9-16-2013

Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 12:16:09 +0800
Subject: Xili Hui, baking cookies, and Taiwan...
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello Family, Dajia hao

So this week has been one full of eventful things, fun stuff and cookies! so lets get started.

This week on the food market, I didn't really eat anything really interesting, but I guess the one thing that I did eat was a drink called duoduo.  Its a kinda yogurt flavored drink that is quite delicious, but whats better than a plain duoduo is actually mixing it with other random stuff, so me and my companion bought a 1 liter bottle of it, and we got a big 2-3, i'm not actually sure, liter bottle of sprite and we mixed it, it was pretty good but we have been experimenting with that, we also tried it with just plain water, and dongguo tea (or winter melon tea) which were all pretty good. beyond that though there wasn't really much to talk about.

So the biggest thing that happened this week would have to have been that I had a baptism, which happened this last Saturday and it was really cool.  While we were talking to her about who she wanted to do what, we asked her who she wanted to give the talks at the event and she picked two people that helped with her lessons (we call them peike's) and we originally thought that she was going to pick the member that helped out with most of the lessons we taught her, but she actually picked him for the talk and thought that it would be kinda weird if he did two things and so she actually picked me to perform the baptism!!! So weird but it was a really cool and interesting experience.  I'm really glad that I was able to participate in that and hearing her testimony about it afterwards was really cool.  And as a really cool way to kinda finish her baptism, right after the event they had a... I think it was a relief society meeting but everyone just attended, but they watched "The Other Side of Heaven" which was just a really cool way to end the night even though I wasn't able to stay to watch the whole thing.

So beyond that, as this was the last week of this transfer, our English class had a party, and for that party we did two things, the first was a talent show and the other we baked cookies!! now the reason that that is so cool here is that nobody here actually owns an oven, and a lot of people actually have never seen one before, so nobody bakes anything which means that the whole baking cookies things was a totally new experience for just about everybody who attended.  it was lots of fun and we actually had a some luck in finding all the ingredient's that we needed, but in the end I think we bought the wrong kind of brown sugar which made the dough look like a chocolate dough, but all in all it was really good and all the people really seemed to enjoy it, and the talent show afterwards was awesome, except for our part because we didn't really prepare a talent.

Also this week during contacting just last night we ran into a group of college students ( Huwei is actually like a college town, which is really weird and makes a lot of our LA's that we have here impossible to find because they just lived in student housing but have moved out now ) who were all from Vietnam, they were really cool invited us in and took some pictures with us ( cause we are white ) and just talked with them for a bit, but it was a little interesting because their first language is Vietnamese and I think the one who had been there the longest had only lived there for only 2 years or so, so they couldn't read Chinese, and definitely didn't speak any English, but they were really nice and gave us a box of moon cakes after all was said and done, and were going to meet up with some time to play soccer so what was cool.

Well thats all that has really happened this week, I have enjoyed it, time is kinda flying by, my first transfer has just ended and one of the cool guys in my district is going to my companions first area.  This also means that my training is slowly coming to an end and one of the privilages of being trained is that you get an hour for dinner for language study for your first transfer, that is now over.  But I know that things are going great. the people are awesome, the sights are amazing, and the temperature is cooling down so thats where I am now woo!

Elder Heaton

PS I finally got a full Chinese name, it was kinda weird for me because a couple of times people asked me whats my name and I had to tell them that I only had a last name, so I asked a member to give me a name, and it is...

He Liang Xing

Liang - shining

Xing - star

He - doesn't really have any meaning

so yeah

From

He Liang Xing

9-9-2013

Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2013 12:06:55 +0800
Subject: Contacting contacting, rice and a Baptism
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com; jessjeanh@gmail.com

Hello family friends and other (I'm not quite sure who other is yet)

This week has been a really interesting one, with two real extremes through it.  But first off the food =)

So I think the main interesting that I ate today was called blood rice... yeah, we were eating with a member who had just come back from a trip (really cool guy and had been gone all week) and he wanted to eat dinner with us, so we go off to a ji pai (fried chicken) stand and then he says something to my companion and hes just like "no man I dont like blood rice" so then he looks at me and I just kinda say why not.  So I got me a little bag of blood rice, which is these little cubes of rice held together with something (blood maybe, but I'm not sure) and had a little sauce in the bottom.  it wasn't really that great and I probably wouldn't order it very much if at all, but now I can say that I have eaten that, which is cool.  The other food thing that I want to expound on that I mentioned before is the kao rou (cow row is how its pronounced) which is a Taiwanese barbecue, so yesterday while we were out contacting we ran into a small group of students that were just sitting outside their house, they had two tiny little grills ( both were smaller than the size of my laptop ) with some hot coals under it, so we go talk to them, and we just kinda joined in for a little bit, we couldn't stay for long because it was about 8:30 but they just kinda let us come, sit down, they gave us a little meat and it was kinda cool.

