Taiwan

Hello Everyone,   I want to start out by saying I didn't forget about Dad's or Grandpa's birthday! I just forgot to include the birthday wishes in the last email...sorry about that. I remembered them in my heart though so that is what's important! So I thought I would make up for it by wishing a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! And a HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDPA! It seemed like you had a great birthday! Grandpa you certainly had a lot of birthday cards this year!! That's pretty impressive. I don't think I've ever gotten that many birthday cards before. You are very loved by all of us! Dad you are too! This certainly is the birthday season! It seems like everyone's birthday is in November.   This week has been a great one. It's a little interesting adjusting to my new area. Unfortunately, I didn't take a whole lot of pictures of the surrounding area, but I'll do that this next week. It's a pretty flat area, not a lot of hills. It's near the...

  Hey everyone!    Today was a sad day. My time in Nanzi has drawn to a close and now I have been assigned to serve in another part of beautiful Taiwan. It's a place called Xihu and it is very small. Actually our area boundaries are some of the biggest in the mission, but the population here is....not very much. So now I am sitting in an internet cafe in the middle of nowhere haha. It's super cool though. I have usually served in the city or factory areas of Taiwan, and now it's my first time serving in a place out in the country. Actually my previous companion Elder Moore served here before and I've heard lots of stories of this place. One of which is that there are more dogs here than there are people. We will see...    But before I left Nanzi Elder Grisenti and I had some last few stories and miracles together.  We had planned to have a lesson with a guy that usually is always able to meet, and never cancels appointments. But then for some ...

Dear Everyone, First off I'd like to start out by wishing my Mom a very happy birthday!  媽媽 ! 祝 你生日快樂 ! 我也祝 你平安和健康 ! 我希望 你的願望都應驗 ! (Translation:  MOM! happy birthday to you! I wish you health and peace! I hope all of your wishes come true!)    I hope that you all had a great time together and made some super good foods! Did Eric make some good Japanese foods for your birthday? I was celebrating your birthday over here in Taiwan. I made sure to tell everyone it was your birthday in all the lessons that we had! Thanks for all that you do for the family and for me! Thanks for the emails and the packages and all the advice that you give! I know that you are sad I couldn't be home for your birthday (at least I think so..) but I know that you are happier that I'm out here serving! I love you lots Mom!   I'm glad to hear that the package made it home alright and the goodies inside were all intact. Thanks for sending me the pic of everyone wearing the ties ...

Hi Everyone,   Well this week was pretty fun! At the beginning it seemed like just a normal week with nothing out of the ordinary, but then we were told that on Friday we would be having a member of the Seventy, Elder Wang from Hong Kong, come to our mission and we would have a big training with him. I was super excited for that and the whole week seemed to go by really slow because of that excitement haha. The training was great though! Before the big training, the district and zone leaders for Gaoxiong area got to have a special meeting with him and it was really helpful. He's a really funny and blunt man. So he answered our questions pretty straight up without beating around the bush haha. I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot.    One thing I really loved was the story of David and Goliath. We all know the story about how David knew that the Lord would be with him and that he would be able to defeat Goliath with his sling and a stone. But if he was that conf...

Hi Everyone,    We finally had the chance to go to Monkey Mountain!! It's a place that I've wanted to go to since I first came down to Gaoxiong. It's a mountain that you can go hiking on and it's really pretty. The main thing about it though is that there are tons of monkeys all over the place! They just roam all around and through the trees. A lot of them are super cute, but lots of them are really ferocious too! Elder Grisenti almost got bit a couple times and they would hiss at us if we scared them too bad. I was squatting down trying to take a picture of one and suddenly my friend Diego pulled me back just in time to avoid getting bit in the face by another monkey that was right next to my head on a branch! I tried super hard to get a picture of me sitting next to a monkey to send home, but they were just too fast, and too scary to get a good one haha. It was super fun though. I sent home a file with a bunch of pics of it so hopefully you can download them. I h...