At the chapel…sign says “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints”, with the larger characters being “Jesus Christ”. The chapel is on the 7th floor.
This week has been really fun with all the new year activities going on here in Taiwan! You’ll see and hear firecrackers going off almost all the time! This last week we were fed by members for both lunch and dinner everyday…we usually just wouldn’t even eat breakfast at home so we would have more room for lunch!
Whole district taken out to eat during Chinese New Year. Accompanied by the ward mission leader, his mom, his assistant, and the assistant’s twin brother.
On Monday evening last week, we went over to a member’s house and they fed us tons of pizza from Pizza Hut! They sell many types of pizza you could get in the US, but they also have ones that are special to here in Taiwan. We’re always super excited to eat at the American places here – not because we don’t like the native food, but it’s fun to try their versions of American food! Our Tuesday night dinner was also awesome. The family lives in basically a penthouse, since it’s on the top floor of the building. The husband is an interior designer, so their house looks amazing, plus it has an awesome view! They gave us so much food and it was great! They have a woman from the Philippines who they hired to help them with food and such, but they still work on cooking as well.
I can’t believe I ate the whole thing…
Wednesday’s dinner was with the Bishop of our ward. He was going to take us to this steakhouse, but it was closed because of it being a holiday all last week. We instead went to this place called Sushi Express. All the food comes around the restaurant on a little conveyor belt. You pay based upon how many plates of food you eat. I decided to go ahead and try all the most interesting things they had. I ended up eating boiled octopus tentacles, sea urchin, grilled eel, and two whole baby octopus. I probably wouldn’t choose to make a meal out of any of them, but they actually weren’t that bad!
This last week was more difficult to be able to find people on the street to talk to and also to schedule appointments. Most people were either busy or out of town because of the holiday. We did find this one college girl when were were just leaving the MRT station who actually spoke really good English. Her English name is Angel. She had time, so we talked with her for about ten minutes, got her phone number, and set up an appointment to meet with her again. She seemed very open and willing to learn, so we’ll see how it goes!
Great Taipei Metropolitan Park, Sanchong District
We couldn’t meet with any of our other investigators this week because most all of them were out of town for the new year! We should start being able to see them again this week though which is good!
Happy Chinese New Year!
– Elder Austin Simonson
文長老
Sister Wong, Elder Simonson, and Elder Stephens
Plenty to see…the park is about 420 acres and is the largest in Taiwan!