Transfer 9 Week 1: Sister Bruno in Taoyuan City with Under Four Months to Go

This week we did Temple Tours again. We had a really touching experience with 3 members. 2 mothers, and one of their husbands. They were from Taizhong and came up to Taipei for a tour. Well, we went up to show them the temple book we have, which maybe one day I'll take pictures of it. What it is, is pictures that kind of run through a plan of salvation in some ways, so we review plan of salvation with the temple for our members. Well, we did this for this lady, and when we get to the place with a memorial and a lady laying flowers I usually just explain we will all die one day, then we move on to talk about resurrection and returning to God...the more important parts, but in this tour I felt prompted to mention sometimes people around us die also, then my companion testified about the comfort of knowing we'd be resurrected and return to God, and the lady, since I had talked about death had been sobbing, her husband was patting her...then I testified also about God comforting us and welcoming us home. I was a little worried, but we just continued on, to show them a movie put out by our Mission called Believe, which talks about how we need to believe in the growth of taiwan, and the gospel, etc. It's good and has pictures and music. At the end, the lady shares with us, that her oldest son recently passed away after suffering for 2 years, and that she felt some comfort in doing this tour, even though sometimes she didn't know what her son was doing. By the end, there wasn't a dry eye in the room, and Sister Collyer shared her testimony on eternal families. It was really a faith building tour. I was glad to be a part of it. That woman had some strong faith. She's been through some hard trials. I was glad to see she had such a loving and supportive husband, who could go to the temple with her, and stay by her side in her trials. So yeah. They were really wonderful and even gave us these onion cakes that were absolutely delicious after the tour. It was a special experience.

In other news, I moved again, this time to Taoyuan City (Taoyuan 1 and 3 ward). Zhongli is in Taoyuan county, so I'm back to around the same area I was born in, but not too terribly close. It's still a good 12ish minutes train ride. And the bike ride to the train station of course. I've been moving a lot lately, but not too much and I don't really mind moving. I just don't care anymore. I only have a very short time left on a mission, so I could stay here the rest, or I could move again, I'm okay with whatever. My new companion is Sister Adrienne Tedjamulia. Yeah, from the MTC, the one transfer older than me Sister Ted. Sister Ackerson is down in Danshui training...the only missionary, elder or sister, that came in this transfer, a Sister Amy Collyer. I thought this transfer would be a big massacre and kind of dramatic with so many people going home, but it was kind of smooth, only one missionary came on, they closed a couple areas...basically sister transitions were very few for some reason we all thought they would be, but it wasn't. Although, now we all think next transfer will be what we thought this would be, with some 6 new sisters coming on. This mission is seeing a lot of drawbacks in missionary numbers I think, but soon I will be home, so I won't even see the dramatic changes from what I hear. Today, from not too reliable sources, they said with my group, 45 elders were leaving. Maybe a handful are coming in. I'm not sure, but I know a lot of people will leave with us to make it home in time for school, so we won't see a lot of Elder extensions to that next transfer. That's for sure.

Within my district though, there was a lot of change. The Bali Elders were whitewashed, and just Elder Smith and Sister Ackerson stayed from before...so they will get a lot of change... My old district leader, had a hard time leaving I think. He was only there 3 months like I was, I think he had settled in. And it is not easy to hear you are going co-senior...with the way the mission has been lately, there isn't spots for people who are older on a mission and qualified to be seniors, to go senior, or stay senior companion...so with Elders they've started experimenting with co-senior. Elder You is going to be one, and in Danshui, I'm pretty sure Elder Smith is in that situation too. I bet he'll have a lot of fun though. His companion is funny. I've met him. Also Taiwanese, so they'll have no language barrier or anything. They haven't done this kind of thing with sisters (yet anyways), but it will be interesting to see how that goes with the Elders. Elder You is in Taoyuan as well, just a different ward, so I'll still see him now and again.

As for my new district, not much change happened I'm now with 4 Taiwanese Elders in my district, so that will be interesting for my companion and I to be the only Americans in our entire district. That's all on the whole mission move call madness front.

Besides that, really not much to say. I guess mostly because moving is a transition. I just got here to Taoyuan only moments ago, and we needed to directly come email since it took awhile to get here. I took my luggage down to Taipei, then waited around and said goodbye to the leaving missionaries, such as my fun little Sister Chen companion, from back in my Zhongli days...for like almost 2 hours. Then, when they got there, we went to lunch with the member who was helping Sister Allen come down, and me come up...and then finally came here. Now Danshui feels like awhile in the past, even though I just left this morning, but I've known since Zone Conference on Wednesday when President told Sister Ackerson she was training, that I was going to move. I just had to wait until Friday to know where. I've been telling people all week that I'm going to move, even before I knew where to...so yeah...it's just been another moving week. And now, I will spend the next 6 weeks trying to figure out how to get to basic places, and trying to memorize important leadership names...etc. Sister Tedjamulia will be able to help me a lot with that drill though, she's been in Taoyuan about 11 months now, so that will help a lot.

Well, that's all I feel like writing for today! I'll send pictures or something in my extra time. BYE

Oh! P.S. Funny scripture moral for the week that the Elders shared with us: Ether 15:31. Even when you feel like Shiz in the morning, you still have to try to get up. That's Elders for you. Always finding fun little principles like that. I appreciated it. Hopefully I shared that sentiment correctly.

