Chapters 78 and 79: Happy Thanksgiving (again) AND Taidong Takes Taipei

Hello! Happy Thanksgiving!

This week was so great! We had so much fun this week, ahh it was just so so awesome!

This week, we spent a little time preparing a play about the background of Thanksgiving for our ward party on Saturday. Let's just say, it was the funniest thing ever and I would send it to y'all except for the fact that it's in Chinese and most of you wouldn't understand it. But it was actually hilarious and honestly one of the most funny things I've ever participated in. The ward LOVED it and they quoted it all the time at church the next day hahaha. We also got to participate in a super sick aboriginal dance with members of the Beinan tribe. It was sooooo sick and some of the Elders in our district got to wear traditional Taiwanese clothing to dance in. haha I was a little jealous, but it's fine I'm over it. 

We had a great thanksgiving too! A member in our ward made us a thanksgiving dinner very similar to what we get in America and it was sooooo delightful! 

In other news, our friend WenLin came to church this week and she loved it! It was the primary program and she almost died of cuteness. Just like the rest of us. Hahaha.

Sorry my email is short this week. The app the church has us have on our phones is broken and so I can't send or receive emails, so if I don't respond to your email, that's why haha. 

Also I don't have pictures sorry because I have lots, but they need captions, so next week I guess.

Haha love y'all, have a great week!

Love,

Sister Larson

1. That one time we finished a 30 person shaved ice #ohyeahhh

2.  We engraved (okay maybe just wrote) our names on the wall #longlivetaidongtoastbox

3. Hualian zone conference on Thanksgiving! RIP the entire rest of the mission got together except for our zone bc we are too far away Haha

4. Taidong district with our baozis #orshuijianbao?

5. Taidong and our tree 

大家好!!
This week was so crazy!! And so fun!!

First things first, sorry my email was very bad this last week, Gmail broke for a hot sec so I couldn't email much haha. But this week it's fixed yay!!

Good and less good news about WenLin this week: we met with her on Friday and she was super super super set on getting baptized on December 12, the last night before I leave to go to Taipei! We were so pumped! And she had plans to come to church and everything and it was going to be magical.
Sunday rolls around though, and she slept through church!! We were definitely disappointed about that. She can't get baptized on the 12th anymore, but she will get baptized this month and it will be so good!! Love her so much.

This last weekend was so much fun! The church has started a new Light the World campaign and it's so great! You should go check it out (lighttheworld.org) 🏼. Saturday, Dec. 1 was a worldwide day of service, so our district got together to make chocolate chip cookies for our ward members and then go deliver them! On Saturday night we went with the elders in our ward around to a bunch of members houses and sang Jingle Bells to them, showed them the Light the World video (fun fact, the church made a special Light the World video for Taiwan. It is really focused on Jesys Christ and who He is and why we celebrate Christmas, because most people here don't know why we even celebrate Christmas or who Jesus Christ is. #blessed #thisvideoisbomb I would send it but it's in Chinese so.... rip that lol) and then we have them a card to give to their friend to Light the World! It was honestly a party.
But the party got MORE LIT. On Sunday night we went to our Bishop's house for dinner and then afterwards, had plans to go caroling and delivering more cookies with the elders. So right as we go out the door of their house, we casually ask them, would you like to come with us? And they get soooooo excited and say, of course! So they call up their extended family, find another car, and 20 minutes later we have 5 kids, 4 missionaries, 3 adults, 2 cars, and a partridge in a pear tree all ready to go caroling. They drove us out to the members who live really far away and sang with us and delivered cookies with us and we just did that for the rest of the night! It was actually soooooo much fun and so Christmasy! #ilovetaidong #iloveJesus

Anyways, so that's mostly it for this week. We're currently on a train that left at 5:00 a.m. that's about to arrive in Taipei (about a 4 hour train ride). We've been up since 2:30 this morning (rip that... it is NOT so that we could make no bake cookies for our trip bc we forgot to buy the ingredients on Saturday so we had to wake up early this morning to buy and make them... ha. ha) but it's going to be soooo much fun. We'll surprise everyone and then go play laser tag #taidonglegends #taidongtakestaipei

Can't believe that this is my last full week of missionary work... wat.

Love y'all. Have a great week!!

Love,
Sister Larson

Pics:

1. The cute Christmas display at Carrefour. I couldn't not take a picture lol.

2. MY CABBAGES!!!! 

3. We went to the LuYe chapel this week and had an activity and then took this picture outside the LuYe 鹿野 chapel underneath the banana tree (I feel like "underneath the banana tree" should be a song or something... 

*cues music* 

"Sister Smith and meeeeee

Underneath the banana treeeeeee

In LuYe so fine and faaaaaair

We very love it theeeeeere") oh my gosh I've literally turned into my dad

4. At our LuYe activity when a bunch of amas showed up to play a game with us for a hot second before they caught their train. Again #legends

5. Caroling with the Wang family last night!!!

6. A member Becky fed us all really good hot pot #livelovehotpot