Yup, that’s right, Braptism! I guess baptism also works…

– or – Brownie at the baptism

Ice in the font? No idea…

Anyways, this past week was super awesome! We had Taylor’s baptism this last Saturday and her Confirmation yesterday, on Sunday! Taylor is an American girl who’s been living in Taiwan for a while now. She’s actually lived in several countries, including Saudi Arabia, over the course of her life, which is pretty awesome! She just graduated from an American school here in Taipei (it’s a super expensive private school and you have to take a test to be able to get in) and is heading off to America this upcoming Saturday so she can start college there. We’ve been meeting with her for the entire time I’ve been here in Tianmu – almost 3 months now – plus the time she met with the missionaries for about a month or so before I got here.

The Savior’s always at our baptisms!

She definitely was not the easiest investigator I’ve had, but probably one of the best! Although she questioned almost every detail of everything we taught her, that just shows that she really was involved and paying attention. It definitely wasn’t a bad thing; many times people just say okay to everything we teach and then we have no idea if they’re actually paying attention and understanding what we’re saying. To be honest, I probably learned the most material in the shortest amount of time because of her – for that, I’m very grateful. She’s also got some great friends that she’s introduced us to – like this one really nice girl who’s headed off in a couple weeks to go to Yale in Singapore!

After the fireside

That was pretty much our biggest thing of the week! Yesterday was the monthly new member/investigator fireside. Everyone in the Taipei zones can attend.

Thanks for the photo, Kevin Yang!

There were talks by a few new members and a couple of missionaries did musical numbers. This month we had an elder play guitar and a sister sang a song; both were beautiful! We also got a few temple tours in and worked on setting up lots of former investigators to meet with them as well as with members, but nothing was more exciting than the baptism!

This morning we also allocated some time to celebrating the 4th of July! The best American item we had in the apartment were some awesome American flag socks that my friend, Spencer Matthews, mailed to me – we hung those up and sang along with the national anthem and some other patriotic songs we had on a flash drive. Remember, patriotism is like charity — it begins at home!

. . . and the home of the brave!

We’re pumped for having an awesome time this upcoming week!

– Elder Austin Simonson
文長老

(Big shout out to Hellen Tsai for many of the amazing photos of our Elder!)

Elder Simonson and Hellen Tsai at the fireside

Simonson – What a heel! Anderton – duck face! Haka dancer – Photobomb . . . Nailed it!