Ghosts, Gummy Soup, and the Gospel---oh my!

Hello!

Hi! I hope everyone is doing great and life is treating everyone well! Remember to pray always and read your scriptures!

So! Let's see, what has happened this week? This week has been not so great yet great at the same time. We taught alot of lessons (23) which was a huge blessing, but only found one new investigator and one investigator come to Church. :S Yeesh. It's been rough. It's been rough for the work and rough for me personally. Still trying to adjust and fight some homesickness and frustration with myself and the language. But things are better and will be even better. It's less lonely as I get to know the members (even if they don't understand me, at least there are beginning to be familiar faces). Things have been good in other areas though. We have one investigator that is sooo sweet and shy. She's 17 and despite her shyness has come to church 3 times and 2 of those times were completely alone. She reads and prays and stopped drinking tea and coffee and said she "feels good" since she stopped. She has a baptismal date, but she isn't positive if she'll be ready by then. But she's doing everything and is just amazing, so we have faith she'll be baptized. That ward NEEDS Young Women. They have ONE. So we're wanting to fill that area. The YW President is so awesome. She's getting sealed in a couple of weeks and we may be able to go. So exciting! The Shaos have only been members for a little over a year. She had an interesting story as well...it seems like Taiwan has ALOT of "Ghost" stories. Alot of people see or say they see ghosts and spirits. But I believe them. When you have a culture wrapped up in creepy voodoo (not literally voodoo...but just very spiritual and worshipping all sorts of dead things...) then you'll undoubtably see some weird dongxi. The YW President said her 4 year old daughter sees 5 ghosts on a regular basis. 2 Parents, 2 children, and "a king". They are creepy and watch them in their apartment. They got so creeped out by this that they prayed, fasted, gave everyone a blessing, etc. but nothing worked. She even turned to Buddhist "bai bai"-ing and incense junk to get rid of them, but that didn't work either. Then she had the Bishop come over and dedicate their home and LO! The ghosts are gone! Strange, huh??

We went a visited a Less Active Member in Hukou the other day. She's Indonesian and fed us Indonesian food. It was soooo good but so spicy! It's funny, I've found that Asian food cares very little about presentation and texture. The Indonesian food had intestine in it, but tasted great. There was also this saucy hard boiled egg stuff that looked like it was scraped out of the bottom of a dumpster, but tasted great. The crab she made looked like it had been rolled in a mire, but was crazy tastey. It's funny, they put gummy worms in their soup! We ate a sweet potato soup and there were little (less sweet) gummy worms in it. Haha, SO weird. I think I'm getting used to the food though. The first night I was here we ate "Dou Hua" which I thought was sick but now it's my favorite thing in the world!! SOOO good! So light and sweet. I've lost weight the past couple weeks. The first little bit I was here I ate alot of rice and peanut butter and grew an unsightly "Bundt cake" around my belly button, but it's now just a wee little donut. But one of our investigators told me I have "more of a duzi than my companion" and patted my stomache. Grr!! Haha.

We're SO excited for General Conference! I'm so jealous of all of you that already got to see it!! We watched Pres Monson's talk last night, but won't see the rest until this weekend. His opening talk was different than it normally is. I was surprised. We had a woman get up in testimony meeting yesterday hysterical and heated about how much of a blessing it is that we have living prophet who talks with God and people still skip or sleep through conference. I quite agree! She's a good woman.

Today is a holiday. It's "Sao Mu" or Tomb Sweeping Day. It's pretty much like Memorial Day, but they also "bai bai" or worship their dead while they are there. Isn't it so interesting that Sao Mu lands right around Easter? Hmmm...interesting. Wow, the Church is true. Some of their characters even have gospel connections! Like "yi" for the word "righteous" is the symbol of a Lamb over the symbol of Me. So like "lamb over me". There's also some sort of ancient tapestry they found in China that has Adam and Even and temple things on it. Interesting, eh?? I am positive that the Chinese had the gospel anciently. I have no doubt.

The other day we had a funny little event...I can never remember if I already told this in another email...but oh well. I ran over a plastic bag and it got caught in the gears. A guy ran over and helped me pick it out and cut his finger in the process. As that was happening, my companion's bike fell over and her papers full of vital info blew ALL over the road. So while I'm picking trash out of my gears, she's dodging traffic picking up a progress records. Geh. The wind here is SO strong.

Have I told anything about Phillipinos and their "indentured servitude"? It's soooo rough. A TON of Phillipinos come and work here in Taiwan as restaurant employees, field workers, nannies, factory workers, etc. They sign 3 year contracts and work from 8am to 8pm or more. Most of the time they don't get a single day off. They live either above the restaurants they work at, in dorms with other Phillipinos, etc. They send their money home and generally sign SEVERAL contracts. Some people have been working for 9 years. Can you imagine being single, alone, working 12+ hour days, having no day off, sending your money home, not being able to go to church (if you're a member, which quite a few are), and doing all that for YEARS?? And being in your 20s! I can't imagine it. One of our new members, Cecile, is the sweetest thing ever. She's working and doing all this to pay for her cousin to go to college. Wow, I'm a bad cousin, because I don't think I'd ever do that. Speaking of cousins, is Uncle David doing okay??

Well, gotta go. Today we're going to Xinzhu to eat sea food!

Love you all!
Coley