Mom,
You were asking about my comp...well, he is great! We get along really well. He goes home right at the end of October. We are looking at going and hitting golf balls at a driving range one of our P-days. He has definitely been helpful.
Also, America still does not have as much Hello Kitty as there is here.
Ok, so first off the words for I Am A Child of God:
wo3 shi4 shen2 di hai2zi, ta1 chai2 wo3 lai2 ci3 ci4, ci4 wo3 yi2 ge shi4shang4 jia1ting2, you3 qin1ai4 di shuang1 qin1. ling3 wo3, dao3 wo3, yu3 wo3 tong2 zai4, zhu4 wo3 xing2 zheng4lu4. jiao1 wo3 suo3 you3 ying1 zuo4 shi4, ta1 ri4 yu3 shen2 tong2 zhu4.
That's the first verse. I can maybe over the next couple weeks get the other verses for times sake.
So that's awesome that Jeff and Ryan came over, sharing their thoughts and feelings about Taiwan. So my jacket is fine that I wear it when it is heavy rain, but for the light stuff it's not even a bother. I'm jealous Jeff can take cat naps during the day though. I have yet to sleep a full night through. On good nights I wake up once in the night. On not so good nights I wake up several times throughout the night. I don't know what is causing me to wake up during the night though. So it's hard now during the afternoons that always around 2 or 3 I get really tired and nod like if we are teaching or in a setting where we are just sitting down. I really wish they could let us missionaries take naps. It makes sometimes hard to do strengthening and workouts in the morning right at 6 (yes, Elder Dailey and I wake up at 6 so we can have an hour of language study rather than just half an hour in the morning) because I am so tired and still haven't woken up or anything.
Yeah we can get copies of the Ensign or Liahona in English or Chinese. We haven't gotten the last couple months though. It might be something we have to tell the office elders about. But yeah we can read them. I have been reading the May issue a lot on all the conference talks. I just looked at the calendar last night and saw that one of the last things Elder Dailey and I will do together before he goes home is watch General Conference together.
I think Elder Vandiford actually might have gotten the psychology test idea from Elder Allen or one of the office Elders.
That is definitely something I miss a lot is watching the RSL games. One of my t-shirts I have with me is my RSL shirt actually. That is sweet though that there season is going really well with having the whole change up a lot of players this year. So to answer one of Dad's questions about the soccer is no I don't really get a chance or anything to play soccer or do anything soccer wise. Soccer is not big at all here, like literally no one really plays it. It's all either Basketball or Baseball. Like you would be surprised actually at how many people I see wearing NBA Basketball jerseys here. Also, you would be surprised at how much English people here actually know. I will share an experience a little later on that happened last night about something like that.
Sounds like a busy Sunday. My Sunday yesterday consisted of going to church at 9 till 12, then afterwards we had ward correlation till about 1:15. Then at 2 we had an investigator come to the church that we taught (went a little over on time with him) then at 4 we met these two kids at the Feng Shan West station for the MRT (the subway) and taught them till about 4:45. Went home then finally to eat, since it was fast sunday. I have never liked fasting a whole lot, but I still do it. Then at 6:30 we had an appointment with a less active that when we showed up his daughter was there but said he wasn't. We got his cell phone number from her since we only had the home phone number and tried calling him. He didn't answer so we started going down the road to tract and call the APR (our Active Progress Record, people we call that are investigators or potentials as well as some less actives we are working with). We looked back down the road and saw a man walking and went walking right up to the house where the less active lives and realized that was the less active we set up to meet with. So we went back to meet with him and met till about 7:15. Then this is where we had a miracle happen. Every Sunday night there is Family Home Evening for the young adults as well as us missionaries invite investigators to it. We as missionaries never go to it unless we have an investigator going or a recent convert. We had called our one investigator Sam or Brother Shang and he had told us he would go, but after meeting with the less active we called him again (we wanted to make sure he was for sure going because its a 25 minute bike ride to the church from our apartment and the less active lived right by our apartment) and he said he was out eating with his family. So he was not going. Another investigator Charlie (who also knows English really well and when we even talk Chinese to him he replies back in English) said he would go but not get there until 8. The FHE starts at 7. So we were already planning to be late. But so we left the less actives home and after about a minute Elder Dailey and I stopped. We didn't know if we should go to the church or not since that is a lot of travel time or if our efforts could be put to better use somewhere else. We were thinking this because Charlie on multiple times because he is busy with school and working for one of his professors has fanged our gezi's (literally Chinese is fang women de gezi which means literally placing pigeons, pretty much getting stood up), so we didn't know if Charlie would actually show up. We called him again and he said he would go. So then we decided to pray and ask Heavenly Father for guidance. After the prayer we both had feelings that either choice we would make would be beneficial that it was something the Lord was leaving up to us to choose. So we decided to go the church because we wanted to meet with Charlie and had faith he would be there. As we were riding along and contacting with people we were stopped at the intersection of Kaixuan Lu (lu means road) and Xingfu Lu. Elder Dailey was talking to one man who right when the light turned green zoomed off on his scooter. But so we both just start pedaling along and all of a sudden a man on a scooter driving next to us was telling us in English that he wants to talk to us. So we pull over to the side of the road and start talking with him. His name is Sean and knows English really well (he majored in English) and right off the bat he said he wants to find peace for the soul. He had tried finding happiness in money and things before but he told us he just wasn't happy. He had investigated churches before, including ours, and was unsure between deciding between Buddhism or Christianity. But so Elder Dailey and I talked to him and testified to him about Eternal Peace and Blessings compared to short term happiness. We even shared a scripture with him, and gave him a Book of Mormon. There are a lot of things he agreed with us on, but also some things he was direct about not agreeing with (he is studying to be a lawyer). But both Elder Dailey and I bore powerful witness and testimony to him about God as our Heavenly Father, the blessings and hope that believing in God bring, and how the Book of Mormon teaches and blesses our lives personally and individually. I invited him to read the introduction last night on his own and told him the promise the book brings of teaching how to obtain eternal peace and happiness. We tried to set up a time to meet then and there, but he was busy tonight with an interview, so we will be calling him either tonight or tomorrow to set up and meet with him. We have to meet with him quickly though because he starts classes on the 10 and will be super busy with those. But so this was our miracle that happened. We were being faithful, obedient, diligent, and fulfilling our calling. And we have someone who wants to talk to us, someone who knows English really well that I am able to bear powerful testimony to making it really personal to him. Very rarely do you have someone who comes and wants to talk to you or is on a scooter and wants to talk to you.
I definitely miss all of your food though. There is no way for me to make cookies here in Taiwan because none of the kitchens have ovens. So I settle for getting Oreo's each week. Also you would be proud of me, I get my protein each day. Pretty much every meal at least has eggs, meat, or both. Like one of my favorites to eat is dong bao fan. It's fried rice (which has meat in it) that they then wrap scrambled/fried eggs around and put ketchup on top. It's so good. Or like yesterday for dinner I had two chua bings (Chinese pancakes) with two scrambled eggs on top of each with ketchup. So I get my protein. But I have a actually lost 5 pounds since coming from the MTC and being here in Taiwan.
I love you very much and miss your food and being home to share life with you and Dad!
Love Ya!
Elder Dayley
