo cred goes to Elder Moh for these first two pics. Here are Elder Moh, Geary, and Provard in the back. Elder Geary came on island the same time as I did, so we've been going through training together. It's fun to have another newbie in the district.

To celebrate Elder Geary, we filled a bowl with nachos, stuck two cookies on top, and stuck a candle in the top. You can also see Sister Jones, one of our Sister Training Leaders, in the background. 

I stumbled across this scripture the other day, and it has now become the scripture of the week. I love how it correlates with 2 Nephi 9:50-51 -Come, my brethren, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no money, come buy and eat; yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Wherefore, do not spend money for that which is of no worth, nor your labor for that which cannot satisfy. Hearken diligently unto me, and remember the words which I have spoken; and come unto the Holy One of Israel, and feast upon that which perisheth not, neither can be corrupted, and let your soul delight in fatness.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ truly gives us an abundance, and now that I have received that abundance, it's my job to share it with others that they may also have these blessings.

Sister Smith got ahold of my camera and decided to take a selfie while I was braiding my hair.

Over the last two weeks we taught the relief society how to make skirts. The first time we met was terrifying. There were like 10 relief society sisters yelling at eachother in Chinese (happy yelling, Chinese is just a very aggressive language sometimes), kids running in and out, and babies crying. This last week was so much better. There were only about six sisters, two children, and no babies. We got a lot of the skirts finished, and it was super fun! We actually have a really cool relief society full of lots of amazing women. I love our ward here in Daya.

Today is momentous because I have officially completed an entire transfer on island. We got transfer calls Saturday night telling us where everyone was going. Sister Smith and I knew that we'd be staying here because I still have one more transfer of training, but we were pretty sure that Elder Councill was going to be transferred. We asked him to make a final dinner for us on Sunday night, because his food is legendary. We used our dinner time on Saturday to buy food. Since we didn't have time to go somewhere else to get Saturday dinner, we all just kinda picked up random food for dinner. I had the healthiest dinner with a can of corn, yogurt, and a pancake thing with chocolate filling. Elder Councill had the unhealthiest with chocolate milk, papaya milk, and oreos. Sister Smith and Elder Moh were somewhere in the middle. It felt just like college again. 

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​Sorry this email's short and weird- it's been a short and weird week. Life is good though, and the gospel is true! Hope you all have an amazing week!

lots of love, 

Sister Hull

Dinosaurs and drugs

Hello Everyone!

So in my last email I forgot to include a very important detail. Elder Councill's full, legal name is Erickson Enoch Aragorn Westover Councill. I'm not making this up.

Mom asked for a picture of my bike, so I figured I should probably introduce him. It took me quite a while to come up with a name for my bike. Sister Smith's bike is named Vladimir, which I thought was funny, but I decided I wanted a strong, stalwart name that symbolized how my bike and I are a team, working together to more effectively bring the gospel to Taiwan. It was as I was riding along, pondering names and marveling at the seamless merging of human and machine that allowed me to so effortlessly glide through the streets of Taiwan, that my bike dumped me on the ground (see last week's email). So, I would like to introduce you all to Genghis. He's a jerk. Vladimir is pictured in the background.

English class was fun this week. Only 5 people showed up. We have a rule that we have to have a girl student there before we can start teaching, because technically it counts as a lesson. A girl didn't show up for the first 15 or so minutes, so we filled the time by asking everyone about their favorite dinosaur. I tried to draw them on the board. We were so proud of our artwork that when the class started we didn't want to erase it. Our class was on visiting the pharmacy, so we decided to utilize the dinosaurs. The Velociraptor is the pharmacist, and each of the other dinosaurs has a different medication with different instructions. For example, the triceratops has to take his medication with food. Also, the T-rex has a bacteria-caused illness, so he needs to take antibiotics. Please enjoy this photo of our majestic artwork. Also, I am aware that viruses may very well be alive, but explaining the concept of bacteria to a bunch of people who don't speak English is hard.

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I've spent a decent amount of time this week reading and thinking about 2 Nephi 4. Nephi talks about how frustrated he is because he's learned so much about the gospel from the scriptures and from visions, but he still makes mistakes and messes up and doesn't live up to the things he has learned. I can relate to this a lot, because it always feels like there's more that I should be doing to fulfill my purpose. I find a lot of comfort in Nephi's following words though:  'Rejoice, O my heart and cry unto the Lord, and say: O Lord, I will praise thee forever; yea, my soul will rejoice in thee, my God, and the rock of my salvation.' Even though I am inadequate, God never is. I know that because of Him, I don't need to be frustrated with myself, because He has the power to make my offering to Him enough.

Hope you all have an amazing week this week! Bunches of love!

Sister Hull

More pics:

1. We had dragonfruit and steamed buns for dinner one night this week. Steamed bread is seriously my favorite food ever.

2. Our ward had ice cream after church this Sunday. We're not really sure why, but we're not complaining. Elder Councill volunteered to drink the final melted bit once everyone had gotten some.

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