Zone Exchanges!!

This week was a really interesting week. Kinda rough with the work, but we're doing well over in Bali. 

Since our P day was switched to Tuesday this week, Elder Hooker and I headed to Nangang to meet up with some Elders. There were 8 of us. 4 trainees, and 4 trainers. We ate this thing called Hot pot. It was a Chidebao(all you can eat) so I ate a ton. Basically you go and put stuff on a plate that you want. Maybe some veggies, noodles, and whatever else is there. They give you meat of your choice, and then you throw it all in a boiling pot and eat out of it. It was super good! It was also just really fun to be with my friends from the MTC. The Waitress gave us all a sour look when we came in. They know that Americans eat a lot more food than the typical Taiwanese, especially poor American Missionaries. Let's just say that we for sure made the money worth it, and they were glad when we finally decided to leave haha.

This week Elder Hooker and I had to wake up. The work wasn't going well at all. Even though we thought we were working the way we should nothing was happening. We only taught one lesson last week, didn't find any new investigators, and no one showed up to church. It was a big wakeup call for us, so we decided to make new goals and plans. Do things differently, and really try to give our all when it comes to obedience. There is absolutely no way you can do the work without the Lord on your side helping you. On Saturday night we were trying to find someone to come to church with us but no one could. I walked past a bunch of college students and started talking with them. When I walked up, one of the friends threw his other friend under the bus and said:" He has interest." Needless to say, he didn't have interest. I did my best to have them come to church with us, but they just kept changing the topic saying I was a:"Shuai ge(Handsome man" It was pretty annoying but we left on good relations. As we were walking home that night we found this guy smoking and we talked to him. He seemed nice and wouldn't give us his number, but said he would come to church. We didn't see him at church the next day, but we saw him last night and he didn't want to talk to us. A really cool contact from that night turned out to be a guy that wanted nothing to do with us. It's frustrating sometimes, but I'm learning not to let other people's actions make me react. I can always be in control of myself if I don't let someone get a reaction out of me. It helps make things a lot happier, cause outside negative things don't have an effect on you.

We also were able to go on Zone Leader Exchanges which were really fun. We already knew the Zone Leaders pretty well because they are in our district. I was with Elder Cooper, and we went to his area in Danshui which is across the river from Bali and is a really big city. We went to teach a lesson to a referral. We went in this place called:" a night in paris" to have the lesson. To sit down you have to buy something so I bought a waffel with ice cream on it. It was super good. The guy we met with was super awkward though. We shared about Jesus Christ with him cause he said he was interested, but whenever we asked him a question he wouldn't answer. He was really" Hai hao," which means that he didn't really care about anything we had to say. We asked him if we could meet with him again and he said no, he'd rather stick with his own religion. After asking what it was he told us:" Yi Guang Dao." It's super weird. They believe that God had 5 sons. It's basically to believe in tons of religions without believing in one person. The 5 sons of God are: Jesus Christ, Confucius, another Chinese guy, Buddha, and Mohommad. It doesn't make any sense because they believe in Jesus, but Jesus says:" I am the only Begotten of the Father." Weird stuff haha. We found for the rest of the day and it went well. The tradition they have is every night they go up on the top of their " DaLou's(apartment)" roof and just watch the city lights and talk with soda and music. It's a really nice way to end the day.

us on the roof looking at the city of Danshui.

Yesterday we also were biking past the beach and we saw a ton of people out there as a volunteer effort cleaning up the trash. It was really cool, and you don't get many opportunities to serve in Taiwan, so we helped them out. They ended up interviewing us and taking pictures with us that they posted on facebook. I tried to speak in Chinese, so if they posted that video you can see me stumble over my Chinese. I think you can put the Chinese or English in. I don't know. But here it is: (#seayouagainTW)(全國揪團津灘）

Us at the service activity

Last night we went out finding for a few hours and talked to a lot of people. We taught the first lesson to some people, but they wouldn't set up again so we didn't get any new investigators. We did get some really cool people that were interested though, they just live outside of our area. We referred them over so hopefully that goes well. Not much else happened this week. I'll keep you guys updated and I love you all!!

-Love Elder Thayne