8-26-2013

how are you liking the pictures?

this is the "Bing" that i ate last week, has beans in it, really good!

8-26-2013

Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 11:47:42 +0800
Subject: BIQ's, Chinese and a Smoothie
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello everyone!! Hows life where ever you are? That's good! Now onto me =)

Well this week has been a really interesting one with tons of up's and downs so without further adeu (adue?) however you want to spell it I'll begin

So as tradition states I'll just go right into the food that I ate this week... which really wasn't all that different, but I think one food that I haven't mentioned is a green bean smoothie... I have no idea how to make it but I think I'll make it a goal to find out, but that's one interesting thing about Asia is that they just seem to think that beans are actually a desert food rather than like... a vegetable or something and so if you go to an ice cream place you have the choice to put red beans into your ice cream and they have like this green bean smoothie, which is really good. I think my taste buds are starting to get accustomed to Taiwan food because things are just tasting better every day that I eat them. I have also learned to just accept that I cant read a menu and just kind of pick something and make sure its not intestines, which I'm not sure if I've eaten yet or not, I'll get back to you on that but its cool.

Well outside of food (or in chinese, chule shiwu yiwai... I cant type in characters yet) there is really only one story this week, so I dont know if you know but when you are in the field (and this may only be in Taiwan) they split your mission area into zones and so I have the main zone (which is Huwei city and that area) and secondary areas (which are other towns like dounan, baozhong ect.) which are farther away from your home.  So we were in Dounan which is one of our secondaries teaching an investigator, it was really late (about 9:15 or so) and we were on our way home, going rather quickly because home was a good 15 mins away, when a car door opens right in front of my companion and causes a wreck... yeah, my companion was fine but it turned into kind of a big affair because the guys door got over stretched or something and was closing funky, so the cops got involved and in the end they decided that there wasn't really anything to be done unless the guy wanted to go to court, but he didn't really want to... I felt bad for him but =/.

So one random, I'm not sure if its a culture thing or just because we are foreigners but whenever we ask a person to help us find a house (because sometimes the addresses are really weird like house number 5 in the east side of the city, where the houses aren't really in numerical order) and the people we ask if they dont know get like the whole neighborhood involved, its really cool but I also feel kinda bad because I feel like I'm really troubling them.

Also this week I had a chance (because we had a little bit of an overlap when a lesson ran long) to teach a lesson all by my lonesome, and it didn't go too bad but I still didn't understand him as well as I would have liked.  But I got through the material that I needed to teach, he kinda understood what I was saying and it went better than I expected, so that was fun.

Well that's my life for now, its kinda fun but also a lot of hard work.  The people are cool even the ones who have no interest, the food is great, and the place looks really cool, I would send more pictures but they only really allow you to use the camera on p-day so I take advantage of that when I can.

Elder Heaton

8-19-2013

Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 11:04:23 +0800
Subject: The work moves forward...yeah
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Greetings Everyone and their dogs... especially their dogs, but the people can read it too.

So we have been having a great time, but this week there wasn't really much new happening.

So first of all in Taiwan they have what they call "Night Markets" or YeShi and so on Thursday we went down there for dinner, and we really wanted to make like a huge deal out of it so we just invited a ton of members and investigators but it didn't turn out as big as we had hoped, however while we were there one of the members named Liao asked me if I had ever tried chicken feet... and then he went and bought like all the parts of the chicken for me to try, so I had the chance to try Chicken feet (not that great) Chicken heart (pretty good) chicken stomach ( kinda rubbery) and my companion tried that little red thing on the top of a roosters head so that's cool. Now beyond the chicken stuff one of the drinks that the missionaries here like is Dongguo Cha or Winter Melon Tea which is quite delishous, but at the drink stand you can get it with other stuff in it, so I have tried it with some aloe stuff which I really liked but I think my favorite thing to put in it was ice cream because when I tried it it tasted just like a liquid icecream sandwich.

But other than that the things are going well here, I think one of the biggest things that I have noticed here is that lately we have been trying to have a lot of peike's or lessons with a member present or just another person who can help testify and do other things, and sometimes we invite another investigator who was a former and seems to know the doctrine fairly well join us and teach, but during the lesson that we planed for the other person I have gotten the feeling that the person we brought with us, the peike, seemed usually to get more out of the lesson than the person we planned for, so that's kinda cool.

Well that's just about it but I just want everyone to know that I love Taiwan, the place is cool, the people are cooler, everyone is really nice even those who don't really care about our message and things are going well

I know that this message can help peoples lives and am working on being able to speak the language better so that I can tell them exactly how it can.  Its great to be a missionary and its lots of hard work, but also lots of fun.

Elder Heaton

8-12-2013

Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 12:03:34 +0800
Subject: Strange foods and nice people
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello everybody How are things at... where ever you are?

