Me and some of my favorite ‘peacemakers’, 唐璦 and 唐恩, our Branch President’s girls
This last week was pretty fun! We ate lots more food because of the Chinese New year, visited a farm that has lots of cows, had interviews with President Jergensen, ate lunch with him and his family, and had a visit from one of the members from TianMu that I know!
Dinner with the Zhou family
Dessert too pretty to eat…almost!
Last Monday we were also able to eat with the 周家庭 (Zhou Family) – they took us to this nice restaurant! They actually don’t live down here but were just visiting family; they are originally from up in Taipei in a place called 新店 (XinDian). You can see a picture of the dessert we had there…it was super good!
Burgers with the big cheese!
Wednesday morning we went down to 台東 (Táidōng) again to have interviews with President Jergensen. Because of changes from the Missionary Department in Utah, we will be having interviews with him every month – they’ll be about 10 minutes long each time. It went well! Afterwards, President Jergensen, his wife, and his twins came with us to eat at this burger place that we always eat at when we’re in 台東, called Sam’s Burgers. In the end, he ended up paying for all of our meals as well as a Chinese New Year gift!!!
Members of my ward…Yuanyi Chen and President Chen’s two little girls (same last name, different family)
On Friday, we had a nice visit from one of the families in 天母 (Tiānmǔ) that used to be in my ward there! The dad hand makes light sabers for people – they’re super cool! My companion wanted one, so I gave him the contact info for this guy – 遊弟兄 – and he got one! 遊弟兄 and his family came down here since they were already coming to 花蓮市 (Hualien City), which is only like an hour away.
“If you spent as much time practicing your saber techniques as you did your wit, you’d rival Master Yoda as a swordsman.”
Even California cows could be happy here!
Too bad he didn’t have any more of that delicious chocolate lava cake from his birthday…
On Saturday, 沈家銘 (aka Mr. Miracle), his girlfriend 張玉萍 (aka HuHu), and one of their customers, Winnie (she’s super cool!) – went with us to this cow farm! 瑞穗 (Ruìsuì) is famous for its fresh milk from their cows! We had lunch there and ate a lot. It worked out perfectly since we already wanted to go to 瑞穗 that day and it just so happened that they wanted to as well, so after lunch, they just took us to the town center and dropped us off! Perfect!
Fresh milk is good….
… but Winnie thinks frozen is best!
The one on the bottom right is a current bill
We met with one of our ward members last night who hasn’t been able to come to church for a while. He’s really cool though! He showed us some old Taiwanese money that he just got from his father who passed away last year. He also shared with us some candy that he used to eat as a kid (no he hasn’t kept it since we was young…he found somewhere that he could buy it!).
Everything’s rosy at the ‘funny farm’!
Finally, my plants are growing well! I’ve been growing radishes, spinach, cucumber, and some basil! They’re growing little by little! Yay! Transfers are this Thursday – I hope I don’t move, but we’ll see!
– Elder Austin Simonson
文長老