Elder Craig Anderson

Hacker Frogs and Circus Sea Turtles

2009-11-09T12:04:00.001-08:00

sorry for not emailing you all last week.

Chinese Lesson 02
There once was a frog who lived in an old well that nobody used. One day he was sitting on the top of the well enjoying a nice breeze when he saw a turtle walking by. He waved to the turtle and the two started talking. The sea turtle asked the frog where his home was. The frog started talking rapidly about the beautiful well. He said “My well is the best! When it is hot outside I can go to the bottom and hide in the shade, and then when it is cool, I can come bask in the sun. If I want I can swim and play in the mud, or else I can sit on the wall and sleep. I have the best home in the world! Nobodies home is better than mine! Mr. Turtle why don’t you come take a look.” The turtle agreed and proceeded to enter into the well.
After putting his left foot into the well he realized he was too big and wasn’t going to fit. He tried with all his might to get himself into the well, but no matter what he did he still could not get in. The frog started talking saying “That is too bad, this well is the best place in the whole world. You don’t know what you are missing.”
Finally the turtle had had enough. He looked at the frog and said, “Actually my friend, if we take your well and the ocean that I live in and compare the two, your well is quite inferior. 10 years ago, it rained and rained and rained and all the land was flooded. It was flooded for years and years, until finally the big drought came. During the drought all the land dried up and every living thing died. All land became a barren waste land, nothing could take the heat. And do you know what happened to the ocean during that time Mr. Frog?”
“No,” the frog replied.
“Nothing,” said the turtle. “Absolutely nothing.”
“During the floods I was swimming around enjoying life, eating the plants I wanted and enjoying the nice cool under currents. During the droughts do you know what I was doing Mr. Frog?”
“No,” the frog repeated again.
“I was eating the plants I wanted and enjoying the nice cool under currents.”
The turtle politely said goodbye to Mr. Frog and headed on his way back to the open sea.

There is a phrase in Chinese that derives from this story. It is jing di zhi wa, which translates to the frog at the bottom of the well. Or in normal words, somebody that can’t see what is really going on outside of their own little world. My friends, don’t be frogs!! Go explore somebody else’s ocean!

Well there is good news! It could be my last week in the office! The bad news is that it is possibly not my last week in office. I should know on Monday. I hope that you all liked the Chinese idiom. I have been reading a lot of Chinese idiom books lately. Some of them I don’t really get because they use a lot of ancient Chinese characters which I don’t know yet. But they are fun and they have a lot of meaning.
In a couple minutes we have to go over to the hospital to stay with an Elder who has appendicitis. Yikes! He is doing great, but he can’t leave the hospital for about 4 days and he needs someone to be with him. We are going over in a second to keep him company. I have been so lucky on my mission, I have hardly had any healthy problems. Accept for the ingrown toenail thing. That was pretty gross. I don’t dare email you pictures, I will show you them when I get back.
Speaking of pictures here are some pictures that I just took! Oh yeah happy Halloween, I am mad at my bike right now so I was gonna throw it at something. Piece of junk.
This week I did some fun stuff. I rewrote a program for the referral system that we use. It is in JAVA and I don’t know the JAVA language but I was able to do it with the help of Google. I went through some online tutorials so that was fun.
Then Sister Hoer, President Hoer’s wife, has a talk that she was giving so I prepared a 20 minute long video about how to conduct a good Sunday school lesson for children. She had a friend film primary Sunday school back in the states and then ship it to us here. She gave us a lot of video but it was hard to find good pieces to show the people here. In the end it turned out pretty good and I think it will really help the teachers here improve their classes.
I installed a new hard drives into President’s laptop. Installing hard drives is one of my least favorite things to do. It is easy to do, but it is hard to get the persons settings and programs all reinstalled properly. It went smoothly though so that was good.
I hacked into our wireless network here at the office, no one knew the password and it wasn’t written down anywhere it seemed like a fun challenge to me. I even called the man that is in charge of all the churches computers in Asia and he didn’t know it either even though he set it up. In the end though after about 2 hours of hacking I got it.
I am pretty set on studying Electrical Engineering when I get home. I need to talk to Joe Bond our neighbor, I know that is what he studied but then he went back to school and became a lawyer. Apparently he must not have liked it very much so maybe I should talk to somebody else.

Love you all,
Elder Craig Alan Anderson
Taiwan Taichung Mission

P.S. - I could be in the missionary circus with stunts like these.

Rubber Band Balls Thanksgiving

2009-11-09T12:02:00.000-08:00

Well I am emailing a little later in the day today because I got really busy. You probably want to know what was so important that it took me 2 extra hours to right an email to you all. Well rubberband balls of course.
There is a family that came into the office the other day and they saw a rubber band ball that I had on my desk. Whenever you eat lunch in Taiwan you get a paper box filed with rice and stuff. To keep the box closed they wrap it with rubberbands. So everyday I get a couple rubber bands and add them to my ball. Usually I take a couple off everyday too to use for things. Anyways, this family saw the rubber band ball and they thought it was the coolest thing in the entire world. I promised them if they came back on Saturday I would teach them how to make them. I guess no one over here has ever made a rubber band ball. They thought it was great. The mom and the 2 kids were so amazed at the rubber band balls. They were talking and the little girl was like “My friends are going to be so jealous, they are going to want my rubber band ball.” Anyways, so here are some pictures that you might think are funny.
This week was another interesting week. I am now officially driving on an expired international license!! Hahaha… its okay though I drive so fast the police can’t catch me. I am just kidding. But really though my international license is going to expire soon, its such a pain. You have to get a new one every 6 months.
Rick from Ping Dong came and visited me in Taichung. It was almost a year ago exactly that we has baptized. Now he is doing awesome, he has the Melchizedek Priesthood and is a Sunday School teacher for the Gospel Principles class. There is no better way for someone to learn more about the gospel. In preparing his lessons for Sunday, I am sure he learns a ton and his testimony grows stronger.
I am still doing what I do in the mission office. I am just glad that I don’t have to do the accounting for the mission. Right now we have an older couple, Sister and Elder Dowse, they work here. But before they came it was a missionary that had to do it. It is so great to have these senior missionaries come and work in the mission field. Since many senior missionaries are not physically able to go out and be a normal missionary, it is perfect because they can take the place of a younger missionary and then that missionary can go out into the field and be a normal missionary.
Well Halloween is almost here. That is fun! The younger kids here celebrate Halloween, but not on the large scale like we do back home. Halloween is my second favorite holiday. My first is Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the best, grandma always cooks some amazing food and we can escape the cold in Utah to go to California for a while. Plus, when it is thanksgiving time, it is also usually my birthday!
I am starving, I didn’t eat breakfast so we are going to go eat lunch now!

Love ya,
Elder Anderson

Mountain Movers and Gamblers

2009-11-09T12:01:00.001-08:00

Chinese Lesson: The Old Fool Moves a Mountain
Thousands of years ago in Mainland China, there was a man who lived in the mountains with his family. He was a hard working and very diligent in everything he did to provide for his family. As he worked day in and day out he began to realize that there was a enormous obstacle in his way that prevented him from being able to provide well for his family. That obstacle just so happened to be an gigantic mountain.
He decided that he must move this mountain so that his posterity could have a smoother path. Every day after he performed his daily labors he would go to the mountain and shovel for as long and as hard as his strength would permit. He did this everyday for several years. People walking by would stop and tell him that he was a fool, he was stupid, there was no way he could ever move an entire mountain. Nearly every day somebody would come and try to convince him to stop his foolish digging. But this old man continued.
Finally after years of digging, the mountain showed no sign of change. However, the man did not care, he was determined to move the mountain, so he kept digging. The Chinese god’s watched this man everyday and were so dumbfounded by his wasted efforts. After seeing the old man struggle for years to move this mountain, the gods were so moved by his determination and persistence that they moved the mountain for him.
Old fools can move mountains.
I may not be that old, but sometimes I do feel like a fool trying to move a mountain by myself. There are so many great things that I love about this Chinese Legend. I am not going to even tell you why I like it, read it yourself and pick out the parts you like.
This week we were really busy preparing for Zone Conference. We hold one conference here in Taichung and one in Kaohsiung. Since they are in 2 different places it is a pain to prepare for, but it is over, the mountain has been moved.
Last night when we were contacting people on the street, I ran into the most normal homeless man I have ever met in my entire life. Normally, the homeless aren’t that normal. But his guy was completely normal. He told me his story. He said:
“Several years ago I was a very wealthy business man. I had a wife, 2 kids, a great job, a nice car, I had everything, until I lost it all in one night.”
After he said this to me I was so intrigued that I had to listen. He continued and said, “I used to love to play Majiang (Chinese Checkers), I would play on the weekends and sometimes at work when we had a break. After playing for a while me and my friends would go to watch the professionals play and we started betting. First we started betting small until finally we were betting in upwards of 10,000 USD. My good friend told me that there was a big match coming up and that he had the inside scoop, so we could bet and make a lot of money.”
Little did this poor man know that his friend had rigged a game. This guy bet everything he had and lost. He told me at first he didn’t even know what had happened, he thought how could it be. It wasn’t until several weeks afterwards that he found out that his so called friend had cheated him.
Anyways, long story short. This guy is very intelligent, very hard working, but since the economy is terrible right now he cannot find a job. He wants to find a manual labor job which is weird because he is so smart. The most interesting thing about this man was that he was very happy. I even asked him, why in the world are you so happy and he smiled and said. “it’s my own fault, that I don’t have any money, and I only have 3 options. The first option, I can be mad at myself for being so stupid, the second option I can be mad at my friend for cheating me, or the third option I can forget about it and start over.” He chose the third option. This man was amazing, he didn’t even ask for money or anything. He flat out told me “I need to pay the price for my actions, so I will not borrow money from my family.” It was almost like he was teaching himself a lesson. Another sad thing about his man was that they wouldn’t even let him in the homeless shelter here. To get into a homeless shelter you have to have your Government ID. Anyways, the workers at the homeless shelter said that he couldn’t stay there because he was from Taipei. Isn’t that crazy? You can only go to a homeless shelter in the city you are registered in.
He is coming to Church on Sunday! I normally am a little apprehensive to bring homeless people into the church because the majority of them are a little crazy. But I am telling you this guy is just like you and me. Average Joe who did something really stupid.
Go move some mountains!
Elder Craig Anderson

