Missionary Emails: Barf-a-rama

Sunday, May 24, 2009 11:52 PM

Well, it looks like last weeks letter didn't send through. Maybe it was because the computer had only one minute left, I don't know, but lucky you because now you get two letters from me this week! And in less than a week too, so it's okay that I only got one letter from dad a paragraph long telling me how disappointed he was I didn't email him today, when I tried to..haha. Because that's KIND of my fault. I didn't expect much today because I didn't mention that we were getting move calls and so this P-day is a different day. I'm kind of sad though because I was hoping someone would tell me about why my investigator thought that about the DaVinci Code. And mom was probably really confused about that letter I forwarded to her, but now it will make more sense.

This week has been quite the week. Saturday night was a not so great experience. I got a really bad migraine during our lesson at 2. And I had a hard time focusing...but we got through the lesson without it being AWFUL bad...but then it started being a pounding headache once they left. We ended around 3:15 and we had a 3:30 brunch appointment with a lady in our English class, who isn't too interested in church, but she loves us and wanted us to come to her house to eat. But she ended up having a rushed day so she couldn't come to the church until 4. So anyways, we get to her house around 4:15, and I straightaway run into her bathroom and vomit up part of the xigua (watermelon, or literally western melon) drink that our 1 o'clock appointment had us drink. And I was grateful that our lunch was late that day so I didn't have too much to barf up. I thought I was done but was weary about eating anything at her house, because my headache was pretty bad and my stomach didn't seem like it would jieshou shiwu (accept food). So I was just upfront and told her I had just barely tu'ed and didn't think I could eat. She was nice about it. She gave me this drink with herbs and had me put this killer burning stuff on my head. It's like vicks for your head. It was really weird feeling and I wished I hadn't...but too late...hahaah. But it was an awful feeling. I didn't barf again at her house, but I just couldn't focus, and my head was like radiating from the Chinese medicine she had me put on my head. I felt bad because I like her a lot and wanted to talk, but it was hard. But she understood. She tried to get me to go rest, but I just wanted to get back to the church and I thought I would be fine as long as I wasn't barfing. She was in the car with us, driving us back to the church and telling me to take a rest...and I was like, I'm fine I'm fine...we have a 7 o'clock, I'll rest tonight. But then...we were one stoplight from the church and I barf in my mouth...but I didn't want to get it in her car, so I was just praying, please let me not barf anymore until I get out of the car...please please please...because I was just holding it in my mouth with my cheeks all puffed up. And the second we stopped in front of the church I dashed out of the car and barfed in the cute little bush right outside the church. I thought I was okay and went back to get my stuff and apologize, but then more barf came...and I barely made it to the bush..so my companion got my stuff and the lady drove off, and I proceeded to barf all over the bush, all over my shoes, all over myself. In front of everyone on the street because I couldn't make it inside the church. So after I was covered in barf on my arm, shoes, etc etc, we went in the church and called our 7 o'clock and rescheduled...I tried to clean up enough to ride my bike home...then we went home. And I took off all my barfy things, including my shoes and put them in the washer...then I got in the shower and washed off my legs and arms with soap...I mean it was sick because it was everywhere, my socks, my undershirt, you name it, it was covered in barf. Nice visual huh? :) And then my companion and I talked until bedtime because I was in too much pain to fall asleep. I took some excedrin and it made it a little better, but I wasn't able to sleep after midnight. So that was fun for me! We had biked a lot that day, so it could have been heat exhaustion, it's just weird to think it was heat exhaustion though because I drink a LOT of water..? I have this huge herbal life water bottle and I drink it all day. But one other embarrassing thing too, is the lady whose house we were at was all asking me if I was on my period yet in front of her husband and 16 and 12 year old sons. They are just really open here?

Friday night we got move calls. The new transfer starts today. This transfer is only 5 weeks long. We'll get a new mission president on July 1st. So they will do the transfers with the new president. It will be sad to see the Nielsons leave, but I'm sure our new president and his wife will be really great! I'm excited to meet them. Our mission will also grow and get some of the Taizhong (Taichung? depending on your pinyin) mission. Kaosiung will officially close. So this will be a fast transfer. I'm excited because my companion is coordinating sister and coordinates splits, and both the Bade and the Taoyuan sisters are training, so I'll get to see my old MTC friends Sister Watts and Sister Olsen. Oh! And I guess it's important to mention in the move calls, I found out I'm staying here in Zhongli with the same companion. Our district leader got moved, Elder Atwood to Banciao. Sad, it's hard to move when you only have one transfer left! Our zone leader E. Huang went home. And Elder McGee got transferred to Taipei 2nd. It was weird to see so much change. E. Atwood was really unique and a fun district leader. We were sad to see him go. And E. McGee has been here in Zhongli a LONG time. The members really love him, and they will miss him a lot. They were all really sad to hear he was going, but they are great, they'll probably love the new missionaries coming in.

