This last week has been pretty good! Last Monday we ended up going to Costco to buy lots of food. This is all in hopes of saving some money by staying in our house to eat a majority of our meals.
What a beautiful family! (劉家庭 – Liu family)
We had a chance to visit the 劉家庭 and get to know them better. They have both a son and a daughter, but since there’s no other children in the ward who are the same age as him (he hasn’t started school yet), he doesn’t like to come to church, so I think the mom stays home with him while at least the dad goes to church. The daughter thinks church is fun though, so that’s good!
Multi-cultural: American boy eating Swedish pancakes that he made in Taiwan. Wonder if that giant cockroach photobombing the picture is attempting to become part of the research….
One of our investigators said that I’m his best foreign friend…yay! I had only met him once before he said this, but I think it’s probably because I told him so many jokes the first time I met him. He hates it when things get too serious and always likes to make jokes. Jokes in Chinese are harder, though, since they’re completely different from American jokes…they usually don’t make sense in English – only in Chinese. This week he’s actually going to an institute/lab sort of a thing to research how to get more protein out of bugs to be used in food for both humans and animals (that will ultimately be eaten by humans…). Yum!
Over the weekend we were able to watch General Conference with our ward. We watched it in English, but there were Chinese subtitles on it. It was pretty cool that I could actually read a lot of what the subtitles were saying even though they disappeared really quickly. I can’t say that it was very comfortable to sit in hard chairs to watch many hours of conference with only 15 minute breaks, but overall, it was great to hear from all of the speakers. I particularly liked the talk that focused on all of us setting goals and accomplishing them!
Brownies…food for the soul! Justin and his sou-chef
Yesterday night we were able to go over to a member’s house and make some brownies with them! Actually, the only member is the older son – Justin (he likes Justin Bieber). His younger brother comes to church with him as well and is really smart, but his parents want him to wait to get baptized until his is 16. This was actually our first time being able to meet the parents and talk with them, so that was a great opportunity! We also invited them to another member’s house for Family Home Evening – they said that they would be able to in about two weeks.
“Duck face” and “Home Alone: Taiwan” – a couple of cuties for sure! (Xu family)
Last night we also got to go over to a member’s house to eat dinner! The 徐家庭 invited us over to eat. They’re super nice! They moved into our ward within the last 6 months and have both a son and a daughter. The mom served a mission in 台中 (Taiwan Taichung Mission) and the dad went to Texas! They actually met each other and started dating within a month of them both getting back home here in Taiwan. #goals
I also got to see my Taiwan brother, Jack! #ILoveYouBro
It’s been getting hot recently, but supposedly a cold front is moving in with more rain, so we will find out within these next few days! On the bright side, when I get soaked from the rain, I just use it as an opportunity to soap up and call it a shower, therefore leaving no reason to take another shower the next morning…right? #efficiency
– Elder Austin Simonson
文長老