Grapefruit and Beetle Nut

2009-11-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

I have a new companion. He just moved into the office to take Elder Li’s place. His name is Elder Chou. Great guy! His whole family has been member since before he was born. Most of my native companions were not that lucky. Some of their parents were opposed to them coming on missions. I don’t know why though, making a 19 year old kid, spend 24 hours a day thinking about others is so good for them. Now that I am 20 I am not like those 19 year olds hahaha…
I heard a weird noise outside of our house 2 nights ago so I ran out to look and see what was going on. Since we live above the office we are always on alert to make sure no one breaks in and steals all our computers and passports. Anyways, I went outside to inspect what was going on and there was this poor old man with his head against our gate making a whimpering noise. It was late at night, and we often have drunks that walk by and make weird noises, but I could tell that this old man was different. I went and got my companion and we went down to talk to him to see what was wrong. I asked him, “Hey mister? Are you okay?” He was a little startled at first but once he saw that we were missionaries, I don’t think he was scared. He humbly asked if we had anything to eat. I thought about it for a second that we had some fruits that someone had given us the day before. We gave him 3 of these giant grapefruit like fruits and he was so excited. He kept thanking us and thanking us. I wanted to go get more, but we can’t leave that late at night to go buy more. People ask us for “food” all the time, but what they really want is money. Of course if someone needs food we are more than willing to buy some for them, but as missionaries we have a rule that we can’t give out money. Anyways, I thought about it for a second, said a little prayer asking Heavenly Father for us to find a way to help him more. After thinking for a moment I realized that there was an entire box of food I had for prepared for the next couple Sundays (since we can’t go buy food on Sunday). We ran back upstairs, grabbed the box of food and took it downstairs to give it to this man. Since the box wouldn’t fit through the slits of the gate we had to hand it to him piece by piece until he got it all on the other side. He began to quiver with excitement and even though it was dark he looked at us with a face that radiate with a sense of gratitude. Once again he thanked us and began to gather his new treasure together. My companion and I went back upstairs. My companion went back to bed immediately, but I couldn’t sleep. I stood up against the window and watched this old man as he inspected every package of crackers and noodles as if he was inspecting a diamond. I felt guilty for how ungrateful I am. I few tears fell as I pondered the poor journey that this old man still had ahead of him. As I sat there for the next hour or so, I reflected on the sacrifice that the Savior made as he suffered in the Garden of Gesthamene so that He may understand every pain and temptation that each of us will feel during our life here on this earth. As I continued to ponder, the words of a hymn came to mind,
A poor wayfaring Man of grief,
Hath often crossed me on my way,
Who sued so humbly for relief
That I could never answer nay.
I had not power to ask his name,
Whereto he went, or whence he came;
Yet there was something in his eye
That won my love; I knew not why.
He that can lift should lift. All of us are in a position that we may lift. “Lift up the hands that hang down… strengthen feeble knees.” As we find opportunities to serve those around us we will feel the love of our Heavenly Father. We will find more peace in our lives and we will become closer to the Lord Jesus Christ. As Paul said, “Faith without works is dead.” You can read and pray all you want, but until you go do something about it, it doesn’t do any good. The knowledge of the Gospel is not enough, living the Gospel and applying it is the only way that we may find true happiness and peace in this life. Anything else that we think brings us happiness, is most likely only temporary.
I hope I didn’t rattle on too long there. I just wanted to share this special experience with you.
On a much lighter note, I thought I would tell you about my good friend Huang. He is a great guy who does all the shipping for our office. We do a lot of shipping, we ship Books and Bikes and Luggage and all sorts of stuff, hundreds of packages every month. I work a lot with this man. Well Mr. Huang is a very nice guy, he is what we might consider a Taiwanese Redneck. He comes into our office and smells so strongly of beetle nut (the stuff that is like tobacco) that it makes it hard for me to breath when I am around him. When I am working with him I often have to take a couple steps back and breathe and then start again. This Mr. Huang is such a nice man, I wish we could just get him to quit all his bad habits. He loves us so we are always encouraging him to quit smoking and chewing. He is very respectful to us and I think he loves the feeling he gets when he is in our office. I am sure all his friends are like him, so when he come an office that is filled with well-dressed clean cut people, you would think he would feel out of place. But it is the opposite, we treat him like he should be treated and he completely changes. He works everyday but we are trying to get him to come to church. We often run into him outside, and he will wave us over and talk with us for a little while.
I have another friend here that is a lot like Mr. Huang. He is always hanging out with his drunk friends, he has got tattoos over his whole body and is usually chewing beetle nut. 2 nights ago, we were in his neighborhood so when I drove by his house I waved and he got so excited he chased after us. I stopped and started talking with him. Since buildings here are all 5 or 6 stories usually the bottom floors are businesses and then the top floors is where the owners live. So here we were on this busy street. My friend is not wearing a shirt, he’s teeth are red from the beetle nut and he is smoking at the same time. I shared a little bit with him, asked how his prayers were going, and then I noticed that about half the street was just staring at the 2 of us in amazement. Hahahaha… I guess it would be a pretty funny site to see. Me standing next to this half naked man, with his drunk friends in the background hooting and hollering. I like this guy though, he is young, he has already come to church once and he loved it. We have just got to get him out of where he is living and working!
Well, love you all.

Elder Anderson

Sea of Heads Sept 26, 2009

2009-09-26T07:22:00.000-07:00

As I pull up to the stop light I look over the tops of the sea of heads bobbing around as everyone positioned themselves for the long wait of the red light. As a missionary in a country over populated by scooters, you quickly learn how to recognize your companion from the helmet that he wears. There could be over 100 people waiting at a single stop light and you can only see the tops of their helmets. There he is the black and gold helmet with the white strip. Now that I found him I can relax and look for somebody to talk to. I start talking with the man on my left, no response. He won't even look at me. I always think this is the most fun because the more they refuse to look at you the louder you can talk, after about 10 seconds you are screaming "Hey mister, how are you?" "Can you see me?" Finally, everyone is looking at the man that I am talking to like "Come on man, just talk to him!" It's fun! It is even funnier when they refuse to look at you but you can make them laugh. You tell them a joke and they look straight ahead like you aren't even there, but then they will start to giggle. It is the best when you make the old guys laugh. I figure if I can make somebody smile, then that is a success.

The light turns green, now I have got to maneuver quickly so that I don't get stampeded by the horde of busy motorist behind me. With a few close calls I manage to pull away without getting turned into a clean cut, well dressed, pancake. Once again I started scanning for that helmet that I so readily know. Target Locked! 50 meters ahead right hand side! My good ol' companion Elder Li. Missionaries aren't missionaries without their companions.

