Sister Larson in Taipei

Nihao! I am finally in Taiwan! It's so crazy that I am actually here now. I love it! It's so beautiful here.  We arrived in Taiwan on Wednesday evening after 24 hours of travel and only 2 hours of sleep. President and Sister Jergensen came and picked us up with their two sons from the airport. They are so nice! President Jergensen is so funny and kind of sassy haha. When we walked out of the airport, it was literally a brick wall of humidity. I don't think I've ever felt anything like it. It was like 8 pm, and it was still almost 90 degrees, and I have felt sticky ever since. I am always sweating here. We took a bus from the airport to the mission home, and we stayed in the temple patron housing across the street from the temple. Funny story about that. People here don't always leave their air conditioning running like we do in America. So the AC in our room wasn't on, and it was about 30 degrees Celsius, or 86 F. We thought we turned the AC on before w...

Nihao family! First off, I just want to say that although my time at the MTC has been long, it's been pretty fun. BUT all good things must come to an end, and I think I have out-stayed the MTC. You know I've been here too long when: I have eaten the same cafeteria food 6 times All the cafeteria food tastes the same I eat cereal for at least 2 meals a day I laugh at the stupidest things my district does because we are all crazy They have gone through all the Sunday night devotional speakers so they bring in the same ones we had our first week here. But other than that, the MTC has been so good to me. My relationship with the Savior has deepened and my testimony has grown immensely. I am incredibly excited to leave the MTC and go preach the gospel to the people of Taiwan. It's literally tomorrow and I am just ecstatic.  I wish I had other, more exciting things to say, but I really don't. All I have is that if I didn't know this gospel was true,...

Nihao! This week has been pretty crazy in all honesty. Last week in my email I mentioned our district was getting a new member, and it was so nice to have him here. His name was Elder Davis and he was a really good addition to our district, and I think it really helped all of us have him here. Unfortunately, he had to go home for health reasons on Wednesday, so he was only here for a couple of days, but my district was glad to have him for the few days that we did.   Other than that, basically nothing has happened this week, except... we got our flight plans to Taiwan! We are leaving the MTC Tuesday morning at 7:20, then flying out of Salt Lake at noon to go to San Francisco, and then straight from San Francisco to Taipei! I am so excited to get out of here and go to Taiwan! It's so surreal. A little frightening because I literally know ZERO words to get around the island, but I can teach all 5 lessons in Chinese haha.  Travel plans! I don't really have any funny...

Nihao! This week was pretty interesting as you can tell from my subject line haha. Because the days here at the MTC are basically all the same, we have to do some interesting things to make things not incredibly boring. So Sister Warren and I decided to start this week off with having foot problems. On Tuesday, I decided to put my straightener on the floor because there was no room for it on my desk, and I forgot about it. So I stepped back and all of a sudden my foot started hurting really bad. Yeah, I burned the bottom of my foot on my straightener that I KNEW was on the ground. Not pleasant, 10/10 would not recommend. I hobbled around in pain for half a day and could barely walk on my foot, but then it got better, and now I just have a nice, 5 inch long burn on the bottom of my foot. Woohoo! Then on Wednesday, Sister Warren had to have a fast procedure done to fix an ingrown toenail, so we got to go off MTC campus! It was like the greatest thing ever. When we were there, I saw ...

Nihao family! This week has been a fun, interesting, and amazing week. Several great things have happened and it's just been so fun here. To start off my week, on Tuesday night we had devotional, like we always do on Tuesdays, and because all the new mission presidents were here, we were expecting an apostle to give our devotional. We were told it was going to be Elder Bednar, and we could not be more excited. So as we were waiting for him to walk in, lo and behold, here comes Elders Holland, Stevenson, Renlund, Anderson, Oaks, Rasband, Ballard, Cook, and Christofferson. Elder Bednar shortly followed and then there were 10 of the 12 apostles in the room. It was such a cool experience. Sister Warren and I sang in the choir and we sang "Praise to the Man" in honor of the anniversary of Joseph Smith's martyrdom. Singing with 600 missionaries to 10 apostles in honor of the prophet Joseph Smith (as it was being broadcast to all the MTCs worldwide) was an amazing ex...

Ni hao family!  This week has been the mission president's seminar where all the new mission presidents, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and the First Presidency come to the MTC. And I have yet to see an Apostle. cool. cool cool cool. They have all been taking tours of the new buildings but they never seem to come to our floor or our wing. I'm convinced they're not actually here. But Sister Warren and I saw Elder Bednar from afar shaking hands with a bunch of people that just happened to not be us, so at least we know he's here. The only downside to having the Apostles "supposedly" here is that we are not allowed to take the elevators because of the tours. Which means every meal and every time we have to go to our classroom, we have to take like 20,000 stairs to get to the 6th floor. Sister Warren and I are always dying by the time we get to the top. You'd think it would get easier every time, but no. It just makes our bodies more sore than before. ...

Ni3 hao3 family!! This week honestly hasn't been that exciting. Basically the same thing everyday haha. We are now teaching 4 "investigators" so we are all teaching a lot. This week we unfortunately had to say goodbye to BOTH of our teachers! One of them left to teach the fast track kids, and the other one, our most very favorite, moved to California for the summer with his wife for an internship. He will be greatly missed, but those of us in my district who go to BYU are going to meet up with him after our missions and he will take us out to Chinese food haha.  This Wednesday, the MTC got SO. MANY. NEW. MISSIONARIES. I'm so glad the Lord's work is hastening! But also it's incredibly crowded here now. We said goodbye to a district in our zone because they were all leaving to go to Taipei on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, our zone got 28 new missionaries. 3 Districts of missionaries. Without them, our zone would be 14 people. But they tripled the size of our ...