So that leads off onto what I did this week.  So work has been moving along really slow here.  We really only had 1 progressing investigator and so that left us with a ton of free time to just do some quality contacting.... which is really really boring, especially when you don't totally understand what people are saying when you ask them questions, but I think we had a good like 3 days this week where that was really most of what we did.  So it was a bit of a boring week, but to kinda improve that and on the other side of the coin we had a person this last Saturday that just passed her baptismal interview!!!!  So that was totally exciting and I can't wait for next Saturday for the actual event to happen.  And she is really excited for it as well.

Well that's really all that has happened this week, I am working hard on learning the language and have been slowly seeing the improvements here and there as I understand more and more of this mysterious way of talking that these people have.  The scriptures are cool and I think at the end of Alma 26 (it should be a really short chapter if I'm right) there was a really cool quote of the difference between people who have the gospel in their lives and those that don't, see if you can find it

From that one guy in the Taiwan area

Elder Heaton 

9-2-2013

Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2013 12:14:42 +0800

Subject: Rain Rain Go Away... or not

From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net

To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello everyone, everybody and... that's all.

So this week was full of so many things, but I think the biggest thing it was full of was travel time... Let me explain

So this week there were 3 things that we really needed to travel to that were out of the normal...rotation, first of all on Tuesday we wanted our district leader to go to one of our investigators houses to do a baptismal interview, but the investigator lives a little out in the boonies so we decided to do a transfer for that but that meant that I needed to go to Douliu for a day because if I had to lead the way in my area I would probably get lost.  So I got to do transfers for that, really fun and the person I worked with in Douliu liked that I had an extra 30 mins for LS at dinner (because I'm still on my first transfer.)

That's one, next, which was the day after (Thursday...i think) they had a meeting for all the companionship's that were getting/training, but the meeting was in GaoXiong (or KaoShiong, I'm not really sure how they spell it)  Which is near the far south part of the island, the only problem was that there was a Taiphoon going on and so everything was totally flooded, including the normal train tracks, so there wasn't anything leaving from our train station, so we called and were about to go home but then the zone leaders called us and told us we had permission to take a taxi. However the taxi's weren't running because of the taiphoon so we were kinda out of luck, but then the sisters called us and told us that they found a taxi, and were given permission to join them to get to the high-speed train that would take us to Gaoxiong.  So that was an awesome adventure.

And finally the 3rd one was that the day after that (Friday) the zone leaders decided to do exchanges with us and so I got to go to JiaYi (Chiai...) for another day for transfers, and that was also really fun, but to get to Jaiyi we had to take another train which from dounan to Jaiyi is a good 40 or so mins.  So that went well.  Also the day after that the zone leader that I was with was asked to do a baptismal interview and because we didn't really have time to switch back I got to join him and go to another town called Taibao.

And I think the most important detail about all this traveling was that there was a taiphoon all this week and so that means that there was just a ton of rain. during the whole time.  It has finally stopped but thta was an adventure.

This week I really only ate like one interesting thing which was called "Chou DouFu" or Stinky Tofu, which smells a little bit like a sewer, but it doesn't taste too bad.  So that was good fun, my companion likes it but I thought that it was just ok.

Another interesting thing about Taiwan is that Bowling here is really really cheep.  its about 100NT for 2 games or so which is about $3 or so.  But I haven't bowled here yet, they had a ward activity but I was on transfers during the time.

Well that's about it.  Know that I am doing well, the rain has stopped, the moon festival is coming up (I'm not sure what day it is but it sounds fun) and the people are really cool, even the ones with no interest.  Speaking of which, last night we were contacting and we ran into a guy at the bus station and were talking about how our ward was having a BBQ and invited him to it, he said he was actually holding a BBQ of his own on that day and totally invited us to it.  So we are going for it and are going to have 2 Taiwan Barbecues in one day, Woo

Well that's pretty much it Love you all

Elder Heaton

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