父親節快了!

Happy Father's Day to my young and awesome dad! World's best. I'm glad there are still so many courageous men in the world who are willing to take the world head on like my dad did. Having a good father is a blessing everyone ought to deserve.

This week was super exciting. We saw two awesome baptisms! I'm not sure how big my role was in their conversion process, but it was certainly fun to watch them over these past few weeks. The baptism was awesome and they're talks afterwards were even better. One got up and she was talking about meeting all these different missionaries and how it switched to me and Elder Falck a couple months ago and how at first she thought I was very witty and funny and that Elder Falck was just dumb (not smart). Says it as directly as that in front of the whole congregation! Everyone busted up laughing! Even Elder Falck. He's a stud. Funny moment! She later apologized by bringing up these huge plates of Costco cookies and brownies! Worth it for sure.

I took out the YM's with me to go street contacting for a night. It was hilarious to watch them being super uncomfortable out there, good reminders of what it was like in the past for me. But thinking of it, they are all so much cooler than I was. Before the mission, if I would've been asked to hang out with missionaries I would've definitely said no. Haha. Good thing I've been able to change. These people are awesome examples to me.

Elder Falck and I are having such a blast together here for my last few weeks. Its cool to think that I now have two best friends living in Taiwan and Sweden, two of my favorite places in this world. If the mission was a complete failure for me, it would still be worth all the awesome friendships I've been able to make out here. Missions are the best.

They're even better when the end is near. I've loved this last transfer and it is just going to get better!

Love you all!

端午節快樂!

Happy Dragon Boat Festival everyone!! I feel bad for all those of you who don't know what that is! Haha.

My blood sugar has risen significantly this week due to all the Taiwanese shaved ice I've been eating. Elder Falck is also addicted which makes the temptation all the greater. We can get up to 5 or 6 in a matter of two or three days depending on how we are feeling.. Coated up with some good green beans, grass jelly, chewy taro balls, salty peanuts and then coated over with condensed milk. Don't judge it till you try it!

We also played basketball a few times this week. I was flat out embarrassed with myself. Needless to say, I will be practicing a bit when i get home..

As far as gospel scholarship goes, I finished the Bible and D&C back to back again. There is some interesting stuff within them. Gotta do it just a few times in life right?

I made it back to Danshui this past week for the first time in 6 months. I felt like I was in heaven. :-)

Even got to hang out with some old friends of mine!

As I approach the end of my sojourn here, I am so glad that I have the people around me that I do. We have an awesome investigator who just cannot get an answer to prayer to save his life. It's great for me. It entertains my mind thinking of how to approach his problems from all angles. Thank goodness I can have some things that I find entertaining during these last weeks.

Life is good. Time goes fast. It's a blast.

神奇

This week was a pretty fast and good one. We saw lots of good progress with our investigators and also found out that a lot of them have more problems than we previously thought. God knew all too well that I would need some interesting problems to fix to keep me excited about what I'm doing lol. But sometimes you wonder how in the world can some people find themselves in such a deep hole and continue living.

I just learn from them. I won't ever consider making a living of helping people solve their problems either..too many headaches..

We were able to go play on a beautiful beach with our favorite member again last week. Chilling with Taiwanese people is pretty fun as it turns out :-) Especially when you can finally talk to them for hours at a time without any trouble. You make pretty good friends while on your mission. Honestly all the friendships I've made out here alone have made my mission more than worth it!

The best moment of the week though was a contact Elder Falck and I had together. Elder Falck does his best with the language, but its still fun for me to watch him in the early stages of his mission where he's still figuring out the language lol. This man we contacted was probably the most perfect contact any missionary could think of, almost a little cliche, but he was genuine. He kept telling us that ever since he had a spiritual experience last year, he realized how "神奇"(shen2 qi2 meaning "miraculous") all of god's workings were. However, Elder Falck misunderstood him for saying "生氣" (sheng1 qi4 meaning "angry") and butted right in to the rescue by offering to say a prayer for him to not always be so angry at everything. I got a good laugh out of that. :-) Sometimes companions are the best part of your mission haha.

I'm still loving life. Trying to enjoy every second of it. Time goes fast.

But of course I'm still really looking forward to the jungles of Thailand and Cambodia and the coast of Vietnam. I have the best family. Super exciting lives they live.

Life is all about experiences.

Love you all!

第六十週年的慶典

here is what xizhi looks like

As I write this, the sisters are sitting next to me with their speaker they brought blaring EFY music off lds.org. Even after these two years of a mission, I still can't stand Motab or EFY music. Some things just never grow on you I guess?

This week we celebrated the 60th year anniversary of missionary work here in Taiwan this week. We had Elder Kitchen here too who was one of the original 4 who opened the work here in Taiwan. Super cool stuff. Things have come a long way since then.

Mostly everything was centered around that. It was super fun to go to this super huge celebration and see SOOOO many past friends of mine. It was especially neat to see people from my first area that still recognized me! Super cool stuff. I even saw Elder Coleman there from the Taizhong mission. Fun times.

We will be having a great month ahead of us. Lots of baptisms on the horizons and lots of fun Pdays. What could I ask for more than that?

Thanks for all the love and support!

Have a great week!!

重要東西的袋子

This week I don't have the letter writing spirit in me. So I'll just explain two pictures 就好了.

Last Monday we woke up early to a major rain storm. It semi bummed me out because we had some awesome plans all laid out to go play in the mountains. We had to change our plans last second. We decided we would just take an inside day. But that didn't sit well with me so I called our member Brother Luo up and he said that heck yeah we were still going out to play! That got me super stoked! So we called it back on. The rest of the day was a total blast! You can have fun on rainy days. Just pretend its not there and you're good to go! We saw a waterfall, ate a huge lunch, set up a sky lantern, then convinced Brother Luo to take us on the super sketchy hike even though it was super rainy outside hahah. I climbed the last ladder shoeless because it was so slippery. Reminded me a bit of being on Angel's landing in Zion during the winter with all the ice up there.

The other one was after a super long service project we had on saturday night. First off you need to understand that Elder Falck forgets random things of his all the time and I always make fun of him for it. So we were super late getting back to the house. We only had like 30 minutes to go out and proselyte for the night. We were super rushed trying to get all changed and put back together so we could go back out and make the most of that time. When we got to the elevator Elder Falck says "Oh shoot, I forgot my bag." Runs out the elevator and into the house when he finally realized it was on his shoulder haha. Comes back into the elevator and we start heading down when Elder Griffin busted up laughing and said "Elder Falck, you forgot something else too." He wasn't wearing a tie :-)

But at this point we had such little time and I wanted to go so we didn't go back to get him one. We just went out and did work. And we did work. We found an awesome new investigator even. Tieless. For you RM's, you'll understand how funny that is.

I love where I'm at right now. We go out and do work everyday and it's fun to just get lost in the work. I ain't about that trunky life. Elder Falck and I are having a blast together!