1-27-2014

1-27-2014

Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 11:52:08 +0800
Subject: Life in Gaoxiong
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the Family and the Friends and the other, whoever that might be =)

This week has been exciting, getting to know the new area, finding out who all the people are, what the different culture here is and all the phases of missionary work, so lets begin.

First off I would like to introduce my new companion, as I said last week, his name is Elder Wootan, he is from Utah but also lived in China for about 5 years going to an international school, but while he was there he didn't really learn a ton of Chinese.  He has be out on his mission for 8 months now, which is about 2 move calls longer than I have and he just barely went senior companion.  The most interesting thing is though, he actually arrived in this area about 3 weeks ago on whats called a "mini move call" which just means either someone from the MTC was on the fast track and came here early, somebody who got an extension went home in the middle of the move call or something like that, but either way, we are both working together to try to figure out the area.  It has been really interesting working with him and seeing his teaching style.  and its been fun learning about the new culture here.

Now a little bit about Gaoxiong.  So in Taiwan I feel like theres 3-4 really BIG name citys here, the most commonly known one is Taipei or 台北 if your speaking Chinese, the second biggest one is Kaohsiung or 高雄 in Chinese. Which I think are the two biggest city's in 台灣.  then after that theres Taichung 台中 which is my mission's name and where the mission office and mission headquarters is then maybe 台南 or Tainan which is a little smaller than all the rest.  But 高雄 is super different compared to Huwei 虎尾 because Huwei was just a little city that nobody had ever really heard about, with very few people there, and so if you were waiting at a red light, a lot of the time there would be no body to talk to.  But here in 高雄 there are SOOO many people here, usually at every light theres a good line of cars as well as a good 10 or 20 motorcycles or scooters just waiting, so you can just go up to any one of them and just start the contact.

So that's just the biggest differences that I have noticed while working here. so you can take it as you will.  but now I will move onto food as this week I went to another buffet, the same kind, a hotpot buffet where you just put the meat in the pot and boil it until it is good.  The interesting thing is the one that we went to this time, (by we I mean me, my companion, two other elders that share the same area as us, and a member named Brother Chen) one of the broths that you could choose from was a Milk broth.  I though it sounded really good and so did another person and Brother Chen.  But then the funny thing happened while we were eating, somebody though... "you know its kinda ironic boiling beef in milk" and we all had a good laugh out of it. so that was fun

Well thats just about it, I'm still working on figuring out who our investigators are right now, as well as what the best way to do the work here is.  hopefully I will have more for you all next week.  But until then know that I love you all and to have a good week!

From Elder Heaton

何長老