We bike over to a little convenience store in the neighborhood to do a little contacting. I run into a guy that is a doctor, really nice, thinks he is too intelligent for religion. That comment makes me smirk, thinking about all the insanely intelligent people that were all very religious, all of which I am sure were much more intelligent than this man. It is okay though, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not about the power of intellect but about the Power of the Holy Ghost and the Light of Christ. I continue to chat with this doctor to see if he is willing to at least come try and understand. He says he has no time. I smirk again, he must have forgotten that he mentioned he had retired 2 years ago. Finally, I hit him with one of my favorite questions, “So how do you know that our religion or any religion for that matter isn’t true?” On the street many people will try and prove that there is no God. It is so interesting, they will claim that they know that there is not God through the same illogical ways that believers of religion claim that they know that there is a God. Usually, it is something along the lines of, “I have read a lot of books and I just feel like there isn’t a God.” Feel? I thought you said that you knew there isn’t a God? At about this point I like to respond with “Really? Me too! Except I am the exact opposite. I have read a lot of books and I have felt that there is a God who loves us. We are his children and he wants us to find time to get to know him.” Finally, I ask a follow up question to this doctor “So how can you be sure that the message we are sharing is not from God?” The doctor thinks about it for a second and comes to the conclusion that majority of people who are asked this question come to, he says “I guess I would have to come understand a little bit about it and then make my own decision about whether it is true or not.” He sets up a time! Now the ball is in his court, if he comes he may hear the most powerful message he has ever heard, if he doesn’t he has missed out on a great opportunity to learn of our eternal purpose and the importance of families in this eternal plan that Heavenly Father has created for us.
Where is my companion? Once again I repeat the searching process as I look for my companion at one of the corners of the intersection. President Hoer has suggested that we contact people on our own so that we can talk to twice as many people. Very rarely do we contact together. Quite often people will remind me “Hey aren’t there usually 2 of you guys? Where is your partner?” Despite the fact that most people are not interested in our message, they do admire us and tend to look out for us. I have had people ask me if I was lost because they had never seen a missionary without his companion by his side. Usually my companion is no more than 30 yards away, but if you aren’t paying attention it would be easy to only see one of us. Especially since I am American, I tend to stick out a little more than my native companion.
Well it is getting a little late so we decide to head back to the office. 9 o’clock, we do a quick little plan for the next day. 9:30, nightly reports, I start talking with all the Zone Leaders to see how their Zones are doing. With about 9 Zones in South Central Taiwan, I only have time to talk to each Zone for about 3 minutes. I type up a quick report to let President Hoer know how the Zones are doing and highlight any areas that they might be struggling.

10 o’clock I start working on little projects that I have going on. The projects vary from week to week. Sometimes fun and exciting, other times boring and tedious. They are all important though. Currently I am selling the Mission Offices junk. I am sure some of you that have lived with me might remember looking for something that you had put down in storage, only to find out that months earlier I had sold it on ebay. Hahaha… well I am basically doing that to the mission office right now. Of course I don’t keep any of the money; it all goes back into helping the missionaries. I have already sold old cell phones, extra computers, hard drives, monitors, old bicycles, recyclable metals, network parts, etc. Who would have thought that I would be able to use this talent of mine to help out the mission office? I guess we are all under that obligation to use our talents and special skills to push forth the work of the Lord. I just never thought that I would use my dejunking ability to help save money for the mission.
I was thinking about why I had this skill the other day, and I came to the conclusion that in all things there is a positive and a negative. Every action must have an equal and opposite reaction. Mom, loves to save things! Even mom will admit that she hates to throw things out. She is so cute, she will save every card that we have ever given her. I hear she is better now, but before, the house policy was, “We might be able to use it later.” I guess when I was younger I got tired of waiting for “later” so I started selling our junk on the “black market,” known to many as ebay. After several months of this underground life of mine, I was discovered when an old GPS system that had been placed down in the basement for more than 90 days disappeared. Poor dad must have thought that there were little Gremlins in our house using our GPS to circumnavigate the globe. I should have stuck with the Gremlin story, but finally I decided it was time to come out, I was cornered, there was no were left to turn. And that was the day I told my parents I was a dejunker.
I kind of function like the US Postal system, anything after 90 days is declared a lost item and may be discarded or sold, if after 90 days no one claims the package the workers, get to rip it upon and have a free for all. I’m not sure if President knows how much I like to sell junk. I have always had this fascination with selling stuff that I think is useless and watching people pay money for it. Mind blowing!
11 o’clock rolls around, I am tired. My eyes hurt, my legs are sore, even my ears seem to ache. We lock up, close the safes with all the passports and mission money, bolt the doors and windows, and arm the alarm system. Luckily, we only have to walk to the second floor to find our beds. I take a quick shower, dry off, eat a muffin from Costco!! (Yeah you read that right buddy, the Dowse’s buy me Costco muffins and MILK!!!) Do you have any idea how hard it is to find good milk in Asia? I have tried to tell the dairy farmers here, you can NOT feed a cow RICE!! Cows need good stuff like grass and hay maybe a little oats, that will make some good milk! They don’t listen they still feed the poor things rice, Costco cows must not be rice cows because it is pretty good milk.
After my muffin and milk, I climb into bed set the alarm for 6:30 and say my prayers. To be honest half the time I fall asleep in the middle of them. I think Heavenly Father understands. Usually, I wake up the next morning and finish them.
BEEP BEEP BEEP! I am gonna throw my companions clock at the wall. Could anyone find a more annoying alarm clock? I doubt it. Just so you all know, I still hate mornings! Time to get up and do it all again.
Wash, rinse, and repeat!
Love ya,
Elder Craig Anderson
Taiwan Taichung Mission

Pictures

1．Andy's Baptism, i can't remember if i sent it to you.
2. The before and after shots of the network that i rebuilt.
3. The typhoon got so bad that we couldn't pedal our bikes so we ran into this really nice restaurant and spent a lot of money. ($10 USD per person) At least we were safe. It was a little embarassing because we were dripping wet and there were little puddles every where we walked. A worker brought us some towels and followed us around to mop up behind us. I felt so bad, but at least i wasn't getting ripped apart by the typhoon.
4. Goofy picture of the network afterwards.
5. at the beach in kaohsiung. there is a giant ship in the background.
6. the final result.
7. It looked like a bunch of High School kids threw together this network in their Technology class.
8. a typically stop light NOT during rush hour.

Empty Nest and Spankins Sept 18, 2009

2009-09-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

Hey all,
Today I decided to send you some “Peace.” Since I can’t light a bunch of Chinese lanterns and make them fly to America I just decided to send a picture. On the side of this lantern it says “The Peace Light.” I thought that was a neat thing to have written on the side. So here it is, your Peace Light. I hope it brings you peace this week. When I saw this lantern it made me think of St Matthew 5: 14-16
“14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. 15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”
I know I have shared that scripture with you all before, but I thought this little lantern was pretty cool. I hope that it reminds you to let your light shine baby!! Hahahaha… go do some good stuff this week.
Well, I had a great battle this week with the network here at the office. I can hear you groaning how boring!!. No my friends, not boring at all! I thought it was quite fun. I ripped apart the old networking for the office and installed a brand new server. It looks great. Some of you might be wondering, what does it take to keep a Mission Office running. Well, we have 12 Computers, 2 network printers and a wireless router. Not to mention we have our own personal web server that I am setting up. Pretty sweet huh? I will send you some pics next week maybe.
Lately Mom and Dad have been emailing me telling me that they don’t know what to do with out Ali around. Well don’t forget that even after your kids have moved out that you aren’t done raising us! (I know that the correct term there would be rearing, but I think it sounds funny. Tell my English teacher I don’t care what she says rearing still sounds like something dad’s do when they get angry at their kids and they can’t find the belt to spank them with.
“Honey, I can’t find my belt, get my Rearer!”
“Come here you little brat I am gonna give you a rearing!”
”See look when kids are bad they get a rearing, how does your rear-end feel after that rearing?”
”You will think twice before you do that again won’t yeah?”
Anyways, I think that this whole pretending to be sad that all the kids are gone thing is all a front for their excitement to have a some time to relax. Yes, dad no more getting toilet papered by Ali’s friends on Friday night. Yes, mom you do not have to kick the Ali’s hoodlum friends out when it starts to get late. And yes no more random explosions near the house (Well at least not until December 22nd). It will be fun! Rest up now, plus you never know when it will be your turn to go on a mission!
Well, I didn’t get in any dog fights this week. I wasn’t attacked by any drunk men. I also was not hit by a car. It was a good week, a bit uneventful but good.

Elder Anderson

p.s. the second picture is my name in chinese. i wasn't sure if you all had ever seen it before.

Rabid Dog and the Great Invasion Sept 11, 2009

2009-09-26T07:19:00.001-07:00

Wow! Lots and lots of letters!

Thanks for all the letters that many of you sent to me last week. It was neat to hear how everybody was doing. Thanks Dad for being the one that handed out paper and pens. I never thought you would be a "paper pusher" hahaha... okay another stupid joke I'm sorry. I am not really sure what being in Asia has done to my sense of humor. As I am sure you guessed humor over here is different. It's funny, but it is just different. Kind of like British humor. I know exactly what Dad is thinking. I hate British humor. My dad is not a big fan. Don't worry dad after hanging out with me for a while you will thing its funny!

So I hear somebody ran into one of my mission friends in Utah. Elder Richter wasn't my companion, but we went on exchanges several times. I hope he is doing good. Sounds like he hasn't quite adjusted though if he is still wearing Taiwan shirts around. I think that is funny that Grandma Elaine and Tom walked up to him and said hello in chinese. I bet he thought that was great!

This week was pretty normal! Fortunately Taiwan was not taking over by the Chinese. Fewwhh... we are safe for another week.

The Taiwanese are convinced that at any moment the Chinese are gonna hop in their row boats and row themselves over here and invade. Well it hasn't happened yet and if it did I am pretty sure the ships that the US has stationed between China and Taiwan would be more than obliged to come over and lend a hand.

So I am thinking that all my friends are basically home from their missions! When does Austin get back? I can't believe it.

