May 27th

This first Sunday in Taiwan allowed us to take a nice break. We had church at 9am. It was a ward that I had previously served in, but in a completely new building. When I served here there had also been an English speaking ward. I thought we might just go to that one, but it turns out that they don’t have it any more. I think the children were all a little nervous about that, and they kept asking me how they say yes or no so that they could respond to questions. I kept teasing them with this though and said that the teach would probably ask “who is going to be baptized?” and they would respond “no” and then the teacher would ask “who drinks beer?” and they would respond “yes”.

When we got there I saw a couple of familiar faces, but it had been so long that I was expecting not to remember very many people. I was hoping to see two members in particular that I had taught, but when I asked around I found out that one of them had moved and the other one had been attending regularly until recently. She had just sent me a letter and I so I decided that I would have to try to go visit her.

After sacrament meeting we told the children that they could attend the primary classes together. There was actually only three other children in primary, so they all attend together anyway. One of the members who recently returned from a mission in the United States volunteered to attend primary with them and translate. They really liked that.

Rebecca and I attended Sunday School and then Elders Quorum/Relief Society. During those meetings I was surprised that I only was understanding about half of what was being said. It was surprising because I had been doing really well with all of the conversations that I was having with people in stores and on the street, but I guess the lessons were going a little deeper. The members also just expected that I would be fluent because I was a returned missionary, whereas people on the street I think use simpler words because they don’t expect me to be able to speak Chinese. In Elders Quorum, my lack of fluency ended up being kind of embarrassing. The discussion was on ministering and how to do it and I was surprised at how similar the conversations were to the ones from our Elders Quorum back in Idaho. The problem is, they kept on asking me what I thought or how we are doing it in America. I understood the general topic of the conversation, but I think kept missing some of the details of their specific questions. So sometimes I think I responded in a way that didn’t really fit what they were asking. And then that made me nervous which made it so I had a harder time understanding and speaking. Oh well, I am excited to be able to try again next week.

After church we all came back to the place we are staying. Rebecca and the children hung out there for the afternoon and I decided to walk to that individual’s house who I had taught. It was three miles each way, so it took me a while. When I got there it looked like no one had been there for some time. I knocked on her neighbors’ doors to see if they knew anything. They said that she does still live there, but she travels a lot and it is never certain when she is going to be home. I was sad that I didn’t get to see here, but am glad that I at least tried.

We ended the night with some ice cream that we had stocked up on the day before.

Outside of the church. It was a pretty nice building. There are three wards that meet in it and it is also the stake center for the area. If I am remembering right, when I was here 20 years ago it was just a district. It did have three wards, two Chinese and one English speaking.