Missions are all about sacrifice…
Another week down – many more to go! Last Monday we went again to this place called XiMenDing and bought these huge mango ice cream cones! Right after, we had to go over to the mission office to talk with President Jergensen about our English class project that we’ve been working on. He really likes the idea and wants us to get it done! It’s actually perfect timing since the international version of the Liahona wants to interview him – he said that he’s going to call them and tell them that he and his wife will do it as long as they include something about Taiwan’s free English class in it! We’ve also now got some connections with people who can put up any video we make on lds.org.tw!
We were at the mission office multiple times this week working on creating a new logo for our English class. We thought we made a pretty nice looking one – everyone seemed to like it – but then we found out that Taiwanese people strongly associate certain colors with political parties. Unfortunately all the colors we want to use like red and blue, we can’t use in the ways we wanted to, otherwise people may get a bad impression from the logo. This week we’ll be completely re-doing the logo and working on revamping the entire English class set of tracts and banners. We’re also hoping to start filming next week. We’ve been in contact with the groups of church members here who have all the equipment that’s used for filming things for the church website. The church even owns a quadcopter that we can use, which is awesome!
In other news, we finally found a new apartment that’s within our price range. It’s a lot nicer than the one we have now…plus it has no mold in it! It’s actually a completely new apartment on the 9th floor of a building! Our mission office should be signing the paperwork *hopefully* today and then we’ll be able to move in next week sometime! We’re all super excited!
Yang Ming Lun and Luca with Elders Simonson and Anderton
We’ve got about three solid investigators who have baptismal goals set for April 16th. We’re pretty confident that they’ll all be able to be baptized on that date! This picture is of Yang Ming Lun, one of those investigators (the one that writes software for the MRT system and Starbucks!) in the front standing by me. It also shows Luca, our friend from Italy who lives here in LuZhou and works at a restaurant in downtown Taipei! We haven’t really had any lesson with Luca yet, but we’re working on it – we always seem to run into him when he’s coming home from work on the MRT. We’re actually taking him and his girlfriend (she’s Taiwanese and speaks Chinese, English and Italian!) on a temple tour this Friday and then going to dinner with them afterwards!
We’ve definitely got some exciting things planned for the future! I’ll let you all know the updates about these things next week!
– Elder Austin Simonson
文長老