Since I am in the Mission office, i have been thinking about starting a TV show. Called "The Office," I know I know, it sounds like a lame name but I think it could be big. ;)

We have started preaching in a new area. Last week we stopped in one are and started in this new area. It's downtown. some other missionaries will take over our other area. Me and Elder Li are so lost, Taichung is huge and we are in the downtown. Since we just started over there, we do not have any investigators, so we don't have any really cooling teaching stories this week.

OOOO, I almost forgot! I got in a fight with a dog! Yeah, it was crazy! In the middle of downtown right out front of our office building, there was this dog, tearing up our lawn and digging and stuff. So I ran outside and was like "Hey, you little punk get out of here?" Of course the dog only speaks Chinese, so I had to tell him in Chinese. He didn't seem to quite understand so finally I yelled at him in Taiwanese and then he knew that I meant business! He started barking and growling at me and even took a lung towards me. However, I am not a new missionary, I know how to make dogs the bravest of dogs wet there pants. So I very calming bent over and pretended to pick up a rock. I lifted my arm and cranked it back all the way like I was going to hurl it at him with all my might. His eyes got really big and I think he muttered some bad words in Taiwanese, and then he bolted! Fast little stinker, all that yapping for nothing, in the end he chickened out, funny thing is is that I didn't even have a rock in my hand. I love that trick, it never gets old! I think mom taught me that one.

Okay, that story was only partially true. He didn't swear in Taiwanese he swore in Chinese.

Love ya all,

Elder Anderson

Water Filters and Mike the American Sept 6, 2009

2009-09-26T07:18:00.001-07:00

Well I guess I should apologize for not emailing on Saturday. It is a long story, but basically I fell asleep. We got busy working in the morning and I completely forgot that it was our day to rest! To me it just felt like a normal day. Being in the office is just like that, we usually don’t get a preparation day and if we do it is just a couple hours to take a breather. So I am sorry if you waited for my email and never got it.
Another busy busy week fighting Chinese cell phone companies. And by the way, no they do not speak English, its quite funny when they try though. It is also very frustrating because they try and take advantage of us because they think the church is rich, they don’t realize that the missionaries are the ones paying for it and that each missionary only has 400 USD a month to survive. Those little scam artists. Its okay we are slowly beating them into submission.
Things have started to slow down now that I have gotten settled in. Although I was in the office before it is a completely different experience here. Back in Kaohsiung, the senior missionary couple there did a lot more than the ones here, so I have to do a lot of extra stuff, which is one of the reasons we are always so busy. Plus President Hoer is always throwing on new projects and stuff. You are probably all wondering, what kind of projects could a mission president possibly come up with? You know what I wonder that a lot too, but sure enough he seems to find ones.
Recently I have been working on getting all the water filters for the entire mission figured out. If you drank the water that comes out of the tap over here, you would most likely turn into a werewolf or a vampire, if you were lucky. It’s pretty gross stuff! I guess when you put 23 million people on a little tiny island you can’t expect the water sanitation to be that great! Anyways, so all the missionary apartments all have these permanent water filter units installed. The filters in them need to be changed periodically. It used to be that missionaries would keep track and change the filters themselves, but we have found that missionaries often forget to swap filters, which isn’t good because we don’t want werewolf missionaries, although vampire missionaries could beneficial because then we could just bite people, and they would turn into a Mormon missionary vampires. But for now we are just going to stick to our normal way or preaching the gospel, I will put in a suggestion though that in the future we could consider upgrading all our missionaries to vampire status.
That project has been going really well, we are getting all the schedules synchronized and organizing the mass amounts of replacement filters that were previously stored at every missionary’s house. Now we are storing all the filters at my house! I have to swim though filters to find my stuff in the mornings . Its okay, though, if it floods again I won’t have to worry about finding drinking water, I can just open up my doors and windows, let all the water in and use the replacement filters as straws.
Apart from the experiences listed above we had some great proselyting experiences. I ran into this guy from Idaho, he was pretty nice guy, his girlfriend who was also from Idaho was not a nice guy. She was a mean girl! I talked to him for a couple minutes and he was great, he was interested and was like “Yeah, okay, I will meet with you.” So I set up a time and then his girlfriend came out to get on the scooter with him and she was not cool. I should have told her to go back inside and let the big boys talk. Just before he was about to give me his cell phone number she hopped on the scooter and was like, “Oh we are not interested.” And I was like “No, actually he is.” I can’t stand it when people try and talk for other people, it happens all the time. Usually with couples, the husband will be really cool and then the wife is terrible. Sometimes I on the street, I will politely tell the wives that I am speaking with their husbands not them. If you do it politely in Chinese it is actually not rude at all. Anyways, I was so made at this Idaho girl, I love teaching Americans, I am sure you remember Robert the Jewish guy. He was a blast to teach! By the way he is doing good and his 2 sons were baptized 3 weeks after I left.
Mike, this guy from Idaho, was like, “Well she will get mad at me if I meet with you.” So I asked her “Hey, kaylee(I can’t remember her name now, I think my mind subconsciously wiped it from my memory) will you get mad at Mike if he comes to church?” Finally, she was like “No I guess not.” And then she started to be nice. We talked about the Plan of Salvation and our purpose here on this earth. I told them “Even if you don’t have interest in what we share you can at least come and understand what we are all about. Heck, at least you will have a cool story to share with your friends.” They laughed and agreed that their friends would think that them meeting with the Mormon missionaries would be a quite intriguing story. Sad part of the story though is that since they just got here to teach english, they don’t have cell phones yet and they didn’t want to give me their bosses number because they thought it might get them in trouble if the missionaries called him. They also don’t know where they will be moving either. I gave them my cell number and they took it, he said he would call. I sure hope they call, but the interesting thing is that people very rarely will take the initiative to get in touch with us. The few that do are usually really really really ready for the gospel, or crazy and want to talk to the handsome Americans. I hope that Mike calls!!
On the street occasionally people will say to us “Why do you go preach, everybody already knows! Leave us alone!” If everybody already knew then we would not have over 1500 baptisms a year in our mission alone mostly from street contacts. People need somebody else to take the initiative for them. Even though a lot of people are interested they would never go out and look for the missionaries. As a matter of fact, I have talked with well over a hundred people on the street that were like, “I am so glad that you stopped to talk to me, I have always wanted to meet with you guys, but I was to shy to wave you down.”
Anyways, I think the moral of the story is that, despite the fact that occasionally somebody will get angry with us for contacting them on the street, it is worth it when we truly find someone who has been prepared by the Lord for us to find. We are not confrontational usually ;), so I think it is very interesting when people start yelling at us before we have even finished our “hello, how are you?” sentence. It is fun though, I have learned that there is nothing better to do but smile as wide as you can. Although, smiling wider might make the person that is yelling at you angrier, it makes the bystanders realize that we are just nice young men trying to share the truth about God.
That reminds me of onetime when I was in Kaohsiung, I pulled up to talk to this man and right of the bat he started swearing and yelling at me in Taiwanese. Luckily, or unluckily, depending on how you see it, I speak enough Taiwanese to know exactly what he was saying. He made himself look like a fool, in the end though a lady that had pulled up behind us watched the whole thing. She watched as this man attempted to spit on me, don’t worry I dodged it, and then afterwards she actually contacted us and was like hey, where is your church? I want my sons to go. She even offered to buy my companion a new basket for his bicycle because his was all broken up. I’m not really headed anywhere with this, just sharing some random missionary experiences.
Peace,
Elder Anderson

