4-26-2014

4-26-2014

Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 18:09:02 +0800
Subject: Interviews and a road trip
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello everybody,

things are doing ok this week, been working pretty hard and just spending some good quality time recovering and trying to get my body to heal as fast as possible so that I can get back to some normal missionary work, but until then I'm still here and doing my best to be useful.

Thats super sad to hear about buddy... i can't really think of the words to describe how I feel right now, its also really unfortunate that it had to happen right during a time that should have been spent in relative happiness.  Buddy was a great little pooch and he will be sorely missed.

This week one of the more interesing places that i went to is a place called "The Stone" or "shitou" (shr tow) which is an all you can eat barbecued meat place.  The interesting thing about this place is that when you go there, they sit you down at a table with a grill in the middle of it (with coals and everything) then you order what kinds of meat you want of their various different selections, then they bring you just a bunch of these raw meat strips and you just go out and barbecue them however you like, its kind of fun and you can order as much as you want because it is a buffet.

outside of that this week was kind of interesting as it was interview week and so I spent most of my time in a van filled with a bunch of missionary supplies that the whole mission ordered, going throughout most of southern Taiwan and delivering these bags as well as spending  alot of time looking at random apartments that the mission is thinking of renting to see if they were any good, it was kind of a fun week and it was just kind of like a big road trip going to all these places with all out clothes packed in a bag and just sleeping with missionaries that were in the nearby area.

Finally an interesting little thing that i noticed this week is that today for our p-day we went to a place called "fo guang shan" which literally means "Buddha Light Mountain" which is just a SUPER BIG Buddhist temple in southern taiwan.  It was really interesting place where we got to see and read a little bit more about Buddhism and what they believe.  but i think the most interesting thing i saw there was a short clip on the history of the temple, and though it was kind of interesting I really didn't understand almost anything that they were talking about.  As we walked away from the clip one of the people i was with made a comment about how "now he knows how an investigator feels when he hears about the restoration" while another person said, "yeah... but we have the spirit" which is just a really cool thing, we are able to effectively teach these people not because we are super persuasive but rather because we have the spirit. I know this to be true.

Well thats about all my time that I have for this e-mail, love you all and just have a great regardless of the circumstances, I know that that is truly what God wants.