Ping Pong and Drunk Old Men Jan 20, 2009

There is this guy named Jiang that we went to visit this week. I had never met him before, but my companion said he was a pretty okay investigator. Anyways, when we got to his house he was out front in some lawn chairs drinking tea with his friend. It was about 8 pm at night and really dark. anyways we talked to them for about 5 minutes and then one of their drunk friends starts walking down the alley towards us. When he got to us he was so excited to see foreigners and started rambling on and on. I had to strain my ears to understand what he was saying. He started asking us a ton of questions and when i told him that my chinese last name was Zhang. He freaked, he was like "NOOO WAAYY!! ME TOOO!!!" It is important to make note that there are only 100 chinese surnames, and my name is the most common, so i usually run into about 10 people a day with the same name. But this guy got so excited, he was like " HOW DO YOU SAY ZHANG IN ENGLIGH?" I told him that there is no translation and that my name had no relation to my english name. But he was too drunk to understand, and he kept insisting i teach him how to say ZHANG in English. FInally i spent a couple minutes and taught him how to say ANDERSON. He was so excited he ran over to his friends and was like "wo shi (i am) ANDERSON, wo shi anderson wo shi ANDERSON." It was hilarious, finally i told him how to say "I AM," but he didnt catch the AM part so he ran around for about a minute and a half saying "I ANDERSON! I ANDERSON! I ANDERSON!" hahaha he was having so much fun i didnt want to correct him, plus he wasnt going to remember how to say it the next morning anyways. moral of the story dont drink... hahaha we run into a lot of crazies on the street, but the great thing about Taiwan is that it is one of the safest countries in the world and most people are either scared of us or love talking to us.

My new area is really fun. It is much smaller, but not too small. It is also really fun to have another companionship in the same apartment with us. He have too much fun. Elder Li is Taiwanese so we speak in Chinese most the time. Its really weird talking to other americans in Chinese. My companion is a little bit newer so it is hard to communicate with him, but me, Elder Mickelsen and Elder Li have a blast. Its going to be a great move, we have a lot of good missionaries in this district. The 4 Elders and then 2 sister missionaries.

Currently our area is not doing so well, we dont have very many investigators, but this week we found some really cool ones. 3 in particular. I have never really liked contacting people on the road, but it is really fun! Thats where our 3 best investigators are from. All of them were contacted by us on the road. Usually our best investigators are Member Referrals. When members refer their friends and family to us and then help us teach it is the best. They are what we call Golden Referrals.

In a couple hours i am going to go play ping pong with this 85 year old man. He challenged me. He lives in our apartment complex, mind you our apartment complex has about 1500 people. Its huge! anyways, he told me he is the president of the ping pong club in our complex and he wants to play me. I warned him that i was pretty good, but i am sure he is going to whip my trash. i am excited. i remember one time we were on vacation and an older guy challenged me 50 bucks to a ping pong game. i was too young so dad shook his head yes and said that i could play him. so i played, he was good but i beat him. hahaha. we wouldnt let him pay us though, so everytime he saw us after that he came and bought us sodas and smoothies and stuff. hahaha anyways, this guy is pretty cool and i think by playing him every once in a while we might be able to make friends with people in the complex. i am going to go play during dinner cuz i think thats when the club meets. anyways i have only played a couple times over here so i am really excited.

well i love you all. i love being a missionary. i know that what i am doing is right and that the spreading message of our savior Jesus Christ is the most important thing that i could ever do in my life.

peace
Elder Craig Anderson