Dragon fruit – cross between a kiwi and a pear
(But I’m definitely not moving!)
Since I’m a new missionary, we’re on a 12 week program where my companion and I almost assuredly will stay together in the same area for those first 12 weeks. After that, we may or may not move when they do transfers every 6 weeks.
Taggin’ in the hood
Last P-Day we went to this place called XiMenDing that has lots of stores and people selling stuff. There was this one guy on the side of the road doing that spray paint art that you usually can see in places like San Francisco and Hollywood (I’m sure it’s in lots of other places, those are just the only places I’ve seen it) where they make an amazing picture in less that ten minutes with just spray paint. He was making this awesome picture that had Taipei 101 in it with some planets and a snow scene – I bought it when he was finished.
On Tuesday, we had our monthly zone meeting. Since we have people who are going back home this transfer, we took a final zone picture before they left.
Getting in the zone…
Dragon fruit…delicious!
For English class, every six weeks, we have a party instead of regular class. On Friday, we ate together as a district so that we could have more time to discuss everything we would need for this upcoming Wednesday. We found a pretty cheap Italian restaurant in our area – one of the things I ended up ordering was escargot (it’s only $2.50 USD here for it!). The next day, Saturday, I also tried dragon fruit for the first time. It’s not super sweet, but it’s actually really good – plus it looks awesome!
On Saturday, we also ended up taking two of our investigators to have a temple tour. One of them is 14 and is super into missionary work and the Priesthood. He always asks us if he can come with us when we’re proselyting. There’s a rule here that someone has to come to church at least 3 times before they can be baptized – he keeps trying to figure out how he can be baptized sooner so that he can get the Priesthood as well. He also read like 200 pages of the Book of Mormon already – in just a few days! The other one that came with us is 16 and is really honest and sincere. He always asks really good questions during our lessons – particularly about things like, “What happens if I’m baptized and a member, but my family isn’t? Will we be able to live together after this life?” He also takes his Book of Mormon that we gave him to school, so he can read it when he has time.
Everything has been going pretty well here. It’s been getting warmer and more humid on some days…it isn’t even summer yet though, so it’s not even close to the worst of it! Unfortunately, our apartment gets humid too, so our stuff sometimes gets moldy really easily. I may end up investing in a dehumidifier at some point, just to alleviate that problem. Otherwise, we’re having a great time here!
– Elder Austin Simonson
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