April 29, 2008 Email

1st transfer is over! this morning i got up at like 5 and headed to the train station to go to a little tiny tiny tini tini tiny so small town called fang liao.

the way there i was by myself for about an hour, the first hour of the ride i was with another Elder, but the last hour i was all alone. it was kinda weird not having another missionary to talk to.

i got to fang liao about 15 minutes ago and we headed here to come email. So far i haven't got to see much of the town, but i here it is super small. i love small! its gonna be so awesome. there is just a little branch down here and i think our area spans over like 50 kilometers. i am not quite sure yet since i haven;t really seen any of it. i saw a little on the train, it is all rice fields and coconut trees.

well last week was quite a special week. Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles came and spoke to our mission. We had to take a train from Tainan (my old area) to kaohsiung (the mission headquaters) to go see him. It was an awesome talk. it wasn't actually a talk, it was more like a conversation between him and 120 missionaries. He is such an inspired man.

Anyway, of course what do you think happens to his laptop just as he goes to start? ..... It crashes! I was sitting a little towards the back and i saw it happen, but i figured i would just let them handle it. But President Hsu wouldn't stand for that. About 10 seconds after it had crashed, he jumped up and in front of Elder Scott and everybody, he was like "Elder Anderson, where ever you are can you come help us?" I was a little nervous, but i ran up to the front and fiddle with it for a minute, no luck, they had the wrong adapter so the battery wouldn't work. Anyways, long story short, they went and grabbed another computer and i helped them set that up and get Elder Scotts presentation working. How cool is that though I got to fix on of the 12 Apostles computer?!

I have done a lot of fixing of computers here so far. That was like the first thing President had me do when I got to Taiwan was help them with some computer problems they were having in the Mission office. I almost got transferred into the Mission Office this transfer. But i barely escaped, it was a close one. President Hsu called me and asked me if i wanted to do work in Microsoft Excel, and I told him i knew how to, but i wasn't like the master of Excel, so he let me off the hook. It would have been tough to be stuck in the office for the 2nd transfer.

I don't think i have told you all my full chinese name yet. It is Zhang zhi yue. Zhang is just a last name and doesn't really have a meaning, but Zhi means ambition, and Yue means Tall Mountain, so that is kind of cool.

Taiwan is so crazy. it is probably one of the most unique places in the world. it has a little of so many cultures. it is a little japanese, a lot of america, and of course chinese. Taiwan also has a special feature that comes equipped on all of the streets and roads here. I call it the 10 "foot rule." Because you can't go 10 feet without smelling something new. There are a lot of smells, some good, and some very very nasty. hahaha what can you do?

So i got an odometer for my bike about 2 weeks ago today. In my last area we didn't bike much, but in the last 2 weeks we biked 207.1 kilometers. In my new area, i will be biking A LOT more. I was in the city, but now i am in the country. It is the most rural part of the mission.

The work continues on. In Tainan we're working with this young man that was about 24 and helping him to get ready for baptism. We helped him to set a goal so that he could slowly become a little better. Changing doesn't happen over night, so we have been working with him to turn his life around, he is a good kid.

I am officially no longer a greenie. I have a new companion and i am no longer with my trainer. Sometimes i wasn't sure if i was the trainee or if he was. He was a goof, good guy though. I am excited to be with somebody new, it will be fun to work with people of all sorts of personalities.

Sorry no pictures this week, i just tried and the USB ports arent working and i don't have time to switch, i am gonna try and send a package maybe in a couple weeks and i will put my pictures in there.

Well i am loving it out here, somedays are really tough and you just want to sleep for like 20 hours, but usually it is great. I think the people will be a little nicer in this smaller town, maybe.

2 days ago i made a phone call to a member to set up a time for him to come help us visit some members, and i understood everything and he understood everythin. It felt awesome! Usually, i have a hard time understanding people on the phone, it is just really hard, but i stinking did it. So cool, people understand me usually when i talk, i don't always understand them, especially if they start talking about vocab i haven't learned yet. It is coming! I am getting more and more comfortable everyday.

Well i love you all. hope everyone is doing great!

Peace