10-20-2014

10-20-2014

Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 12:59:25 +0800
Subject: 
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!!

This week has gone by fairly well, we have been working on trying to find more people to teach as our pool here has been a little small for a bit, but as we are going along, I am having fun just enjoying being with my companion and hearing all him and meeting new people.

This week started pretty good, here in our mission, in order to see what missionaries are doing here in the field for language study to improve the language program at the MTC, they are having us do a quick language survey every 3 months where we have to speak into a microphone and use Chinese to answer some random question or situation.  Its kind of weird, but as we were going to do it in the chapel, we discovered that the internet was down at the chapel, so we went to a nearby members house to do it and got to get to know them, the member family is really fun, the dad only has one arm and is quite the artist, while the wife is in a wheelchair, they are a super cool family and their kids are really fun, so as we were doing the survey I just kind of hung around their little kids and goofed off with them.

Later in the week, I think I had one of the more crazy experiences in Taiwan.  A couple of weeks ago we had gotten a referral from a Sister who had just barely gotten off of her mission in Taipei, however the problem was that when I called the number that she gave us a woman would answer that seemed to only speak Taiwanese, and so I had no idea what she was saying every time I called her until she would just get annoyed and just hang up on me.  So we asked this sister to set up the appointment for us as I was having the communication problem.  This week she called us up and asked us if we would be able to go to our furthest secondary area to go meet with this referral, of course we were willing and so when the day came, we hopped on the bus and took the 1.5 hour bus ride out to this tiny little town to visit this person.  When we got there, the Sister showed us to the house, and as I saw it, I was in a little bit of shock, mostly because it had a fence around it and within the fence was just tons and tons of barking, seemingly angry dogs.  It was a little dark at this time and she told us that her father would come and help us get through the gate and into the house.  When the dad arrived he was on a motor scooter and we just went in kind of a small circle, with dogs surrounding us and just barking at it.  It was super crazy, but when we got in the man was super cool, he had been christian all his life and was just kind of like a normal old guy, constantly telling you the same thing over and over again, and just having fun.  So it was totally worth it =)

And finally the last thing that happened this week was that this last Saturday, we had an appointment with one of our RC's at his house, so we were heading down to his house, about a 30 min bike ride away, and as we were about 10 minutes away from his house he calls us up and asks if he could reschedule to another day.  We talked a little bit and finally he canceled on us, and we decided that we would just head to a nearby town and just start tracting it up, so we start biking and not 10 seconds after we start heading out to the area, we head a loud popping noise and air leaking out of my companions tire... Lots of fun! So we started walking around and asking for the nearest bike shop that could help us fix the bike, which lead us to this old mans house who had a sign on his door that said "bike repairs." seeing as we didn't really have any other nearby option we had this man who couldn't really speak any Chinese start fixing my companions tire, in the end he got a new inner tube and a new outer tire, so we start heading back to our main area because we had a lesson at the church, and about 10 minutes later, my companion yells for me to stop, as his tire is flat again! Super crazy, so we walked back to our area and finally got the tire fixed at a little more professional place, but it was still quite the fun little walk =)

Well that's about it for this week, things are going well and the people that are willing to meet with us are still pretty cool.  Hope you are all having a great week!

Love you all!

Elder Heaton