I really loved our district and zone! I realize every time I have to say goodbye to people, I get a little sad, but I'll get to see E. Atwood at zone conference once more, and E. McGee has a little while left. So he'll be around. I guess it will be nice because at conference my companion was so excited to see all these people she knew, but I wasn't that excited because I only knew a select few people. I was excited to see them, but S. Ackerson is down in Hualien so I don't get to see her, so that just made me sad to see some of our MTC district and her to be missing. But each transfer I'll know more people and get more and more excited to see old district/zone members when I do! haha. Like now i get excited to see the 2 girls I went on splits with last transfer too. Woo. Now I'm old. Or at least not a trainee. Older than the brand new olds. And now my Chinese is improving lately. At first it didn't feel like it was, but this last week I feel like I'm understanding a lot more. I'm trying to participate in the lessons more. It's coming really slowly, but surely.

The last event I will talk about this week is exciting news...Li Yufeng, or Sister Lee as my companion calls her in her family emails, I just pinyin the Chinese instead of make it into English, but she actually speaks English REALLY well, so her name in English is Yvonne Lee. But like I was saying, Yu1feng1 made a baptism goal this week! WOOOO. I was really excited because she is special. Even our bishop and mission leader told us her family is special. She had a goal before and it passed, then she didn't want to make another goal for a long time. It was really nice she was willing to try her faith and make a goal. I don't know if she'll actually get baptized on that goal, which is in 2 weeks, because we want to wait for her husband who might a little longer, but we talked to the Elders and they are going to team up with us on this family since they live closer and can therefore follow up in person more often with him at nights. And they are Elders...So I have a feeling he'll start progressing a little faster and I can totally see them being baptized together this transfer. I have high hopes for them. I really love them a lot. And even if it doesn't happen this transfer, I know they will be baptized.

So yeah, those are the things I remember this week, other than that investigators are pretty much the same, coming along slowly. Not progressing in a lot of ways, church is one of the biggest problems. We are starting to feel like we need some new investigators because some of our old ones are less and less interested. We've been praying for new investigators. I'm sure we'll be blessed this transfer and see miracles. We've already met a lady married to a Canadian who is willing to meet with us, and even her husband said he'd meet with us too. She's funny because she said S. Hill's Chinese is better than her husbands, but her husbands Chinese is pretty good when we spoke to him! It's just probably hard to have the language barrier in a marriage and want to talk about your feelings and not being able to. It should be interesting because we talked about it, and he needs the lessons in English and she needs them in Chinese! So we'll just...um translate everything or something!? We'll figure it out. Maybe after a lesson or two with him he'll be willing to meet with Elders too? We'll see. He said he could see about coming to church next week when we told him there was a translation into English.

Okay I'm going to see how much time I have to send pictures now! bye!

Missionary Email: Crazies

Sunday, May 24, 2009 10:51 PM



PRENOTE...I don't know what's wrong with the computer, but dad said this email didn't get to him last week, so I'm resending it. But this is what I wrote last Wednesday! I didn't skip a week. I would at least say Hi and I have no time if I wasn't going to send a long email!

Sister Bruno

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey dad,

Can you please take my email off the website you are posting on? I have received emails from various people asking for help in their young woman's and some other things, although I would love to help and will think about if my ward could possibly do what that lady asked and appreciated hearing from other people, it is against the rules of the white handbook to receive letters from non family members, and to reply to them. So I can't reply...their emails would have to be filtered through you guys. If people want to write me, it has to be forwarded through you or handwritten. So thanks to everyone who wrote me, but please realize I am just trying to be in compliance with my mission rules when I ask not to receive letters from others directly to my mission email! Thanks.

In other news, thanks for all the letters this week. It's fun to hear from everyone. I liked seeing the pictures of Gen and Stuart and Gigi. I wanted to see Gen's pregnant belly but it was covered in all the pictures! Boo. But I did notice she was wearing my sweater! Haha. So yeah, I'm guessing she's probably starting to fit into my bigger sized clothing as she grows.

This week was interesting. I really need to start bring my diary to the computer cafe place though, because weeks start to meld together and I have no idea what happened when. This week was Xie DaiDai's confirmation. She was so excited about it. She got a really amazing blessing and she was just so happy. She's been really excited about having the gift of the Holy Ghost for awhile...it was so nice to see how happy she was about it. She even wore a skirt, which is a big deal for her, she really isn't the type to wear skirts, but we told her she needed to start wearing a skirt to church, so she went out and bought one. I'm so proud of her! She is one of the most happy people. I really love her a lot.

