June 3rd

We really only left our apartment to go to church today. On the way to church I noticed that I wasn’t sweating as much as I was last week. I think maybe it was partially due to fasting and not having water in me, and partially due to us all becoming more used to the heat and the humidity. In sacrament meeting I decided I was going to share my testimony. I was really nervous! They first had a new missionary get up to share his and his Chinese was great (he had been on the island for a little over a year). And then a member shared hers. I understood everything for both of those testimonies, so I thought for sure I would have no problem sharing mine. I am not sure if anyone really understood what I was saying, but I did share my testimony at least in what counted as Chinese to me. I knew I was making lots of mistakes though and so that made me more nervous and the more nervous I got, the less fluent I seemed to be. Then, right after me there was another family from the states who were visiting. The husband in that family got up to share his testimony. And his Chinese was way better than mine. It was really embarrassing. He served in the area 20 years ago (I served here 18 years ago), but they had been living in another city on the island for the past year for work. I wanted to talk to him and see if we had overlapped on our missions at all, but he was busy talking to members right after sacrament meeting and they did not stay for any of the second or third hours. Sunday school was okay. Again, I was understanding the main points of the lesson, but there were a couple times where they turned to me to share and I think people didn’t understand or I wasn’t exactly answering the right question. There was one point where it was my turn to read a scripture. I asked if I could just read in English and they said okay. When I was about to start, the member that was sitting right next to me said I could read from her electronic device a type of Romanized Chinese. When she showed it to me, it was a different scripture than the one that I thought I had been asked to read. I said I was fine just doing it in English, but I quickly changed my device to the scripture she had showed me on hers. It was the same scripture that the person before me just read. I thought that that couldn’t be right, but figured they must want to emphasize a point from it again. I figured if I was wrong, no one would understand the English version anyway, so they could just read the correct scripture in Chinese on their devices. I was wrong. Right when I finished, one of the members blurted out that I had read the wrong scripture. I was really embarrassed. For some reason church is the most challenging for me with regards to the language. I seem to communicate with no problems at all to people on the street, but then once I get to church I have all sorts of difficulties. Coming to Taiwan I thought church would be the easiest, since most of my vocabulary was all gospel related topics, but as I have thought about it more, I think maybe there are a few reasons for it. First, I think the conversations on the street all stay pretty superficial, whereas at church they are having deeper conversations about the gospel and scriptures and things. Second, I think the people on the street are all impressed that I can speak any Chinese at all, so they all talk slower to me and use simpler words; however, members at church are used to the missionaries knowing Chinese and just think that I should be fluent like them. Last, when I was a missionary, the quality of your Chinese was always a sign to the members of how hard-working and trustworthy of a missionary you were. So I think I feel extra pressure at church to get things right, which only makes things worse. Well, at least I have six more Sundays to work on it. Even if I make lots of mistakes, I am just going to try to use the technique I used as a missionary and try to speak up as much as possible.

The rest of the day at the apartment we tried to take some pictures of things that are different about the homes here compared to the homes in America. Here are a few of the things we came up with.

Here is our room. The kids wanted me to mention that the homes are all made out of concrete and tile. There is no wood used at all in their building materials.



Elliott thought these light switches were cool. When they are off, they have a little light on in them so you can still find the switch in the dark.


Christian wanted to point out the neighborhood. All the houses are connected to each other with stores on the bottom floor. He also liked that all of the places have flat roofs.


Everyone takes off their shoes here before you go inside the home.They typically have a bunch of slippers by the door for everyone to put on once they take their shoes off.


This AC was a life saver for us. Even the nicer places and stores typically just have window units like these.


Here is our bug zapper. We probably heard it get a mosquito every hour or so. Based on Rebecca's legs though, it wasn't doing its job well enough. She somehow attracts them much better than I do. I don't think I have a single bite and each one of her legs has maybe 50+ bites.



This place had a tub, most do not. Elliott was pointing out how the shower is just combined with the rest of the bathroom. There is no shower curtain or anything like that. That is okay, because the whole bathroom is tile and there is a drain on the main part of the floor. Also, I love these shower nozzles that you can take off. I know you can get them in America too and we even thought about it for our house when we were building it. Experiencing them again makes me wonder if we should of had them put in.


Toilet paper is always an issue here. In the bathrooms they just have these sheets rather than rolls. Out in the public restrooms though they typically don't have anything. So we have been trying to remember to bring our own everywhere we go.


Here is our water supply. The water in the homes or anywhere else is not drinkable. Some people have filters, but lots just get these water dispensers or only drink bottled water. This has been our other big issue here - making sure we have enough water as we are out and about. They don't serve water with any meals or anything like that.


Here is where we hung our clothes up to dry.


Here is our back view. Just the back of other neighbors' houses.


Here are our four main appliances in the kitchen. There is a heater plate, a kettle, and a microwave. There is also this dish thing right behind Christian. We couldn't figure out what it is for. It didn't seem to have washing capabilities, so maybe just to dry the dishes.


The refrigerators are all tiny. I think most people just get their meat and vegetables and things like that on a daily basis from the markets.


Ethan is pointing out their brooms and their outlets. Luckily, they use the same type of outlets and electrical current as they do in the US.



We have been really enjoying the pineapple here.


We also played a few games in the afternoon on Sunday.