Laojie Fire

Hello and welcome again to my life story from 淡水 Danshui. As for move calls, in this area it's almost like they didn't happen. Our entire district is staying the exact same, and even in the zone, one of our zone leaders is now training and opening up a new area, but same ward he was in before, so those two will live with our zone leaders...one new, one same. Also, in our 北投Beitou ward, Elder Kyle 欧杨 Olsen is moving down to 台东 Taidong..we both go home at the same time, so when Sister Ackerson 孙 and I said bye yesterday, we were like, see you when we are headed out together! haha. So yeah, not a big change feeling. With the exception of Elder Olsen, everyone else is still around. So that's exciting.

I actually felt it this week that we'd stay together. We had two investigators that would have been really upset if either of us moved. When we talked to Whitney about move calls, she teared up a little. I felt really bad and hoped neither of us moved as she said she had a hard time with change and she bonded with us...She said she'd been praying for a week already that neither us or the 石牌 Shipai Elders would move. And, none of us did. She's doing really great and she really understands and desires forgiveness for her past sins. She still is overcoming the Word of Wisdom, but she is doing a great job, and she continues to come to church weekly, whether we are there or not, so that should help her faith a lot.

Also in investigator news, Yan Yuhang 严宇航 is doing really good too. She is going to do her interview tonight and wants to get baptized on Friday so her brother in law can do it. However, since this last week, she couldn't get out of her house (she can only come meet us at the church if her husband is home to take care of her child) she hasn't done her interview, so we didn't announce the baptism on Sunday, so if she passes tonight, us missionaries will be doing a lot of calls to schedule together a baptism, especially since our MM leader in this particular ward pretty much doesn't even like his calling, we never have meetings and we aren't helped much in that aspect, so I hear baptisms are missionaries arranged here...usually it's half and half...but either way, I'm willing to go through whatever to make it so our investigators have a positive baptism experience...so yeah, if everything goes according to the wants she expressed, we should have a baptism on Friday...if it can't be thrown together, we'll just do it next week, but I don't see why we couldn't get it all together. We did spend quite some time yesterday trying to get it worked out so she could get her interview tonight, since we can't use the church on Monday nights, and the Elders and I will just have to spend a little of Preparation day doing an interview (Elder Kyle Broadhead and Elder You ?Sen 游？森 (sorry dad forgot his Chinese name...well one character) are so good to us). Yeah so we will have an interesting next week! But that can be talked about next week.

In other this weeks news, 陈芝柔Chen Zhirou is doing really great. She meets with us 2-3 times a week, and will even set up with us herself. We set up to go do a Temple Tour in Taipei on Thursday, so I thought we were set up for the week, and Zhirou asks, when are we going to have class at the church this week? We haven't scheduled yet! So we found some time on Tuesday afternoon after WPS to do it. I don't know how to help her father allow her to get baptized, 我还在想办法。 I'm still thinking of a way.HAHA. But yeah, she's doing great! I hope she can make her date.

And also we are meeting with a 江 Jiang Doreen who set a date in 5 weeks. He desire is strong. She's amazing. We taught second, and we went over her part to return to God (the gospel of Jesus Christ) just as an overview, and she got out pen and a paper to write it down! If that's not a good investigator I don't know what is. She still hasn't come to church, but she said she will next week. I'm excited about this week, we aren't teaching a million lessons, but our progressing investigators are progressing really great! So yeah, the area is still doing awesome.

And now, for the final story of the week, and maybe the most interesting thing that happened this week, Sister Ackerson and I had a day where we had a ton of lessons, and to make a long story short, we thought we had to go to Beitou next, and did, but we were supposed to be in Danshui to meet with Yan...so basically we stood her up. When she called and we realized we were wrong in our appointment order, we felt awful, but our area is too huge there was no way we could ask her to wait and come...but instead of eating dinner in Beitou when we had some time, since we felt like complete crap, we went back to Danshui and bought some flowers for Yan and left the on the doorstep and ran. She said we were too dramatic and she forgives us of course, and isn't upset, but we wanted to do something nice! Well, after we ran...we are about a block up, and Yan calls...so Sister Ackerson is on the phone telling her we just wanted to do something nice......and I notice a huge black smoke in the air...I'm thinking about how bad the Taiwan pollution is...when 3 Fire trucks whiz by with their sirens on. I can't even hear Sister Ackerson, but it clicks and I tell her to look at the big black smoke in the sky! 老街 Laojie is on fire! And we were on Laojie!! (jie 街 means a small street in Chinese ) So we walk towards the MRT back to Beitou, but walk along the coast, and find out that this HUGE coast guard type boat is completely engulfed in flames. Unfortunately we can't read the news, so I'm unsure the entire story behind it, but that's what we did for dinner that night, watch a boat go up in flames, and drop up flowers. It was crazy to watch the firefighters wait for the boat to come into shore, and there were standing in the cold weather with the hose trying to get the fire out...and some other boat starts getting close and spraying it too. I got videos and pictures, I'll send a few pictures, and the videos with a CD or something maybe next month when I have some money. It was crazy. There was a huge crowd watching. It's strange we ended up being in that place just when a huge boat was burning...that doesn't happen every day. I was really entranced. It was crazy! And that's the only thing really of note. Love you guys, have a good week. Write me and send pictures! ha.

Sister Flora Bruno. Sistah Fu4. 傅