We met with Wang Zixia yesterday. She won't be able to keep her baptism date. Her husband opposes her being Christian, so it might take a little while to get his signature. She is terrified to even ask him for it, so the next step is going to be getting her to let us meet him, or getting her to have enough faith to at least even ask. I think meeting Wei Yan would be really good for her. It's really sad about that culture problem. She's willing to keep all the commandments, and was even excited about it. She prayed about Joseph Smith and everything...But we've ran into the problem of people from Mainland, like Wei Yan and Wang Zixia marry Taiwanese men who went to China to find a wife. The men very controlling of their wives. They don't respect them a lot, and need to always know where they are at. Wei Yan has been coming to church every week for a long time, and really wants to be baptized, but first she needs to be able to overcome the Sabbath Day problem, because even though she comes to church, her husband and her work together and he won't let her have Sunday's off. After she can find a way to keep the Sabbath, she can start trying again to get her husband and husband's mother to let her get married.

And those aren't our only 2 investigators with an opposition problem. We also are meeting with a 10 year old girl whose mother is a member and really wants her daughter to get baptized, yet because of the husband's opposition, she's also scared to let us come over when her husband is home. It was really sad when we met with them last time, she told us about how her husband had threatened to kill himself if she didn't marry him, so she did because she felt bad for him. And we had to just listen to her story, because we can't give people marriage advice.

It seems to be the never-ending story. I have at least 5 or 6 other people I could talk about that are amazing individuals, but their life is really hard because their husbands "fan dui" (oppose). :/

Another one of our great investigators either a. was possessed yesterday, or b. is bipolar or some sort of crazy. We rode the train all the way out to Yangmei yesterday, which is in our area, but we hardly ever go because it is so far away. And this really nice lady we've been meeting with was acting crazy and saying weird things. When we would ask her to read a scripture aloud, she'd read it out of word order, or put her own words into it. It was really really strange. I felt really uncomfortable and didn't say anything. I just wanted to get out of that place. Some lady approached us in the middle of the lesson and asked about how our church was different, and Zhu di had just had the same question about how she was confused because she didn't have time to go to different churches on Sunday, so I told her about Joseph Smith and when I was reciting his vision...this crazy man came up and like got REALLY close to us. And even though I ignored him and kept talking, he kept interrupting and asking for our surname. He scared the lady who was normal away. And then my companion, who is really nice told him her name...but I was thinking about how the bishop had just told us that Sunday that if men who are sick come up to us, not to feel bad about being honest and telling them to go away...so I told my companion not to talk to him and tell him to go away. So she told him we were in a lesson and he had to leave. And he did. So that was good. There are a lot of crazy men in Taiwan. Men who come up to me on their scooters and try to get me to come over to them. One did this week and I gave him a
tract and said I was busy and he could wait, because my companion was setting up with a nice lady named Rita. So I just pretended to be really intent on what they were saying, but he was freaking me out. I locked my bike and put my backpack on my bike and everything. And when
he saw I wouldn't go near him until my companion was done, he gave me back the tract, I told him he could keep it, but he wasn't interested in the tract and rode away. I was glad. Men like that are just no good. They eat this drug plant here that makes their mouth all red, and then
they are always calling out to us and stuff. I just pretend I don't understand them when I get people like that talking to me. But yeah, Zhu di didn't even see how he was weird, she just was saying we were popular. Then when we asked her to read something, she said she wouldn't because we commanded her? And we told her she had her agency...but we were not feeling comfortable in Yangmei anymore and prayed to end the lesson and left. I hope she was just in a weird mood because I really like her. She was such a sweet nice lady until that encounter where she went weird?

Today for P-day we are going to Li Yufeng's house to make dumplings. She is really great. At FHE this week she finally came out and said why she wasn't getting baptized yet, she doesn't feel ready to give up coffee. She talked about how her husband would make it and she would smell it and couldn't not drink it. So we need to just find time to meet with her super busy husband and
commit him to live the Word of Wisdom, and that will help his wife out a lot! He's progressing a lot slower because he works a lot, and his job requires him to golf on Sunday to have a good word with the boss, so he hasn't been able to come every Sunday...But they are a great family. They are really special. Just progressing slowly along. They are really happy and love one another a lot. They are both always smiling. It's really great. It's rare to see someone smile as much as they do. They are completely sane. Although something hard for me is recently Li yu feng has read DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons, and her English is amazing, and my companion hasn't read them, so she's always asking me questions that aren't important to progress, but I
guess she's interested. She wants to know what mormons believe about the book and all this other stuff I never researched. I just read the book as fiction. And that's all. I forget a lot too. She wants to know about when Christ was born and about how science works with the book
and Mormonism.



My computer is turning off in 1 minutes! So i'm going to go now! Have a great week, ttyl!



Fu jiemei