Chapter 40: Over the Hill

Well this is it. I hit my 9 month mark on my mission on Saturday. I am over the hill and have 9 months left to baptize everyone in northern Taiwan and master the Chinese language (lololololol). 

But seriously, time has flown by way too fast! I officially started my 6th transfer on island last week, and Sister Tu and I get to stay together in Yilan for another transfer!!! It's going to such a great transfer, I am SO pumped.

This last week was really good! We got some super cool new investigators! We got to meet our investigators Lin Jiemei's parents this last week and they became our investigators! Turns out they actually lived by the missionaries in PengHu (a Taiwanese island just off the west coast of Taiwan in the Taizhong mission) and were really good friends with them there! But then the missionaries moved and they moved too so they lost contact with them. But now we get to meet with them and continue to share about Jesus Christ! I'm so excited to see what happens with them. 

Another cool thing that happened this week was that yesterday the temple presidency and all the senior couple temple missionaries came to the Yilan ward! So they all spoke in sacrament meeting (with translators. except for the temple presidency, none of them speak very much if any Chinese at all). It was SO GOOD. They talked about the blessings of the temple and bore super simple testimonies. I loved it. Then Sunday School and Relief Society came around. I sometimes forget this, but as a missionary we are just about the only people (save a special few) who speak both English and Chinese in our wards. So guess who became the designated translator for the senior couples? It was us. Of the 6 missionaries in our ward, 2 of them are Taiwanese, so the others of us all had to translate because there were like 4 couples. Let me tell you, translating is super hard. Because you hear them talking in Chinese, and you understand it in Chinese, but then you have to translate it in your brain and then say it out loud in English while still listening to what the teacher continues to say, and then continue that process. It was interesting. Especially since Sunday School was about the story of Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah. Our Sunday School teacher went over 9 chapters of Genesis in the space of about 25 minutes and didn't take a second to breathe. But now if anyone ever wants to hear the story of Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah in Chinese, I can totally help you out with that haha. Relief Society was a little bit easier to translate, but it was still a little bit of a struggle, especially since it was only me doing it haha. But one of the senior couple sisters leaned over to me during Relief Society and told me about how awesome this church is and how cool it is to know that it doesn't matter if you are in Boise, Idaho, Brazil, England, Taiwan, or Africa, all the lessons are going to be about the same thing and everyone is going to be giving about the same answers, just with different stories and experiences. It really made me think about how cool this church is. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, as long as you go to church, you will be taught by the Spirit and be spiritually uplifted. The gospel is the same all around the world, because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. I love this gospel so much, and I am so grateful and blessed to be here in this country in this time preaching the gospel! 

Love you all so much!!!

Love,

Sister Larson 

1. Sister Tu and I at the beach last week!

2. artsy nametag pic hahaha we are so basic

3. with one of the senior temple couples!

4. this week we were sitting in a family mart and this girl (in the green) walks in and is like, "Tu JieMei?!" and it's like sister tu's friend from back home. Only Taiwanese missionaries would just see their friends randomly out doing missionary work hahaha

5. another pic from the beach last week #blessed