Sister Museus, July 25th 2011

Hello Well-Missed Family, The days are beginning to fly by since I only have three more weeks until I see many of you. How excited I am to see show you around my little island that I've been living on for so long! Since I spent some time emailing you all a bunch of pics I won't be able to type as much this week, sorry! However, I thought you might like to see some more pics since I haven't send a lot for a while (luckily, Sister Lee helped me with my camera ordeal). Happy Birthday Whit!!!! Please forgive me for not saying this in my last email. However, I do have your B-day gifts and I cannot wait to give them to you when I see you in three weeks. I hope you're okay that I didn't end up sending them to you. I hope you had fun with the family in Phx. I bet you all will come back with a nice tan with how hot it is in Phx (however, you cannot beat the super, hot, humid weather here in Kaohsiung). In addition, I bet you all got in a lot of shopping and swimming! Oh, do I miss those days with being while the whole clan! However, I know I will see you all real soon! Things are going great in Daliao. We have a baptism coming up this weekend with Sister Guo who is from China. She is actually getting baptized into a different ward since she will be moving soon. However, I got permission from our mission president to attend her baptism since we are the missionaries who taught her and helped her get prepared for her baptism (they call us their Fuyin Jiemei, which means Gospel Sisters, there isn't a name for this in English). We are so excited that Sister Guo decided she was ready even though she wanted to read the entire BOM before she was baptized. It has been neat teaching her and watching her life and attitude change (or what we call her "faguang", which means the light within her, the light of Christ). In addition, we have some other great investigators who are looking to be baptized in the near future. Sister Wang had her baptismal interview this week, but right before her interview we found out that when she came to church she was skipping school and now her professor doesn't want her to. Sister Wang still ended up doing her interview and passed, but she won't be able to get baptized until she goes to church on a regular basis and we are still working on getting parent permission from her. Right now Sister Wang just needs more faith and confidence since she still hasn't given us permission to meet with her parents and explain baptism and our church to them. However, Sister Liu (who is in China right now for a week) and Nina are still looking great to be getting baptized next weekend. I don't think I've mentioned who Nina is to you all. She is an amazing 18-yr-old who just finished highschool. She loves meeting with us, but is still struggling if God exists since she is an Atheist. But, she is beginning to believe and is starting to see God's hand or miracles in her life. Nina already is a great person and believes her purpose is life is help and love others. However, she sometimes lacks the faith she needs in order to believe in God and our true church. However, we are seeing more success with Nina and we meet with her almost every day since she loves it (and she also loves going to church as well). You would all love Nina since she is so sweet and innocent. Hopefully, we can get her dunked before I leave . Nothing much has happened here in Daliao. We are just trying our best to find new people to teach and such. Luckily, the weather has been better, but occasionally it will rain. Today, we didn't do anything special. We ended up staying inside and running errands. The other sisters wanted us to go to some cool art display, but Sister Lee needed to write a million letters and I needed to finalized our Taiwain plans. Mom, I hope you all had fun in Phx for Whit's B-day. I bet you did a lot shopping, tanning, and swimming while you were there. I do miss those days spending time with you all. I hope when I get back we can take another trip to Phx together (Sister Lee is from Utah, but her family recently moved to Phx so maybe in the future you could all meet her). Madre, thanks for your hard work in getting this whole Taiwan trip figured out since I can only do so much. Your plan to leave Taipei sounds great, but I cannot meet you at the train station. President Bishop specifically told me that I need to meet you all at the mission home since I will still be a missionary until I return home. I hope it's okay that you all take a taxi with your bags and meet me there. I will make sure to give you the specific address to the mission home next time I email. I promise to be at the mission home by 10:30 just in case you get off the train earlier. The train station isn't too far away from the mission home (about a 10 minute drive). In addition, when you come and pick me up I wanted you all to meet some of my recent converts. (I've been able to talk to them once in a while since our mission gives us their numbers and other information before we leave Taiwan). They are all very excited to meet you all and some of them will be able to speak some English with (don't worry I will be there to help translate). Moreover, Mom I understand we will be back to visit Taichung so that is okay that right afterwards we head back to the train station so we can get to Kaohsiung. (Sorry, I know this is annoying, but I know Pres. Bishop will make me meet you all at the mission home in order to leave). Mom, I'm glad you decided to get a rental car for the trip. Will we have a rental car for Taipei as well? Let me know if you need help how to get from you hotel to the Taipei train station so you can all head to Taichung to see me. I saw that you asked about tickets. Don't worry about the tickets until you get here. They are more pricy online and there is always plenty of room on the train (especially in the middle of the day). I know they will not be sold out. Plus, the price of all the tickets sounded way too much (maybe you made a mistake) since you would be sending about 800 dollars (who is overboard). Just from Taichung to Kaohsiung costed me 15 dollars. Every $1,000 NT (Taiwanese) is $30 dollars in America. In addition, don't worry about the rooms that you already paid for. The schedule of them all looks great and I pretty much finalized the plans for all the cities except for Taipei. Here is a list of the things we would do each day:Kaohsiung: do some shopping the first day since all government buildings are not open on Mondays -Shopping: Dream Mall, Treasure Island, E21 Mega store, New Juejian Shopping area, etc. -Evening time: go to the famous Love River (take a boat ride) and eat dinner) -Night: Urban Spotlight and Nanhua Tourish Night MarketNext Day: -Morning: visit Cijin Island and other close historical sites -Afternoon: Museum of Hakka Culture (makes handmade paper umbrellas and other handifcrafts--can buy them, they are the aborginals), and Museum of Fine Arts Late Afternoon: Grand 50 Tower (famous tower in Kaohsiung) kind of like the empire state building -Evening: Natural Science and Technology Museum or Chengcing Lake (famous lake in Kaohsiung) -Night: Liouhe Tourist Night Market Tainan: has a lot of historical sites that we will see -Morning: Cigu Mountains (huge mtns made out of salt, this is where they get there salt, famous) -Afternoon: Sihcao Temple and grove (can take a fun boat ride in the swamps) -Afternoon: visit a bunch of historical sites -Night: shop at some night markets and do some underground shopping Taichung: tons of stuff to do -Morning: Sun Moon Lake (most famous lake in Taiwan), vist the neat aborginal villages near by with fun shopping -Afternoon: Formose Aboriginal Culture Village and Snake Kiln Ceramics Cultural Park (fun handicrafts and pottery) -Evening: Jingming District shopping and Zhongang -Night: Chung Tai Chan MonastryNext Day: -Morning: Lukang Village and visit other historical sites (went here for Christmas and has the best handicrafts and shopping) -Afternoon: National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts -Evening: Art Museum Parkway -Night: Zhonghua Night market and mall Here is what is have so far. I will send more info next week, but my time is up. Let me know is this sounds fun. I'm still working on the night stuff since I doubt we want to shop every night. Love you all lots! Love You Always,Sister Museus p.s. MOm, if you have any other questions let me know! love you so much!