You Though AT&T Was Bad Aug 28, 2009

2009-09-26T07:17:00.000-07:00

Well Grandma Wood gets my award of appreciation for her email this week. She was the only one that remembered that there is a poor little missionary over in the South China Sea floating around. Ok ok ok… so now that the typhoon is gone I am no longer floating.  Thanks grams I love you to pieces.
I was just teasing you all, I am sure that you haven’t gotten used to the fact that I email on Saturdays now Instead of Wednesdays. This week has gone by so fast! Being in the office just makes time fly by. We are just busy busy busy. All day!
I am in charge of working out the cell phone situations for all the missionaries in the mission. We currently have 118 cell phones. So recently I have been working with a cell phone company called ZhongHua to get a new cell phone contract signed. It makes me want to pull my hair out. You thought cell phone companies in the states were bad. Ha… Try Taiwanese cell phone companies, you have to be extra careful or else they will try and charge you all sorts of penalties. For example 2 days ago I sent an email to our contact at the cell phone company, She didn’t respond. So yesterday early in the morning I sent another email, no response. Finally at about 4:30 pm I called her and was like hey did you get my emails. And she was like yeah, but I finish doing it before responding. Whatever she was trying to wait until the next payment period started before responding. What I told her to do in the emails was cancel 10 phone lines, before July. We pay month to month so as soon as the 1st of the month comes around we are automatically signed up for the entire month. Anyways, so after I called and told her I wanted them cancelled yesterday she was like okay. You know what happened? She called us back about an hour and a half later. She knows that the Operations Manager (me) is in charge of the phone stuff, but she asked to talk with President Hoer. Luckily, I heard my companion answer the phone. Anyways, so she got on the line with President Hoer. President didn’t know that I have been trying to get her to cancel the phones for the past 3 days. So I started listening to the conversation on speaker phone and then she said, “So I will just go ahead and cancel those phones next week, is that okay?” Sneaky little stinker huh? She knows how our mission office runs because they have been dealing with us for years, so she tried to go around the person that actually does the phones so that they could force us to sign up for another month. However, I ran into President’s Office and told him, “Hey, tell her not okay, she needs to cancel those phones today!” So he told her and then she tried to say, well lets just wait until Monday, but Monday would be the start of a new payment period. Isn’t that a slimy thing to do?! I was so ticked. Anyways, we got them cancelled.
Hahaha… I feel bad for you all. You have to read about me whining about cell phone companies. You probably want to hear about missionary stuff. Hahaha… well, we had a couple of good lessons last night. We were walking around in this park looking for people to contact and I ran into this somewhat drunk man. He wasn’t like drunk drunk, he was just a little buzzed. You know the really friendly type. Anyways, as soon as he saw me HE started talking to ME. Crazy! People hardly ever talk to us first, usually they look at us like we are alien cyborgs. So I sat down with this man and started talking with him. Really nice guy! Anyways, he told me all about how when he was younger he was in some Chinese mafia and used to be the one they would send to scare people or beat up people. Then he got married and decided to leave the mafia and all his mafia friends abandoned him. He had a really bad drinking problem though. And then a couple years ago he had his first kid, so he got a real job and stopped smoking. Then after another year he started to not drink as much. So now he only drinks on Friday nights occasionally with his friends in the park. Anyways, I sat down with him and we talked about eternal families, that if we prepare in this life we can live with our families in the life to come. He loved it! And said he would come to church on Sunday. He wasn’t really drunk so he won’t forget, plus I have his cell phone number. But he wants to bring his whole family. It was perfect too because he said he was looking for something to help him make the final change to being a good person. I told him through Jesus Christ we can all change. We will see what happens I guess.

Love ya
Elder Anderson

MIssion Office Chapter 2 Aug 21, 2009

2009-08-24T12:56:00.002-07:00

Well things have settled down back to normal here. well at least as normal as things can get. We are working away in the office. Although the flooding has been really devastating to a lot of people here, it has been a great opportunity for everyone to work together and serve each other. i think it has been a tragic typhoon, but it has also been an uplifting experience to see people performing selfless service. many of the missionaries were down there cleaning up mud and debris that had been washed into peoples homes. i was moved to Taichung the day that they organized the service groups. Oh well, my work here in the office is important too.

If I had one complaint about being in the office, it would be that you miss out on all the action. Being in the office in Taichung is about the same as being in the office in Kaohsiung, of course there is a different mission president i report to, but for the most part it is the same. my duties here are quite a bit different though. I work on apartments and getting contracts setup with land lords. because missionaries move so often there has to be someone that organizes all the apartment stuff. I prepare all the stuff for new missionaries and missionaries going home. I am currently working on our english class website for all of Taiwan, it will be a website that Taiwanese people can go to to check locations and times for our english classes. Usually by 6pm we are out the door doing normal missionary stuff for 3 hours. My companion is a native, but we both are so busy that we hardly ever talk. Elder Li my companion is in charge of recording all the baptisms in the mission. That is what i used to do!

I still can't believe that I am back in the office. There are 186 missionaries in our mission and I have been in here twice!!! If I didn't know that they needed me here I would feel like it was some sort of punishment. hahaha...

President Hoer is great! he is a fast pace guy, I like it! We get along really well and so far it has been a great experience working with him. He used to be a business man in China before so I have a lot to learn from him.

I wish I could explain everything that I do, but it is hard. I am whats called the Mission Operations Manager, basically anytime there is anything that happens in the, whether its the Mayor of Taichung coming to visit us or a missionaries toilet gets broken, I get to deal with it. I was looking at my phone records for the past 2 weeks and it looks like I will average about 800 outgoing calls and about 1000 incoming calls in a month. Thats a lot of phone calls!!! So that is what I do.

There are 4 Elders in the Office. Elder Li, Elder Yang, Elder Alexander and I. Elder Yang and Elder Alexander are Assistants, they are hardly ever here though. Within 6 weeks they visit about a third of the missionaries in the mission. So that is about 60 missionaries, it takes them a long time, about 30 days to go and drive to every place and spend a full day with all the missionaries. It sounds like a lot of fun, but I am glad that I don't have to do that, I like sleeping in my own bed.

There are also a senoir couple that works in the office. Elder and Sister Douse, they are great. I work right next to Elder Douse.

We unfortunately do not get fed here. We have to fend for ourselves, but its okay because Taiwan has soooo many great places to eat.

President and Sister Hoer are great, we are their inside Assistants. We help them do things to help the mission. Most of it is just managerial stuff and organization nonsense. I am sure you are all a little shocked to hear that i have to be organized. Crazy huh?

My favorite thing about being in the office is the Air Conditioning hahaha... Really!! Apart from loving the AC I really doing things that help the other missionaries better do the work.

Of course the toughest thing about being here is not being able to be a normal missionary. Also it is tough not sleeping as much. We are often out past midnight doing running errands. Like last week, a land lord called and told us that we needed to move our stuff out in 24 hours, he originally told us we had 1 week. So we took the mission vans and were packing stuff until about 2 in the morning. Oh ya, we still have to get up at 6:30, so that other missionaries don't misunderstand and think we are being lazy.

Thank goodness though, when we do get to sleep our apartment is right about the office. It makes it very convenient for 2 reasons. Its easy to get home :), and 2nd if anyone ever tried to break in we would here them for sure.

Although I hate to admit it, i think i will probably be here until i come home. i am hoping that that is not so, but we will see.

Taichung city is great! It is really big and I am still a little lost, since we don't spend all day outside wandering around I still don't know the roads that great. I know how to get to different cities because we visit other areas quite often, but as far as downtown I still don't quite get it. i haven't even been here for 2 weeks though, i am sure i will figure it out.

Well i kinda rambled a lot. i better go. love yall

Elder Craig Anderson

I'm Alive Aug 14, 2009

2009-08-24T12:56:00.001-07:00

Well, i am sorry for the lack of communication the past couple weeks. As i am sure you can guess, things have been crazy hahaha... well i might as well tell you right off the bat, i am back in the office. Its okay though, i am excited to work with President Hoer, he is an awesome man. I was able to make it out of the office for a little over a month, but i am back in! it will be fun to help out in a different ways.

Oh ya, so i moved to Taichung. It is really far away from where i was. I was just in FengShan, the typhoon hit there so bad. Crazy Crazy! My companion and I were running around every where trying to help out. We tried to get a sandbagging crew put together, but no one had any sand bags. So it was pretty sad to just see the water fill up in peoples houses and not be able to do anything about it. Don't worry it was really safe, we were not anywhere in the mountains. Luckily, we do not have any missionaries that live up in the mountains. Really though, we are okay, not a really big deal. I have got some really cool videos though.

Shortly after the typhoon started to leave, i got a call informing me that i was to report back to the office. i was a little sad at first, but i am really glad to be able to help out.

Because of the flooding it was so hard to get from FengShan to TaiChung. Normally the trip would take about 3 hours on the train, but there was some flooding over the tracks and some bridges got washed away. So i had to change trains 4 times and them i had to get on 2 buses that transfered me to different train stops. It took 7 hours to get here. I am happy to be here. I have been here since Monday.

from now on i will be emailing on saturday. That is the preparation day that president has set aside for us.

I love my mission! This is just another opportunity to serve in a different capacity. President Hoer is hoping that i can help out a lot, since I know the Kaohsiung mission. Ideally, this will make the merge better.

Well I love you all. Thank you for all the emails. Sorry I don't have time to write each one of you. I only get an hour if that. In the office, we get so busy that sometimes we can only find 10 minutes to write.

Love,
Elder Anderson

I'm Okay Aug 14, 2009

2009-08-24T12:55:00.003-07:00

im okay. don't worry. there was little flooding where i was. i will email you in a couple hours.

love
elder anderson

Sorry Sorry Sorry Aug 4, 2009

2009-08-24T12:55:00.001-07:00

So last week there was a major computer failure! We are only supposed to use this email system, but last week the email systems all went down. I had just spent 40 minutes typing to you all last week and then when I went to send it kept saying server not found. Me and my companion were pretty agitated. This seems to happen a lot. We found out later that President Hoer gave people permission to use another email system like yahoo or gmail, but by the time we found out our day was already over and we couldn't go back to email. Sorry Sorry Sorry!

I will try and sum up last week and this week. I think I told you already our investigator Andy got baptized. He is doing really good! On Sunday he even went up during Sacrament meeting and shared his testimony and conversion with the entire congregation! He is a really awesome kid!

Well last week we had an interesting visit to the hospital hahahaha... I figure by now all you readers are on the edge of your seats. It wasn't that intense. My foot has been bothering me for the past 8 months because of this stupid ingrown toenail. Usually I can just dig the little stinker out my self, but about 2 weeks ago that little nail decided it wanted to become a submarine and dive to the bottom. Sure enough it took a 90 degree turn right into my foot. I did pretty good and i had dug it out all the way, but then the nail broke off and I knew i was in trouble. About 3 days later I could hardly walk so I called up Sister Hoer to ask her if I could go to the hospital to get it cut out. She gave me the go ahead and so we went.

