Dear Dajia ("big family"),
Good morning from Taiwan! It is cold and rainy outside while still being somewhat delightful (I'm so used to hot and rainy, I guess), so I am one happy sister missionary. :) Plus reading all of your emails and seeing your fantastic pictures just makes life great no matter what the weather's like.
This week was really good - lots of miracles, lots of funny little contacting experiences, lots of fun church activities, etc. It was at one of the activities that I actually tried a little bit of french food - snails. It was a first! But it wasn't too bad - pretty chewy... kind of like octopus, but I think better. Probably not that much better that I'll want to eat it all of the time, though. :) It looked pretty scary though when I was about to eat it - I'll make sure I include some pictures. There was a member who kept making the joke that I was eating French food for dinner - every time he said it he would crack up for like five minutes. So by the time we left that meant it was like a whole half an hour of his laughing from the number of times that he made that joke. :) That activity was a little barbeque up in the mountains of Luye - there's an Aborigine festival going on there right now and we were going to see some of the performances. BUT, the activity was taking up too much time so we went home before the dancing even started. Bummer. But at least I got to try on some of the clothing! Another activity was last night - we made pizza in someone's homemade brick oven. Tell you what, I didn't know that tuna and corn was a popular pizza flavor. But I'm pretty sure that 99% of the pizzas I've had here (you got me, that's not very many) have had tuna and corn on them. Oh, and onions. It's actually pretty good - maybe I'll tell Papa John's about it when I get home.
In other food news, I thought you might be interested (might being the key word here) to know about one of my favorite drinks here. There are drink shops ALL OVER THE PLACE in Taiwan - all different kind of tea shops with all sorts of weirdly delicious things you can add to them. I actually think that the Goodwill shopping center next to Norcross has a Taiwanese place with some drinks you can order - Pheonix? Something like that. Anyway, my favorite here is something called "winter melon tea" - it's like a cucumber, I guess, but bigger. And then they add sugar to it so it's nice and sweet ("ku ku," or "bitter" drinks are much more widely accepted here than they are in the States - yuck). But I can't just go to a cool drink shop with hundreds of choices and just order winter melon tea - way too boring! So I add milk to it, and also a little thing called "zheng zhu," or "pearls" - they're these little tapioca pearls that you can add to your drinks. I don't really quite understand it yet, but the Taiwanese love chewy, gummy things. They have them in their soups, in their candy, and even in their drinks. So they'll give you these huge straws so you can suck up your milk tea and then your tapioca pearls - to tell you the truth, it kind of fascinates me every time to see those little tapioca pearls going up in the straw when you drink it. Yeah, so if you ever go to Taiwan, go and order "Dong gua cha, jia xian nai, jia zheng zhu." You won't regret it.
So in interesting mission news, President Day came to give us some training in Hualian this past week. It was good - but really different. He went over some of the principles behind rules in the white handbook and in Preach My Gospel (as well as the scriptures). He said that these principles were the reason we have some (if not all) of the mission rules that are specific to our mission (we have more than 50 of them). And then he said, "These principles are going to stay the same, but the rules are not. I'm taking away all of these rules, with the expectation that you're going to still be obedient and stay true to these principles." ...Wow. That's a lot of trust. I'm still kind of reeling from the fact that he did that. 53 rules, plus some that are "fable rules" that are passed down from generation to generation - that's a lot. But, I guess in reality, not much has changed. The expectation is still there - be exactly obedient. And in a way, the responsibility is even greater, since we don't have the little list of "do's and don't's" to keep us in line. One thing that I am excited about though from this change is music. We can now listen to early-20th century music (before it was only until the 19th century). Oh yeah! :) No, there used to be a lot of specific rules about music, but now there aren't any, so there are some songs/pieces that I would listen to before my mission that really helped me feel the Spirit and happy and excited about the Gospel/life that I couldn't listen to here because of the rules... but now that's changed - I listened to "Brigham Young" and sang along with it when we got home to celebrate. :) Fun fact: the Chinese character for "music" and the character for "happiness" are exactly the same. I think that that's very fitting: music = happiness.
Time for the miracle of the week and then I've got to go. Miracles! We saw so many. One of them that was really cool yesterday had to do with a Sister Li ("lee"). The elders came into the chapel with Sister Li and said that they'd found her on the street and were going to give her a tour but since we were there they just let us take care of everything. Anyway, there was a member in the chapel (who normally talks about really deep stuff in the Gospel and talks a lot) that I asked to help us. It was only going to be for a few minutes, and nothing bad would happen, right? WRONG. This member started talking to Sister Li - a strong baptist - about priesthood authority and when the Church was established, etc. Sister Li got really confused and a little angry, and somehow I was able to clearly and succintly explain priesthood authority in a way that she perfectly understood and invited the Spirit - it was the Spirit "putting the words in my mouth" to help me know what to say. But THEN, this member started talking about how the Bible was full of mistakes and the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book. And she grabbed a bible and started bashing her religion and the Bible. Then Sister Li got offended and hurt and started arguing with her - it was so bad! And I was praying so hard that we'd be able to take control of the situation and leave Sister Li with a good impression of the Church, if nothing else. So the member went around the corner to talk to another member about how to prove Sister Li wrong, when I went up to her and quietly said: "Our purpose is not to say who's wrong and who's right in this situation. Our purpose is not to say anything about the Bible except that it completely supports the Book of Mormon and that the Book of Mormon supports the Bible. Our purpose is only to invite her to pray about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon." Really bold-sounding in hindsight, but I guess I had the Spirit helping me again, because this member wasn't offended - she nodded and backed off. Meanwhile, Sister Burton was helping us work everything out with Sister Li. It wasn't until Sister Burton bore a powerful testimony - in English, actually (Sister Li's English was pretty much perfect since she used to live in the States) - that Sister Li calmed down. Then we took her to the chapel, sang "I am a Child of God," and everything was good. The Spirit was really strong - so strong that not only was Sister Li not offended, but she also agreed to keep meeting with us. Woah, talk about "wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles!" God's hand was totally in that lesson. And in this whole work, actually. This really is His work - as one of our recent converts said yesterday: "This is all true! It's true!" It is. And it makes me so happy to be able to bear testimony of that.
Thank you for your support, your love, and your prayers. Have an amazing week!
Love,
Sister Winters
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