Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Happy Chinese New Year Jan 27, 2009

first things first! i beat that 85 year old man hahaha... he was amazing though! i am sure he would have beat me so bad 40 years ago. me and Elder mickelsen went to play him last week and he was really serious about it. he made elder mickelsen referee while we played. Anyways, the old man cheated so bad hahahaha... i called him out on it a couple times but he always was like ask the ref, and then me and Elder Mickelsen just looked at eachother and smiled and let him do what he wanted. i think its part of the culture here that if you can cheat and get away with it there is no shame in it. it was so hilarious. i think the funniest thing was when the ball bounced twice on his side and he hit it back so i caught it and he gave the point to himself. then i asked him, didn't it hit twice and he said i dunno ask the ref. hahaha. then he started giving himself extra points. anyways, it was so fun i cant even tell you how hilarious it was. a big part of the culture over here is saving face so after i beat him 2 games, he was like, i brought the wrong paddle today, this is the wrong paddle. what a cute old man. i cant really take any pride away from beating an 85 year old guy, but he was stink good. when we first started playing i was worried.

this week is chinese new year. since monday we have been eating like crazy. lunch and dinner is always at a members house. in about 45 minutes we are going to a members for lunch. most of the stores are closed so there is not really any good food to eat, so the members put together this little schedule to invite the missionaries over for a meal. it was really nice of them and it has been a great way to meet the people here.

since i am in a smaller town, nothing to crazy happens for chinese new years. fireworks are always going off and people are always burning the paper money to worship their ancestors. when i first got to taiwan it took sometime to get used to the fireworks here. they use really loud ones and so it feels like little bombs are going off around you. i was thinking about it the other day and this would be a terrible place to bring a war veteran they would be having flash backs every 5 minutes hahaha...

well this year is the year of the BULL. i didnt know that until a couple days ago, but it makes a lot of since now, because lately i have seen a ton of people wearing chicago bulls coats and hats and stuff. i am a Dragon, so i still have a couple more years until its my year.

this week we havent really been teaching that much because everyone is out partying. we have been teaching this Filipino guy named Greg Bancolita, he is awesome. there is a member here from the phillipines so we invited him to come help us teach and he basically taught it all in Tagalog (filipino language). it was awesome. he have been teaching this greg for a while. his english is good, but talking about gospel stuff is a little hard for him. well, i gotta go eat some more chinese food. the gospel is true!!!

love you all,

Elder Anderson

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