Well this week has actually been a really really fast week and I am surprised that it is already Monday again.  So as far as the big burning question on everyone's mind is that my Chinese is still pretty much useless as I cant really understand people but that's ok because I have an awesome companion that does all on my translations or fanyi for me, so that's that

So heres are the highlights I think of the week.

Some interesting foods that I have had the chance to eat, just yesterday there was a meat on the table and whenever we asked what it was the people would laugh and tell us that they didn't know the Chinese name (because most people speak taiwanese which is a language of its own as well as chinese) they only knew the Taiwanese name. So as someone went to the computer to translate it into chinese I just ate one and it turned out to be Pig Testicles so that was cool... next thing was also at the same dinner which was an avacado smoothie, which was actually rather good, but It didn't really taste like avacado so you can think what you want of that.  Then theres this fruit here that's in season right now called Long yen which translated means dragon eyes, and I pretty much eat that everywhere because its really really cheap and it seems to be the gift that people just like to give you, what it is is they give you a branch with these brown balls growing on it, and you peal off the skin for a little bit of fruit on the inside but within the "meat" of it there is a big black seed, it kinda tastes like a weird grape so that's kinda cool, and finally the thing I ate right when I got here is called a hot pot and the weird thing about those is that they give you a bowl of raw things and a stove of water that you boil then you just throw what you want into the water and wait for it to cook... kinda interesting but I dotn really know what to think of it.  But there's my food story for the week

So as it turns out my area, the Huwei area is actually a really really large area and I still haven't been to every town that is in it, but that also means that there is a lot of travel time to get to each appointment (sometimes up to an hour) so while we were doing this a car pulls over and waves to me and my companion, so my companion stopped but I wasn't really paying attention until the last minute and then I realize that things have come to a stop, so I grab my breaks and right when I get next to the car, my bike flips over! So as it turnes out the person in the car was a member and worse still is that I remembered them... So that was really hilarious!!

An interesting thing about I think its Chinese culture is that when a guest arrives at your house to meet with you, you always bring them a snack or something to drink.  Every time.  its rather an interesting custom but that's what it is, its also really nice after biking in hot weather as people tend to just bring out an ice water =) but I bring this up because we were looking for a less active and right as we got to his house his mother, who only speaks Taiwanese, so no Chinese, comes greets us, and we are asking her if her son is home, she has no idea what we are saying, we have no idea what she is saying, but she brings out a bottle of water for each of us and a little bag of ice cream... We tried to decline it but she totally insisted, even after we called up her son to translate for us and tell her we couldn't sit down with her, but she was the nicest old lady, it was a really cool thing.

Well that's about it for the interesting things that are happening here, the people are nice, the lessons are all in gibberish here, and I totally love it

I know that I am here for a reason and I don't know what it is yet but for now I am enjoying it

Elder Heaton

He Zhang Lao

8-5-2013

Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 10:50:44 +0800
Subject: Re: How do you know the ocean is friendly?
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hi mom hows things going there?

Yeah so first of all here I do go by He Zhang Lao most of the time but I discovered yesterday that alot of the people in my ward actually are able to speak English quite well so that was an interesting thing to note.  also I am sending this e-mail off first to really make sure that I don't forget to write you like last time... I felt really bad about it and so I hope that this makes up for it.  So the interesting thing about Taiwan is how weird the traffic is here.  It really is just kind of crazy and I don't think I totally understand it but here's some interesting points about it.  First off there are the little motor scooters EVERYWHERE!!! which is really funny, you could walk down a road and the entire road would be totally lined with the motor scooters. Second weird thing is that you can't turn right on a red light... I'm not sure why or anything like that but that's just what it is.  and 3rd is that when you want to turn left, in a scooter i'm not sure if it applies to cars is you would have to wait for the green light, move over to the front of the right intersection into a little "scooter box" that they would have painted on the road and wait for the next green light.  and finally the last interesting thing is that the timers on when you want to cross an intersection when the dont walk sign is up actually tell you how long you have to wait which could go up to about 90 seconds, which is really weird.

Well beyond that I forgot to bring the mail information with me, sorry, but I will bring it with me for the next week so you will have that, but I think they said that the best way is just through USPS or the US postal service, and to make sure that you dont send any of the non allowed items that were listed on that flier when you got the letter from the mission president, also when you are sending it just send it to the mission home, I think that would be the best way to get stuff to me... Sorry I'm not more informed but I'm really just trying to get this whole chinese thing down.

The traveling was long and got me really tired but it was interesting to see everything from up in the sky, saddly we weren't allowed to watch anything and they were really vauge on what music you were allowed to listen to so most of the time I spent sleeping or just reading what they had there.

Anyway sorry for the scatterbrained e-mail but that's what it is, I love you!!

Elder Heaton

First Days in the in the mission field.