I felt like I was walking to my death bed hahaha... I think Amy had an ingrown toenail once. And I remember her saying how much it hurt and then I remember one time her little gauze thing that was on it fell off and I saw her foot and it terrified me. So needless to say I was very reluctant to go. (Sorry Amy if it wasn't you, but I do remember very distinctly when I was really young somebody had an ingrown toenail and it sounded scary.

Don't worry the hospital we went to was one of the nicest hospitals I have ever been to. They sent me to the Dermatologist. The doctor was really good. She looked at it and said okay we can do this. And I was like no we can't, not with out serious anesthetic. I tried to get her to give me laughing gas, but she just laughed at me and grabbed pliers. She was really nice and once she realized how deep it was she agreed that we needed to do use a little local anesthetic. I was so glad! I had heard of other missionaries where the doctor calls the nurse in and a couple of the nurses quickly grab the missionary and hold him down while the doctor rips out the nail. Luckily, the doctor just shot some stuff in my foot which did actually hurt a little, but after that i didn't feel a thing. They went in and hacked away like Indiana Jones in the Amazon. It was pretty crazy watching this lady chop up my foot. I am sure you are all noxious by now so I will spare you the details, but it has been a week and it is basically healed up. The day after I could hardly walk, but after that it was fine. I am all better now though!

It was kind of a fun experience because I learned a bunch of new medical terms like Local anesthitic and laughing gas. When I asked the doctor if I she could give me laughing gas, she looked at me and laughed and said no no no no. I was sad, i thought that if i said it in chinese she might be nice.

Earthquake! The other night me and my companion were sleeping and at about 3 in the morning everything started shaking. I woke up and i looked over and saw my companion sitting up in his bad. He sounded scared, he has only been here for about 4 months so the Earthquakes are a little new to him. I think the funniest earthquake i have seen on my mission was during our personal study in the morning. When i was in the big city, with Elder Johnson, I was sitting there reading the New Testament and i had my feet on the legs of the chair I was sitting on. Then all of the sudden I felt my chair shaking and I thought it was my companion messing with me. So I was like "Hey Elder, knock it off, quite kicking my chair." Then I flipped around and realized that it was an earthquake. It was pretty funny, i felt stupid.

Oh Ya!!! So you know how i was jocking about delivering mineral water to the World Games?!?! Well Guess what?! It wasn't mineral water, it was fruit tea! Hahaha... isnt that hilarious, I had a feeling it was going to be something heavy and boring so I guessed a beverage. Sure enough, we showed up and they had us load an armored car full of Fruit Tea. It was fun though to be able to talk with some Americans and chat about what they thought of Taiwan. They spoke a little chinese, later on I found out that they were both Majoring in Chinese and Asian Studies. One of them was this really funny African American Lady from Kansas. She was super nice and just thought we were awesome. I convinced her to go on a mission for her church when she gets back. Seriously, i am not kidding, either that or the Peace Corp she said. Anyways, we rode in the Armored car to go drop off the tea at this venue. After that we hung out at the venue and talked with the people that came into the American Booth. It was pretty cool, every country had their own little booth. Not to be arrogant, but the American Booth was by far the coolest. Everyone that came in got free Oreos and Ocean Spray Fruit Tea. Then they had an astronaut come and talk to commenmorate the 40th anniversary of us landing on the moon. To bad it was all in English, most of the people there couldn't speak English. I almost volunteered to translate for them, but i stopped myself when the astronaut starting saying "Lunar Module, Moon Roover, liquid oxygen rocket propellant, gravitational orbit reentry " hahaha... yeah sorry NASA. I haven't learned what those words even mean in English yet. It was fun though.

We went to the Vaticaan Booth. That was actually pretty cool, but all the volunteers got really nervous when we walked in and they started to try and speak English with us but I had no idea what they were saying, which made me nervous, so finally we just asked them to speak in Chinese and once they realized we spoke chinese they all calmed down and everything went back to normal. They took us around and showed us all about Mass. It was a little awkward, but neat at the same time. I still don't really get the whole deal about praying to the all the different Saints though.

After that we went and looked at the Israel Tent. That was pretty cool too, we had a Christian Chinese Israeli guide us through the tent. So we learned about Judaism and Catholsism.

Well I hope i remembered everything from last week. My companion and i are doing really good. I might have time to send some pictures next week. We are going to go play ping pong in a second. Alright well i love yall.

Elder Craig Anderson

the Summit and Operation World Games July 21, 2009

2009-08-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

Hey Hey hey!!!!

I can't believe that Ali and Dad made it! Sounds like it was quite the adventure. I am so jealous! Although we get to see a lot of neat things happen on a mission, in Taiwan it is not very adventurous. The only adventurous thing we ever really get to do is eat crazy things, but by now I have already eaten them all. Plus, I have been here so long I am starting to like the crazy weird things.

I bet that hike was so hard. I was thinking, since we do live at about 6000 feet i am sure you guys were already pretty ready for the hike. Not to mention the training that i know you have been doing. so cool!!

Although we didn't get to go on some crazy African safari, On Sunday we did have a little activity with the American "Embassay" in Taiwan. I have to put Embassay in paranthesis because since the UN will not recognize Taiwan as its own country, technically, we are not allowed to have an embassay. However, we do have what is called AIT. Which is the American Institue in Taiwan. That's pretty clever huh? They say we can't build an embassay so we said fine we aren't building an embassay we are builing and "insitute" punks. Hahaha...

Anyways, Sunday night because the World Games are going on in Kaohsiung right now, the embassay (lower case e ;) ) needed people that are both fluent in English and Mandarin Chinese to assist the Athletes and what not. So they had us stationed at different hotels throughout the city to assist the athletes in getting to this big event at the mall. Our job was to excort the athletes from their hotels to the American Party at the mall. Well it just so happens that the hotel we were scheduled to be stationed at was for all the Frisbee Players. And they just so happened to have an event that night, so NOONE came for us to excort. O well it was still fun standing their feeling important.

So we called up the embassay and told them that none of our atheletes came but they told us to come to the American Party anyways. So we went to this huge party the funniest thing that happened was that our bishop was there. As we went to walk though "pseudo-security" that they had setup we saw our bishop who is a police chief. He is a really nice guy and he was glad to see us. I call it pseudo security because as soon as I walked through the metal detectors they started beeping and ringing like I was carrying a fully automatic machine gun. But I think all the police officers were to embarassed to come pat me down. Plus right as the alarms went off our bishop came over with a big smile on his face to shake our hands. I could have been packing heat!!! How do they know i wasn't? And maybe our bishop was in on it. ssshhhh... don't tell them.

At the party we were supposed to help the guest and what not, but it turns out that the majority of the people that came to the party were not even American. Out of all the people at the American Party only about 5 percent of them were American and that includes the 10 missionaries that were there. President Hoer came down to attend, originally we were supposed to do a little more translating for the athletes, but it turns out most of the athletes didn't really seem to mind not understanding.

It is okay though. Elder Christensen and I have another assignment on friday at the embassay. On this assignment we get to ride in an armored car. Hahaha... Seriously, but it is not that cool we are just helping them transport some stuff to the world games. I think we are supposed to help the driver get there and unload the stuff safely, I am pretty sure the driver is American. As of right now we don't know what the "stuff" is but apparently it needs to be transported in an Armored car. Who better to trust then a pair of Mormon Missionaries hahahah... That is probably what the embassay is thinking too.

The reason we got this service oppurtunity is because the main guy at the embassay is a returned missionary who served in Taiwan, he has really good chinese and he is kind of like the liason between the english speakers and the chinese speakers. but because of the World Games he has had to much on his hands so he asked the Mission if we could help out and do a little service for Taiwan and for the United States. It should be pretty cool. I am sure Mom is reading this thinking, I don't want my son riding in an armored car with who knows what they are transporting. Don't worry mom, i bet we are in charge of the imported mineral water that the american athletes demand to drink. i still don't get the whole concept of putting water in a bottle and selling it at ridiculous prices.

As i am sure you know, we love to do service and we are hoping that by doing service like this that we can be a good influence on everybody.

i think i told you about how we went and taught the cops english right? we were joking about it the other day, if we ever get in trouble in Taiwan i think we will be okay. The embassay loves us, the Kaohsiung Police chief loves us, heck we could probably get a permit to park our bicycles where ever we want. :)

So apart from the service we have been doing our investigators are also doing really well. We have a baptism scheduled for Saturday. Zheng Cong Da. He is a great kid! 15 years old and is moving right along in learning about the gospel. We are excited for him!

Yesterday we went to Taichung to have our first Zone Conference as the new mission. I love our new mission president. President Hoer is just as amazing as President Hsu. I guess when people are called directly by a Prophet of God they usually are pretty great people. Its amazing how inspired the callings and assignments for all the volunteers in the church are.

