Gummy Bears

Good idea, Elder! That will be much cheaper than a flight home!

This last week has been pretty good! There hasn’t been anything amazingly special though. Since our last P-day was only five days ago, I haven’t taken that many exciting pictures either…

Last Wednesday we were able to go to the temple up in Taipei, which was pretty fun! We only get to go to the temple about once every three months. If we go any other time, it’s because we’re going with a recent convert and we’re accompanying them for the their first time to the temple to perform baptisms for the dead. Hopefully, in a couple weeks we’ll be able to go with our ward and our two recent converts to the temple to do this!

YAY! Care package!

When we went up to Taipei to the temple, I also had a chance to stop at the mission office and pick up a package I had just received. Come to find out, it was from the branch president’s family of one of the other areas I’ve served in in the past! They sent me a bunch of food and a cool wooden foot hanging thingy that says 『祈禱』and 『持守到底』on it! Getting mail is always the best!

Leaving footprints…

In addition, I received a letter from one of the people in my current ward that is out on a mission right now. She’s in England, but I met her the week before she left for the MTC. Unfortunately though, our mission doesn’t forward mail to our house like most other missions do, so we have to wait for someone to have a good reason to go up to Taipei and then they can bring our mail back for us.

Moon cakes…YUM!

Mid-autumn festival is coming up on Wednesday, and one thing that all the Taiwanese people like to make and eat during this time is the moon cake. This last week we’ve already been given quite a few – a lot of them have different flavors, so it’s always interesting! They all taste pretty good too. This Wednesday, our ward will be renting buses and traveling a couple hours away to have a picnic in a place called Yilan. It’s a two-ward activity, so in total, there’s about 90 people who are going including us missionaries! I’ve never been there before, so it should be a pretty fun trip!

Exchange rate: 1 Blueberry Banana Bread Loaf = 3 Bags of Gummy Bears!

As we were taking the elevator up from the basement back to our apartment one night, we encountered our neighbors who live on the floor below us. The wife was carrying a semi-large container of gummy bears, so I asked her if she liked them. This caused her to open the container and take out two huge handfuls of them to give to us! In return, I gave her a small loaf of blueberry banana bread that I had made and was taking back to the house…which in turn, prompted her to give us even more gummy bears. In the end, we were very content with ourselves. Why? Because gummy bears. (aka QQ熊)

– Elder Austin Simonson

文浩竣長老

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