We tried to sneak in the back, but of course there was no real way to do that when you are the only White people and you come marching in with 6 children. The bishop stood up and interrupted the counselor and they stopped what they were saying to “welcome the foreigner family that just walked in the back.” They announced that they would welcome us by name, but since they don’t know our name yet, they would just welcome us without a name at that point. It was embarrassing, but we were there at least and they hadn’t passed the sacrament yet.
After the sacrament they had a couple really good talks. Then, the kids went to primary. There were about four Chinese kids and then our five. Since they had two teachers and one of them spoke better English, they decided just to split the kids into the English group and the Chinese group. For Sunday School, I decided that Rebecca and I could go to the gospel principles class instead of gospel doctrine. I am so glad that we did. I think I understood like 99.5% of what was being said. The Priesthood meeting similarly went well. I felt really good about my ability to understand and speak compared to the weeks at Hualien. I think maybe I struggled so much in Hualien because I had served there and I felt pressure to show the members that I could still speak Chinese.
After the meetings the
Stake President came up and talked to me. Turns out that we overlapped in the
Taipei mission for a couple months – crazy that he is a stake president already!
He updated me on our mission president, who he said passed away about a year
ago. He invited us dinner and I really wanted us to go so I could ask about
different people that he might know, but we already had a dinner planned with
another family. It was neat feeling the automatic connection with him knowing
that we had served in the same mission at the same time. He had four children
(which is unheard of in Taiwan) and the youngest was just a couple months old.
I don’t know how he managed being the stake president with his young family,
but the people in the ward seemed to really love him.
So for dinner, the person
who is renting this place to us invited us for a traditional Taiwanese dinner.
We were hoping that she meant at her house, but turns out that it was at a restaurant.
We never eat out on Sundays, even when we are traveling, but we felt like it
would hurt her feelings and be disrespectful if we didn’t go at that point. They
had a special meal prepared for us in the top floor of a restaurant. There were
a weird mixture of people there and we couldn’t figure out the connection
between them all. There was our landlady and then her housekeeper and the
housekeeper’s daughter. There was also a Chinese man who went to Oklahoma for
college and a Chinese woman from Hong Kong. Those were the people at our table.
And then there was a second table that ordered their own food, but it seemed
like they were part of our party too. They brought out about 20 different
dishes. I don’t think the kids liked any of them, but they tolerated a few of
them at least. There were these one fish meatballs that I thought were really
good and then a really spicy beef soup that I liked a lot (I could have used
less spicy though). There was also a pretty good squid dish, some different
soups, whole shrimp that they kids had to pull apart, and a lot more. I am sure
that the person who paid for it (I think it was the guy who had lived in
Oklahoma), had to have spent over $200 on it all. It was so nice of them. It
seems like every day some shop owner or someone on the street or someone else
is giving us free things. They all just want us to feel really welcome here.
Waiting for primary to start.
Outside the church building.
Just a really cool looking temple that is just outside our place.
The yummy dinner we had in the evening.
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