Sister Museus, June 27th, 2011

Hello Lovely Family, Things seem to be going pretty good in little Daliao. We actually had a baptism over the weekend to Sister Meng. It was a great baptism and she will make an excellent new member. She is actually from China and moved here with her husband a few years ago. So, her family still lives in China. Maybe in the future she can teach and share the gospel to her family in China. I was a little disappointed by the lack of support from the ward with Sister Meng's baptism. Very few people showed up and none of the bishopric did as well. I guess I can never compare Utah baptisms to Taiwan baptisms. Plus, this is a small town with not so many members as Taiping did. My new companion Sister Lee is really great. She is very proactive, which helps a lot. I don't always feel like I'm carrying the load with her as my companion. However, it has been very difficult getting to know a whole new place with new members, investigators, recent converts, less-active members, etc. It's hard when mission presidents decide to move the missionary on their final move-call. But, I guess there must be some reason why I had to come to this place (it's like Huwei all over again). Nevertheless, we have some amazing investigators, but they do have some problems that we need to help them overcome: First, there is Sister Xu who is loving mother and works very hard. She owns a dinner place that is out of her home because of this she works on Sundays and can only come to church for an hour. However, today we are going to meet with her and write out a plan to get her to come to church for all three hours each week. This will be a bold commitment, but it will definitely help her progress toward her baptismal goal. We already gave her a great calendar that consists of scriptures she can read each day to help her get prepared for her baptism. Second, there is Sister Shi who is in highschool. She is an excellent investigator, but her mom is against her baptism. However, we are planning on meeting and contacting her each day so Sister Shi can learn how share her testimony and feeligs towards this wonderful gospel. Third, there is Sister Lin who is also another great mother. She loves coming to church and bringing her children. However, she has the same problem as Sister Xu, who works on Sunday. Next time we meet with her we going to share the Plan of Salvation and share with her our expectations so she understands the importance of the gospel. We have other great investigators and many of them are young mothers. Things are looking great so far and I know if we continue to work hard and with the ward we can help our investigators enter into the waters of baptism. We had a neat experience happen to us on Saturday night after returning home from a wedding reception. The wedding reception ended up being wasted time since we arrived late (too late to help our ward out in singing a song....whoops) and their reception are quite different from Americas. They ended up having a talent show and performing weird plays on the stage and because of this we couldn't sit down and talk much with our members, recent converts, less-active members, etc. However, on the way home we discovered a huge parade of huge, light-up cars carrying a bunch of Taiwanese religious stuff and going up and down the streets blaring Taiwanese music. My companion and I ended up following it for a while and took some fun pictures of it. I will definitely have to send you some. Today, Sister Lee and I went to a neat Buddhist temple that is pretty close to our house. Sister Lee kept making the funny comment on thinking that the big white Statue (which is enormous) was like having a Christus next to us instead (which I thought was pretty funny). We ended up spending over an hour at the fun place taking many fun pictures with the dragon statues, mosiacs, Buddhist statues, etc. We had a lot of fun taking many pictures of this fun place. Afterwards, we ended up going home for a couple hours to write letters, but I ended up get all of my reimbursement things ready to send to the office so I can receive almost 100 dollars (since traveling here and paying for other things (sine I'm the senior companion). Because of this I don't have much money in my missionary account and have been using my own, sorry. Please Mom look into my bank account and make sure I will be okay for the next two months if I need anything or for any emergency. I won't be spending much on anything just something for Whit's B-day in July. After emailing we will just be running more errands such as buying groceries, fruit, veggies, pictures, etc. I've actually almost become a vegetarian since the grocery stories in this small town don't carry in fresh fruit, veggies, or meat so I have to find it at the afternoon market. I actually haven't eaten any meat this whole week and only lots of fruit since it's hard to find fresh veggies when I need it. However, we are going to get some today so I can continue to eat more healthy. John, it was so good to hear from you. I'm glad you loved your Father's Day gift. I do know you love little cultural things so I thought you might like this. I hope the rest of the family and Alex loved theirs to since I didn't hear from them about it (except for Whit). I'm glad to hear that Sadie is still in good hands with my Mom always around and such. I hope Sadie can remember when I return home. I sure do appreciate your hard work on the house. I know it's a lot of take care of, especially when you are doing it by yourself (most of the time). However, I bet it looks great and I promise to do my share when I return home. I am so proud of you John and can't wait to see you soon! Mom, I'm glad you are starting to look for hotels, however, please let me know if you would still like to stop in Tainan. You never answered me last time if you would like to. I just know Tainan has some cool Dutch historical sites (since the Dutch settled Tainan), but not much else. We could just try and spend a half day in Tainan. Please let me know if you are interested in stopping in Tainan or not. I don't think you'll have to worry about catching the train from the hotel. We will just take a taxi from the hotel to the train station. Each of these big cities have huge train stations and the hotels that I gave you seem to be not too far off from the train stations. I don't know if you can take a rental car and leave it at the next city. You will have to search for this kind of information on the internet. You might could find the same rental car company in each of the cities and they would probably let you do this. But, it still might be best just to take a train to our next area, but I can see this being annoying since we would need to find a new car to rent for each city. Just see what information you can find on this, sorry that I don't know much on this particular subject. Mom, it sounds liks it's getting pretty hot in Logan, but at least you don't have the humidity. It's pretty bad here in the South. But, luckily we have a really nice apartment with two brand new a/c units, which we always use when we are at home. I do miss hiking and it sounds like the family is loving it. I hope we can all go the wind caves when I get back and other fun hikes. Please send pics of the fun hike you are going to take with Jimmy (and I guess is new girlfriend....). I do miss playing badmitton and I do hope my skills are still there when I return home because we will be playing this fun sport a lot when I get back. Of course, we will kick the trash out the boys again :). I am sad that I will be missing the 4th of July again. I do love this fun holiday since we get to go boating with PJ and spend time with so many relatives. Let everyone know that I will miss them and next P-day my companion and I are planning on doing something fun to celebrate this holiday. I am also glad to hear that some of our Philippine cousins are visiting. Thank you Mom for being such a Saint and trooper and letting them stay with you. I hope Deb continues to feel better after having kidney stones. I also hope Al is doing better since I heard he is recovering from having cancer removed. Did you say that the actual Beach Boys are coming to Logan? Or was it suppose to mean something else? Anyways, I love you Madre and I can't wait to see you so soon!!!! I love and miss you terribly! I will send some fun pics in my next email right now since Sister Lee fixed my camera, yahoo! Love you all and can't wait to see you soon! Love you Always,Sister Museus