Taipei 101 in the background
This week (today) our zone is going to the temple, so our P-day got moved from Monday to Tuesday. Last Monday, though, we went to Taipei 101! It’s a big mall with tons of high-end shops in it. They also have an observation deck on the 89th floor I think – we didn’t go up to it this time, but I’m sure I will in the future. Although there was basically nothing we could afford in the mall, we had a great time walking around and looking at everything!
Taiwanese version of cheeseburger, fries, and a shake
Last week’s English class teaching went a lot better than our first time. My companion and I teach the lowest English fluency level class – the children – which presents a problem in that they have little to no attention span. We figured out a way to teach them, though, so that they’ll somewhat stay focused; we planned our class down to the minute and included activities, songs, breaks, and snacks so that it helps prevents them from just running around and screaming as they sometimes do. It was a lot more productive this class time!
SanChong district elders, ward mission leader, and a ward member at the church
On Thursday evening, we were talking with this guy in a night market who was kind of not that interested in what we were saying. We got him to let us say a prayer with him! Afterwards though, he started to leave, but before he did, he took out 2000 NTD (approximately $60 USD) and handed us each 1000 NTD each. We’re not supposed to accept money, so we really tried to not let him, but he stuffed it in our pockets and ran away. Since it’s around Chinese New Year time and it wasn’t an excessive amount of money, our mission president let us keep it!
Elder (Emeril) Lagasse and Elder (Jamie) Oliver spend a quiet evening preparing a feast for their companions
Also, on Sunday, we got someone to attend church with us that my companion met last year when he was in a different area. The guy lives here in LuZhou though. We just called him up and invited him to church, and he accepted. On the way to church, he told us he works in coding software for banking. However, I was talking with him while we were at church, and he told me that he coded the software for the MRT (subway) card system here in Taiwan! It took him 7 years to make it – he started right after college. He also coded version 2.0 of the Starbucks gift card system! He’s awesome – he also likes photography. We invited him to some other activities and to church next week, and he accepted.
Anyway, this has been a fairly good week. Still raining quite a bit, but it’s not bad! Glad to be here!
– Elder Austin Simonson
文長老