Ji'an

Hey!!!!!

So...I will be skyping on mothers day your time at 6pm and sunday for you. it will be 9AM in taiwan on monday. dad and alma and rachel, email me your skype names...just in case one doesnt work. everyone be at the house at the same time! :) i cant wait to skype!!!! 

I dont have very much time left because we were all trying to coordinate times to skype home because there are only 2 computers for 12 missionaries to use. so confusing. but at last i get to skype home at the time you guys wanted. dont be late. 

It poured all night into this morning and it was super crazy rain outside when we biked over to the internet cafe to email. so funny. we wore our plastic ponchos that this investigator gave to us. i love it. your face gets soaked and your legs and feet and you can barely see anything while riding. thats what scares me. haha. im getting used to the bike more and more. not as scary anymore. still a little though. i sprayed my bike too! it was such a nice bike before i had to spray it. so sad. i need to get a bucket for the back of my bike so i can keep stuff dry. my bag has been getting wet but its waterproof so YAY! except water can seep in from the sides sometimes. but iits a super sturdy bag. thank goodness for osprey right alma? very useful. but usually im wet when i give a lesson. my clothes dont get ruined or dirty....just wet. haha. 

We have been able to find more food places. we love eating at the night market that is close to the church. there is a less active that owns a little restaurant there and it is so good and ALL the missionaries go there to eat all the time because it's cheap...or he gives us a good deal. i get my favorite vegetable there for only $40 taiwan money where other places charges $80-100. CRAZY! i eat my favorite vegetable at least 5 times a week. haha. and there is this really good baozhi place in the night market that sells baozhi with cabbage, bamboo, mushrooms in this curried sauce kinda and it is amazing. so yummy. also there are lots of fruit drink stands at the night market and i got a smoothie made with just mangoes and papaya. so good. also there is this vegetarian buffet type restaurant by the church with all these different vegetables and tofu and random things. did you know that vegetarian here means that they dont eat garlic, onions, or chives?!?!?!? so i have to ask for no meat instead of say "su" because then they think i cant have garlic and they will say they have nothing there for me. interesting. ive only been to one member's house to eat. i had the skinny clear noodles with vegetables and meat...but i just picked out the meat. there wasnt much in it. not very many members in our ward invite us over for dinner so usually we are on our own which is fine. fruit here and bread is so good. 

i've received about 10 mosquito bites. there is one kind of mosquito or bug, i dont know what, that i get an allergic reaction to even though i didnt scratch it. my leg swelled up super big and got super red and it was huge. its not swollen anymore or itchy anymore but it left like a huge rash/birthmark looking scar on my leg....i never itched it either....all the other bites are prettty much normal though. so i dont know what that was. no i have a huge red spot on my ankle. 

Okay, so enough about all that. Im loving Ji'an more and more. im getting used to the area kinda. still directionally lost a lot but my companion knows where she is going. i just follow. oh and we met this man outside our apartment when we were parking our bikes and he came to talk to us and he said he had a friend who was LDS and served a mission. he told me that he thought i was a young china superstar when he saw me. hahha. i was like nope, im a missionary. we have this investigator, pong jie mei (JM), and she has been coming to church and she worships at this buddhist temple next to the church. she has some crazy ideas and sometimes i dont understand her at all. she wanted us to meet her friend that is a guy who speaks good english and teach him the gospel. we followed her to where he was and she brought us to the huge miao and told us to go up the stairs with her. we felt kinda awkward to go onto the miao grounds and she said it was just up the stairs and we were going to meet him outside. so we didnt actually go inside a room but we still felt weird so we just made a quick contact and left and gave her friend to the elders. we felt like she was trying to set us up with her friend or something. so weird. but she is great and i hope she will get baptized. we have this family, ma jiating, who has 3 kids. the kids are our investigators. they are all ready for baptism but missed their date because their dad said one of them couldnt get baptized since he was busy with school. we are going to see if he can ask again and have the other 2 baptized this month. they are so ready too!!! We also met with a less active and her 12 year old daughter is our investigator. the less active got offended at church so doesnt want to come anymore but she is supportive of her daughter being baptized if she wants to. her daughter is super shy and hasnt been to church yet...she doesnt know if she wants to be baptized either. so we are working with them. we also went to go visit a member family, Zheng jia ting. they are so great. they showed us pictures of past missionaries and i saw a picture of my friend alyssa's brother in law mike dickson! so cool. im loving the work here. we meet a lot of indonesians here who dont know chinese or english that much. they are here taking care of the old people. we met these phillipino ladies at the park and they spoke english. we talked to them for a little and prayed with them. they were crying after we prayed. they really felt the spirit when we were talking to them and we were going to meet them again at the park but it was raining so they didnt come. it was a cool experience though. when we go contacting and knock on a million doors, most are just uninterested or say they dont have time. but we always seem to get one that listens and prays with us. they dont always want to meet with us again, but at least we are planting that seed. 

anyways, taiwan is great!!! hualien is really pretty. It's still dirty but not as bad as the city. lots of rice patties when we go out to the middle of no where to find less actives. ok. cant wait to talk to you next week! dont forget to be watching skype. i might be using the church account...i dont really know how that works here. 

wo ai nimen! 

Sister Chao