12-30-2013

12-30-2013

Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2013 11:59:02 +0800
Subject: Hi!!!
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family and friends!!

This week has been an interesting one full of contemplation, as well and just having fun with our investigators and members as we try to figure out the best way to do the work here is. So lets begin.

First off is I just need to say it was great to be able to see the family this week and to be able to just kinda see that everybody is still there, there still alive and no matter how far away I am they will still be waiting for me when I get home.  It was also just fun to be able to speak English with someone who is not a missionary for a change... Its definitely an interesting thing to think about, and I was talking with my companion about it as we were biking down the road, but just speaking our native language here is almost like speaking in code, because most people wont be able to understand what we are talking about when we speak English and no body really uses it here except to try to communicate with the random foreigners that pop up every now and again.

Beyond that things are going good this week I let it slip that my birthday was on Wednesday and so a bunch of people got together (mainly the missionaries I think) and all pitched in to buy a little birthday cake, which was really nice, but because they gave it to me at church I figured it would be better to save it for DTM which is on Tuesday to eat it because there would be a little less people there =P but it was happy and I'm excited to eat that.  Other foods that I ate this week was actually a... as a Taiwanese person learning English calls it "A traditional Taiwanese wedding cake" which is actually a little odd.  So I think the definition of sweet in Taiwan is a little different than sweet in America, because this cake has I think about 13 layers, and I think one of the layers is actually just plain meat, but it also has a lot of sweetness in it and it just turns out to be a really interesting flavor. but that's the most interesting thing that I ate this week.

Lets see, this week was a little slow on the lessons but we have been spending a little more time working on trying to figure out what it is the ward has in plan for this ward, as well as what our part of that is, trying to see how the ward want's us to use our time, and to follow them.  I think the biggest thing is that they want us to work with as many less active elders as we possibly can so that we can get the accomplishment of having this ward and others turn into a stake! so that's the big excitement right now.

Well thats about all that I have for you all.  The work moves forward, the people are nice, The weather is a little cold but I think its getting warmer, and I'm nice and happy.

Until next week!

Elder Heaton

何長老