Well as you all continue to climb the "mountains" in your life, remember to take a shot at climbing the spiritual Kilimanjaros that are sitting right before us.

Love you all,
Elder Craig Anderson

P.S. - Oh ya can somebody do me a favor and call Obama and tell him that I am not going to be able to make it to our Luncheon on Friday. Tell him Jack Bower and I are busy transporting the mineral water.

Stunt Devils and teenagers July 14, 2009

2009-08-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

well i may not be summiting everest this week. but it has been a pretty good week:). i hope dad and ali are doing good and having fun.

this week was such an awesome week. we talked with a lot of people and it was awesome. we didn't reach the goal of talking with 1000 people, which was fine because this week we spent most of our time teaching people. everyday we had about 5-7 appointments. it was really nice. there are 3 young kids that we have been working with that are getting ready to get baptized. there are all 16 year old guys and they are awesome. i never knew 16 year old guys ccould be so spiritual. anyways, we are trying to make them all become friends so that they can strengthen each as they grow in the church.

there is one kid named Andiee who is just awesome. He met the missionaries about 3 years ago and came to church a lot, but his parents didn't like him going to church because they are buddhist so they told him he couldn't go anymore. well last week we ran into him on the street and he was like yeah i would love to come back to church, but my parents say i can't. so we told him to go tell his parents that he wanted to come to church on sundays and stuff and his parents said that would be great as long as it makes him a better person. which of course it will!! he loves praying and reading the scriptures and he loves church. there aren't to many 16 year olds who love sitting thru 3 hours of church, but you can just tell he loves every minute of it.

the other 2 kids are Weng Kid and, Xu kid. I found these drumsticks in our apartment, i have no idea what they were doing there. anyways, the Xu kid plays the drums so we took them over to his house last night and gave them too him. his dad was so touched by us giving him these old drumsticks that we found. now his dad is super happy that his son is going to become christian. as a matter of fact he has been asking us, what else does he need to do? he will even make sure his son is saying his prayers at night! isn't that awesome! his dad is buddhist, but will still make sure that his son is being true to his commitments.

as far as preaching the gospel, everything has been going great. however, recently my companion took up being a stuntman. 4 days ago we were going to visit this investigator out in the middle of no where and we were cruising down this pretty steep hill, i was about 50 yards behind my companion, when all of the sudden this scooter pulled out from a side street right into his path. my companion isn't a very coordinated kid and he kind of freaked out and ran straight into the scooter. He went flying thru the air and did a full flip. hahahaha... luckily he was fine, but now i call him Evil Kanevil. his bike was beat up really badly and he was a little scratched up. the front tie on his bike was all crooked! i guess thats what happens when you ram right into a scooter.

he has only been here for 3 months and is still getting used to the driving style over here. its okay though, i think this accident has been a great learning experience hahaha.

well it was great to hear that Grandma is doing so well. sounds like everything is under control. hope you start feeling better grams. i love you and pray for you all the time.

love you all,
Elder Anderson

sombreros and spagetti July 16, 2009

2009-08-24T12:50:00.001-07:00

This week was another very interesting and busy week. The weeks seem to flying by! President Hsu will be heading home in less than 2 weeks! After that our new Mission President will be coming down and meeting with the office staff down here. Hopefully, I will get to leave the mission office and get to go back into the field. At the present time I should be going back out to be a normal missionary soon.
I really want to go to a place that is smaller and more rural. I feel like I can do more good in those places. In the city there is just TOO much stuff to do you can’t figure out what to do. But out in the country you can really focus on a couple people rather than trying to juggle 20 or more in the city.
So you will not believe this! Right next to our office is a new Mexican Restaurant. It is authentic!! There is this guy from LA. He grew up in the states but his parents are Taiwanese. He doesn’t really speak Chinese, but he speaks English just as good as any American. He isn’t really Taiwanese at all he is American. Anyways, he just opened up this shop and the food is so good. He is a really nice guy and he is already asking questions about us. I am hoping that we can just kind of eat Mexican food with him and talk to him about the gospel. He is such a nice guy, probably about 26, his name is Mark Wu.
It was really funny, because lately I have been thinking about how much I missed Mexican food and then sure enough we see the sign for “Pacos Tacos” pop up last week. Eating at peoples restaurants and making friends with them is such a great way to share the Gospel. What happens is people kind of realize that we are people too. A lot of people when they see us must see us as aliens or machines or something. There is this Wei Family that I always go and eat their noodles at their noodle shop. They might be coming to church soon. They love us though and think we are the funniest nicest people in the world. In actuality they are the funniest nicest people in the world.
Well I need to go get my fix of Mexican food.
LOVE YA,

So I ripped apart our network here at the office, because whoever put it together before must have thought that networks are supposed to look like a bowl full of spaghetti noodles. Hope you like the pics!

July 5, 2009. Hoses and 1000

2009-07-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

I finally moved away from the office!! I am a place called Feng Shan now and it is an awesome place. It is rural in some places and really busy in others. It is perfect. My new companion is Elder Nicolai Christensen from Park City, UT. This is the first companion that I have had that has lived so close to us.

Once I found out he was from Park City, I had to ask him if he ever remembered when the big red "PC" statue in front of their school got painted yellow. He said he remembered it and he told me all about it. I started laughing and had to tell him that it was me that painted it. Small world huh? It was homecoming week so I had to do something to show my school spirit right?

Anyways, today is our P-day because we merged with Tiachung Mission last week. All the people in Taichung are moving today. So I will still email you on Wednesday as normal.

Elder Christensen is on his 3rd move so he is still really new, which is really fun. For example last night we were eating at a members house and Sister Lin was asking if we were full, and we were so full, so I told her that I was full but my companion was still starving so she came back with a big old plate full of sausage and kept putting them in his bowl. Hahahahaha... And then 2 days ago there was this kid playing with a hose and I told the kid, "Hey my companion wants you to spray him!" and so the kid looked at me like "Really?" and I was like "Yeah, he says it is really hot and that he wants you to spray him a little bit." Right as the kid started to spray my companion Elder Christensen figured out what was going on and ran away.

We are getting along great. He is a really great guy! Our area is struggling a little bit, we don't really have a lot of investigators currently, but we have a goal to invite 1000 people to meet with us this week. I think we can do it!

The Taichung Mission is really different from my old Kaohsiung Mission. They have different ways of doing things and different rules, which will be hard to adjust too but I think it will a great learning experience. I miss President and Sister Hsu so much. Those 2 were so awesome, I hope they are doing good and having a nice rest in Hawaii. That is where they live so I guess it isn't probably like the vacation we would think it is, but I bet they are taking a rest after 3 years of service.

Being a missionary really takes a lot out of people. I saw President and Sister Hsu's picture from 3 years ago and they looked so much younger hahahaha... I guess they did worry a lot about us missionaries.

So funny story, I have been using a left over bike from a missionary that just went home and it is terrible. If you pedal to hard the chain will skip off of the teeth on the gears. Anyways i was pedaling up the driveway from the parking garage underneath out apartment and sure enough it started skipping of the teeth. it is really loud when it does it, so the security guard that protects our complex came running over and saw me walking my bike up the embankment with the chain clicking against the gears. I told him "This bike is a piece of junk." and he laughed and in English said "Made in China." Hahaha... it was just funny because Taiwanese people are really proud of the quality stuff that they make so it made me laugh.

Today we are going to a science museum so that should be pretty cool. I have actually been wanting to go to this museum for a long time, but all my other companions had either already been or they just didn't want to go. But this morning Elder Christensen was like hey do you wanna go? So i we are going. Probably sounds boring to you, but I think it will be cool.

Pray for us this week so that we can talk with 1000 people! Love you all,

Elder Anderson

June 30, 2009 Email

2009-06-30T20:47:00.001-07:00

Elder Yang just happens to be terrified of elevators. As we have been packing up the mission office, it has been hilarious to see Elder Yang as he nervously gets in the elevator with all the boxes. Finally, we took the last trip to the car and we headed back up to clean the office.
Well we cleaned everything up and at about 10:15PM decided to head home to get some sleep. As we headed down the elevators we all looked at each other and it just seem to click in everybody’s head all at the same time. “1..2...3.. JUMP!” So we took a little jump in the elevator just to scare Elder Yang, however, it must have also shocked the elevator too because it came to an abrupt stop! We started pushing all the buttons and it wouldn’t move.
Luckily however we did have ice cream on hand so we called the management and then sat down and started to eat our ice cream. Finally an hour and a half later, all of the sudden it started moving again and we were freed. It was a very interesting being in the elevator that late at night, for a minute or two there I thought that we might be having a little camp out in the elevator.

Love Elder Craig Anderson

Return Date

2009-06-26T13:34:00.001-07:00

As you will see in the letter below. Craig's official release date will be December 22, 2009. What fun to have him home right before Christmas and for the holidays.

Robert

2009-06-26T13:33:00.001-07:00

HELLO!!!

