First week in my *new* mission!

Hi all!

SO! Guess where my first area is? South Jordan! I'm in the neighborhoods right behind the District with Hobby Lobby, Harmons, Target, etc, across from the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. It's funny because when I lived with Jessica I applied to work at that same Hobby Lobby and a bunch of places in the District. Haha. It's interesting, I also ran into one of the parents of one of the Elders in my MTC District, Elder Van Wagoner. Random and fun. We live in the basement of the Egberts...it's REALLY small world because they were in the Ashley Park Ward in our old stake but just barely moved into this area. Their daughter Amanda Egbert knew Brewy I think...It's really funny.

Things are very different from #1 how I imagined, and #2 how they'll be in Taiwan. I highly doubt Taiwan will be as cooshy. We have a car and a cell phone and get fed awesome food every night by members. We have to work to get investigators, but often the members are just "fed" to us by members. We are teaching twin 13 year-old boys who were friendshipped by their friend in the stake. One of the boys had stolen the girl's Book of Mormon and wouldn't give it back. He wanted to go to Church with her so he and his twin went with her then we taught them yesterday. They are really good boys! We taught the first vision and the Spirit was really strong. The one brother is a really deep kid. He was very contemplative about the First Vision and they both agreed to pray about it. It was pretty neat. We had a woman drop her baptism and told us she didn't want the lessons anymore which was pretty frustrating, but hopefully her fellowshipper keeps tabs on her.

So I've been trying to really find the reason I'm here and not in Taiwan, so I'm finding every opportunity I can to use Chinese. Our stake doesn't have a whole ton of Chinese people, EXCEPT for my neighborhood. Hmmm...interesting! We knocked on one door and set up an appointment to teach her next Tuesday with a Taiwanese member. Then we knocked another door of a part-member Chinese family. It was funny...if people in Taiwan are the same as these people, it will be VERY interesting, because all 3 of the Chinese houses we've knocked have let us in. But it's funny because they say pretty much "Come in we're not interested!" in the same breath as if it were one sentence. The part-member family opened the door and immediately said "come in!" and the wife yelled from the top of the stairs "we're Buddhist and SO BUSY!" But they were very cordial and talked about how busy they were for about 15 minutes. Haha. The man denied he was a member. I bore my testimony in Chinese and they said, "Oh very good Chinese, bye!" Haha. They were awesome. They looked very much like every older couple we ran into in Ningbo. Then we knocked another Chinese door and an older women and 3 little kids scurried to the door. The woman said she didn't speak English. So I found out at the door in my broken Chinese that she's from Indonesia and is Catholic. She let us in and showed us her ADORABLE grandchildren. I could have stolen that baby, he was SOOO CUTE!!! We chatted for a moment, then I realized..."What is going on? I'm sitting on this lady's couch, we're in her house, it's awkward...I think I'm supposed to start teaching something now." So I blundered through asking her about her belief in prophets and the Bible then told her about Joseph Smith and the first vision. She said she understood (I wonder how much she really did...) and I asked her if she believed Joseph Smith story and she said she did. I asked her to pray about JS and she said she would. It was really cool but there is still so much of a language barrier that I'm not totally sure if she knew what was going on or if I even knew what was going on too. Oh well. When we teach the Chinese family on Tuesday we are going back and going to give her a BOM and we'll have the Taiwanese lady with us so hopefully it will work out.

Anyway, it's really good here. I'm really enjoying this. I honestly am not anticipating Taiwan being this relaxed, but that's okay too. We're given alot of opportunities to serve people. One day we knocked a door of a little girl we were going to teach (parents are members but inactive). The mom answered and said her daughter wasn't going to be baptized any time soon. She was pretty blunt. We could have just walked off the porch, but it just seemed like the lady didn't want us to even though she was saying she did. Then she burst into tears and said life was hard at that time. We felt like we should just give her a hug. It's interesting where Heavenly Father puts you sometimes.

So the mission President Laney is AWESOME! He's so laid back. We go to the temple every Tuesday and new missionaries get to go to Temple Square. So last Friday, Sister Peterson (another Taiwan visa-waiter) and I got to take Trax with a ton of other new missionaries and tour temple square. Of course, I left my stupid bag in the visitors center!! ARGH!!! It had my scriptures and my wallet in it. It's so awkward, because the APs told me to call family or friend to pick it up and give it to them. So embarrassing. BAH. Yes Danny, I lost my purse again. Haha.

Anyway, love you all! Can't wait to hear from you! If you wrote last week, I won't get it until next Monday because our mail schedule is lame. :S