People Really Like Their Veggies Here In Taidong!

April 2, 2017 email

Emma and her new companion Sister Lin!!

This week was absolutely SICK! Taidong is getting better and better everyday and we keep meeting cooler and cooler people everyday! I love it so much:) Heavenly Father has really been right next to us every minute of every day. It's also been so cool to see how many ties have been made this week as well. Members serving in the same mission as Uncle Eric and him also serving in my companions home ward! The world is such a tiny place!

This church is so true!! (Note from Lisa:)  James, and my 2 brothers and 1 sister in law have been scanning faces for the last year, searching for people that any of them knew in Taiwan.  Well this last week we hit the mother lode!  My youngest brother served in Taiwan about 10 years ago as a missionary.  When Emma posted pictures of the people and friends she was meeting in Taidong, Eric called so excited!  Emma's companion lives in another part of Taiwan that Eric had served in.  Her family are members and had the missionaries over for dinner frequently.  Eric ate dinner with the Lin's almost on a weekly basis!  Sister Lin was about 10 years old at the time, but Eric remembers and loves her family!  Also another sister that was in a picture with Emma, was a missionary who served in one of Eric's areas. The world becomes such a small place sometimes!)

Alright, now we will start off with last P-days adventure.

It was super duper adventurous. We rounded up all the taidong missionarie, our stake president, and a bunch of members to join us! (we actually just needed them to drive us...hahah. jkjkjk we really do love them!) We all got together at the church and said a prayer to bless our journey:) We hit the road! our first Destination was SanXianTai. It is a super pretty beach, famous for this fancy little bridge that goes to a small island. It was absolutely gorgeous! It was pretty funny...we spent a really long time throwing rocks. I don't know, something about throwing rocks into water is so peaceful:) Then we went and explored the bridge! I can't believe how beautiful Taidong is. Its so similar to hawaii its crazy. 

This is Sister Bernhardt and she went to the same high school as Emma!  They have been friends for years:)  They now are in the same zone and get to see each other every once in a while.

Dragon Bridge in SanXianTai.

After the bridge we headed to destination number 2. A fish house! Not live ones. Dead ones. This place was pretty interesting. they just had thousands and thousands of fish and sharks and all sorts of sea things that had just been caught! Then they bring them to this warehouse and chop them up and box them up and ship them all around Taiwan. It's open for the public to come and check out. At first it was really cool, but by the end I was trying not to barf.

Our last destination was NUTS. We drove up this road a little ways into the mountains and then pulled over on the side of the road into a little turn around area. I looked out the window and there were like 15 monkeys. Just chilling. 

We all got out of the car to check it out!

They were so cool! Not a huge fan of monkeys but it was cool to be so close and check them out.

This monkey park is open to the public, but the monkeys are super duper protected, you are not allowed to touch them. I didnt' want to get mad monkey rabies anyways so I stayed away. It would freak me out too much! But ya, you will love the pics:)

So it was a fun day for sure! full of lots of adventures and monkeys:)

The rest of the week was great as well.

Our area isn't chuck full of people like taipei is but we have still found some awesome new investigators this week. It's crazy what happens when you just talk to everyone you see and invite everyone to learn more about Christ and how we can improve our lives!

I am so grateful for my companion Sister Lin. We have become the best of friends. she makes me laugh really really hard. The best is when she talks to me in English:) She is SO DANG CUTE! She kills me. but not only is she cute, she is also and amazing missionary! She has a talent for inviting the spirit everywhere she goes.!

This weeks english class was a blast. We are the Beginning class teachers and have the best students. This week we taught about American and Taiwanese cultures and did a compare and contrast. It was super funny and everyone was laughing there guts out by the end of class. this week we are baking cookies. should be fun!

this week we met so many cool people. It was interesting we had 3  people this sunday tell us that we were dumb for not being vegetarians. ugh...Ok..sorry! It was just funny that they all happened to tell us this on the same day!

People really like there veggies here in Taidong I guess.

Saturday night we went to our investigators jessie's resturant to help her clean up so that she would get enough rest to come to church! It was so fun! She was SO grateful that we would come to help her. It totally reminded me of working at the bakery! brought back lots of great memories of closing at the Good Ol Great Harvest:)

We also met an angel this week:) her name is Shi Ruo Fan. She is so prepared! We have met with her a couple times this week and she has the biggest desire to be baptized! Last night we shared the restoration and shared the Because of Him video. She was so touched and so happy to finally have so much confusion in her life be cleared up.

I love this gospel so much and know this church is the restored church of Christ! Through following his example we can all have ultimate peace in our lives!

I love you all so dang much!:0

xooxoxoxxoe

emma