Monday, March 11, 2013

Accidentally rode through a funeral... It was super awkward

March 11, 2013

Hellooooo! Geezzz I'm sorry that I'm writing so late today. IT"S BEEN SO CRAZY LATELY!!! Today we spent our whole preparation day in Taizhong preparing for an english training that I'm going to give the whole mission on Thursday..... AHHH! We've recently started a new english program that we're trying to get started, and I'm doing training on getting effective feedback from your students and helping them feel our LOVE for them. I'm nervous but excited at the same time. I'm terrible at presentations and stuff, so I decided to write a song instead haha. I'm going to play my uke and sing a silly but information packed song, then do some demonstrations, then some other stuff that I haven't quite thought of yet, but I'll work it out in the next few days. It'll be fun! We'll do it with the northern half of the mission in the morning, then drive down to Gaoxiong and do it again with the South. We haven't even bought groceries or anything yet today, and we're still in Taizhong, so I really don't have a ton of time to write this week. I'm SO SORRY!!!!! Next week should be a lot more relaxed, so I can write a long long longggg email. Let me stop telling you how much time I don't have and instead use the time I do have to tell you about my week! Haha

ok... So Monday night, I met some of our newer members. Chen JM is so sweet and her 2 daughters also come to church every week. She was baptized on Christmas and loves the gospel so much! I love hearing people's stories of how they met missionaries, why they wanted to learn more, and how it has changed and blessed their life. During personal study this week, I read that hearing the testimony of others can kindle your own faith. My mission just makes me so happy!!! well, the gospel in general just makes me so happy!!!

Here are some quick random funny things:
We had an earthquake that shook our apartment on Tuesday. It wasn't severe, just really fun. We were all studying when our rolly chair started to roll. Some things moved a bit, but other than that there were no big effects.

Sister Burrows and I were stopped at a red light, when a man called out from the side of the road to us. He was sitting next to a fruit stand, with about 8 sons next to him in a row (the oldest not more than 20) He said that we could have a pick of any of his sons to marry, we told him politely that we were not really interested, but thanks for the offer, and rode away laughing.

We accidentally rode through a funeral... It was super awkward... The Taiwanese have a ton of deep traditions when someone passes away. They usualy rent out a rainbow tent, fill it with flowers, burn paper money to their gods, wear black capes over their body and read their fojiao scripture with a metronome block. The last day, they will wear bright pink capes with yellow stripes on it and crawl through the streets to another destination while wailing and mourning. We were going through a tiny ally when all the sudden we passed some of the people crawling on the street. By the time we realized what was going on, we couldn't turn back and had to quickly go through it, pass the fire bin, and get out as fast as we could! We felt SO bad. The only good part of the story is that they hopefully didn't notice we went through because they were all crawling on their hands and knees with their faces facing the ground. Note to self: beware of funerals.

There is a cute little girl that comes to english every week. Her name is Octapus.

One night we went to one of the cities we cover up one of the mountains to meet with a family. The bus to come back home was supposed to get there at 8:40, so we could be home by 9:30... however it was an HOUR LATE! We waited and waited there but no bus. Finally it came, and we had to call President Bishop because we were going to be late getting home. The ride home is like a rollercoaster, it is so fun! The road back home is really curvy and bumpy, and the bus has really bad shocks, so we are always bumping up and down like crazy, it is SOOO fun. We laugh the whole way :)

AHHHH my time is up but I have so many more stories to share with you all. I'm sorry, but I truly love and miss you all!!!!!!

Love, Sister Smart

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