So this week was so stinking awesome! We had 2 baptisms. I know I have told you all about the Jewish man that we have been working with. He has been doing so well lately and then finally he was ready. He has been meeting with the missionaries for over a year and has progressed slowly the whole time. Since he is about 60 years old and has a very strong Jewish background, it has been a hard long road. But through the power of the Spirit influencing him day by day he was able to change.
His story is very unique. A little over a year ago, the missionaries were heading home late at night and they ran across a drunken white man on the street. His name was Robert Hirsch. He was lost and drunk out of his mind. They felt bad for the poor guy so they asked him for his wallet to see if they could find his address for him. They found his address and realized that it was way too far away to walk. So they jumped in a taxi with him and took him home. After dropping him off the missionaries headed home. A couple days went by and the missionaries didn’t think much about the incident, but they had a strong impression to call him and see if he was doing ok.

They called him up and asked how he was doing. He was so thankful for what they did for him that he invited them over for dinner. Days later they went over to his house to eat a special spaghetti dinner that he had prepared for them. He introduced the missionaries to his wife and 3 kids. They all sat down for a good ol’ American dinner as Robert would call it. During the dinner of course the topic turned to religion. Poor guy just wanted to thank the Elders for helping him, he probably didn’t want to talk about religion. Hahaha… Well what did he expect. However it went very well and Robert was very interested in the “Mormon” religion that he had always heard so much about. The missionaries quickly explained that the “Mormon Church” is not our actually name, it is a nickname that other people have given us and they told him that our church’s full name is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They explained that the center of our religion is the savior Jesus Christ. Of course Robert teased them about some of the rumors and half truths he had heard about our church but in the end he was still very intrigued and decided to keep listening.

The first several lessons were very rough. Coming from a non-Christian background made learning the gospel just that much more difficult. As he continued to meet with missionaries regularly his attitude started to change. He started to treat his family more kindly, he started to quit some of his addictions, and he started to feel the love of the Lord as he began to pray and repent.

His progress has been very obvious, about 5 months ago I had the opportunity of being in this same area. On several occasions I was able to meet Robert and talk to him at church. At the time he was meeting with the other Elders so I never taught him at his home, but at church I would talk with him and we started to develop a friendship. I don’t know why, but I always seem to make friends with 60 year guys. They are usually the smartest and most interesting people though.

Well I moved away for a couple months and then came back to this area when I moved into the Mission Office. We started teaching him regularly and began helping him to prepare for baptism. I think the most memorable moment of teaching Robert was the night that we got him to forfeit all of his cigarettes and alcohol. He has always struggled with drinking and smoking, but on that night he decided to change. He went into the back room, grabbed several bottles of rice whiskey and we all went and dumped them out. Since Robert doesn’t speak Chinese I asked his son in Chinese if there was any more alcohol in the house. His son thought about it for a minute and ran off into another room and came back with another bottle. So once again we went back and dumped it all out. It was kind of funny because I don’t think Robert was trying to hide it, he just forgot about that bottle, but of course we had to tease him a little bit about it.

We left that night with several packs of cigarettes in our pockets. Thank goodness our Mission President didn’t come visit us. It would have been a little hard to explain why our pockets were full of cigarettes and why we smelled like smoke. Hahaha… Luckily we didn’t run into anyone so we just went home and flushed them down the toilet because we were afraid that if we threw them in the trash our neighbors might think we were smoking.
Anyways, finally on Thursday he was baptized. He still isn’t perfect and will probably struggle with several things throughout the remainder of his life. However, the change that has happened to his family is so amazing. They truly have felt the love of the Gospel. His wife decided to wait a little while to be baptized, but Robert and his daughter Elli were baptized. They all come every Sunday and are probably the most active members of our ward.

Here are their pictures. Elder Frandsen performed the baptisms, Elder and Sister Frandsen are the coolest. Elder Frandsen was a missionary here about 30 years ago. Him and his wife have been here for about 1 year and they always feed us really good food  They will be heading home in about October just before I come home on the 22nd of December. Oh and yes that is the official day I will be coming home.

Anyways, I hope that Robert’s conversion story makes sense. I am having a hard time thinking how to write today. I am sure I left out a ton of little details but I will rewrite it in my journal later. Love ya all.
Peace,
Elder Craig Anderso

Sombreos and Spagetti

2009-06-17T08:46:00.001-07:00

Clearest Day Yet

2009-06-10T07:44:00.000-07:00

June 9, 2009

2009-06-10T07:24:00.001-07:00

A picture of one of the clearest days i have ever seen in Taiwan!
I don't know if i have ever told you all about the random fireworks that get light off over here. Somedays you will be biking down the street and all of the sudden things will start exploding all around you. I am starting to get used to it, but the other day I honestly thought the Bloods and the Crips had started a turf war and I was stuck in the middle. Of course my companion who is a native was probably wondering why in the world I dove underneath an empty dumpster and curled up in the fetal position. They don't have guns over here so when they hear fireworks they think " oh fireworks!" or as they would think in chinese "ah! qing chang hong hang bang bing bong su ran pao" (And yes that is all one word). But of course being an American I hear loud bangs and 2 thoughts go through my head the 1st "Is it hunting season?" If the answer is yes, then everything is ok. If the answer is no, then of course the next natural reaction is to curl up in a ball and hide. hahaha...
so if you are wondering whether or not i really did curl up underneath a dumpster or not, the answer is no i didn't not. but only because there aren't any dumpsters here. They recycle everything so they won't put dumpsters out on the street because if they do people will use them. But the other day i almost really did get a bottle rocket to the face. That was fun. Just like old times.
Love you all,
Elder Craig Anderson
PS – stay away from fireworks!

June 4, 2009 Monkeys

2009-06-10T07:23:00.001-07:00

Well I am sorry I didn’t email yesterday! Things got really crazy and we were so busy I couldn’t even sit down for 10 minutes. I t turns out moving a mission is a lot of work. It’s okay though, it is really fun and I get to learn a lot.
This week has been another wonderful week. Yesterday morning we actually went to a place called Monkey Mountain. And yes you guessed it. It had monkeys on it. Lots of monkeys, they are crazy. I thought they were going to eat me. We brought a loaf of bread with us to feed them and it was very intense. You had to be really sneaky about pulling the bread out of your bag or else they would jump you. They are evil little creatures!!
I am sure Ali is reading this and just shaking her head thinking that monkeys can’t be mean. Ali trust me all I can say is Wrong, Evil, Smell, Bad, gross, mean. Hahaha… it was really fun though to get outside of the office and go climb a mountain. Besides the monkeys there was a really good view of the city. Luckily there wasn’t that much pollution in the air yesterday so it was pretty clear.
I start to love the culture more and more here. What I mean by that is the old Chinese culture. In old Chinese culture, people are very respectful, families are the most important and they believe in doing good things. Their views are very similar to ours or at least used to be very similar to ours.
Here are some pictures of the monkey gang that we ran into. I hope you like them.

love ya
Elder Craig Anderson

May 19, 2009

2009-06-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

This week we met the coolest guy on the street. He is so perfect! We went and ate dinner together and he was asking all these really deep soul searching questions. I really like him a lot. He is a computer programmer in the building across the street from ours. On the way home the other night we saw him on the street and started talking with him. At first he was really stand offish, but then I started talking about computers with him and he really warmed up.

We gave him a church pamphlet and invited him to read it. So we setup a time to meet a couple days later. We all went to this little shop across the street and ate. He had read the pamphlet several times and had all these awesome questions about, "why are we here on earth?" "how do we know what is true?" So good! We gave him a Book of Mormon and setup another time to meet. He was so excited to read scriptures, when we gave it to him he could hardly pay attention to what we were talking about because he was flipping over the pages and holding it like it was the best gift he had ever gotten.

His name is Benjamin Chen, we actually helped him pick the name Benjamin because he didn't have an English name. Most people over here have an English name that they use. But Benjamin didn't so we helped him pick.

Today there are some new missionaries coming to our mission. 3 new ones to be exact. The new missionaries are so much fun because they are so perfect. Their faith is so strong and they just have no idea what to do. But you can feel their enthusiasm for the work and its awesome. Although they are completely clueless about how to do missionary work, they bring a spirit and a drive that is a strong inspiration and motivation to us. I love being around the new missionaries because they are basically white slates. You can teach them, and they are willing to accept what you teach. Even when we eat it is just so hilarious to watch this missionaries try to use chopsticks hahahaha... Don't worry I usually don't laugh at them. As I am sure you can tell I am excited to welcome these new missionaries today.

I have good news too! I do not have to do referrals anymore! Last week I was supposed to move from my current job to do that, but my company Elder Zheng isn't moving. I am so relieved, I was really not that excited to do that job. So I get to keep doing what I have been doing for a while now. Anyways, thats good right?

I also have some more good news. I might be leaving the Office on July 1st to go back out into the field. Originally President Hoer of the Taichong Mission was going to take all of us in the Mission Office up to Taichong and work from there, but now it looks like they won't need us so we can go back and be normal missionaries again!!!! I am so excited, but still plans could change. Lets just hope I can get out into the field soon.

Well thats the story for the week. If you have complaints please email them to somebody else. :) hahaha

love ya
Elder Craig Anderson