The Field is Yellow and Ready to Harvest. July 19, 2015

Well I'm here! I have two hours to write, and there's a lot that happened this week so this one's gonna be pretty long! This last week was undoubtedly one of the craziest ones of my life. Tuesday morning we were told to be at the travel office by 6:30. At about 5:50, two elders that were dropping off one of their roommates at the travel office come into our room saying that the travel office made a mistake and we need to be there xianzai (right now)! We (me, my comp, and elder porter) proceeded to get ready as fast as we could. Anyways, we got there just in time to make the bus which took us straight to SLC!  The flight was not that bad! I slept a decent amount of the time, studied for little bit,  Tokyo was cool. We made it to Taiwan at approximately 8:00 pm (taiwan time) which is 6:00 am Utah time. We then proceeded to meet our mission president, his wife, and the APs. A 2 hour ride to the mission home from the Taipei airport and then finally some rest! I awoke to one of the best breakfasts of my life which consisted of a wide variety of the best tasting fruit and some Taiwanese bread thingies that were way good! Orientation for the next day and a half! Thursday night we had our first contacting activity and it was crazy! We went to a night market and "Dan Jones"ed. This means standing on a box and shouting your testimony. Pretty wild. Then we contacted for about an hour. One thing I'll say right now, Taiwanese people are really really nice and polite. Friday I met my Father (in training terms)! His name is Elder Zhao, he's a 24 year old convert from Michigan. He was born in China and moved to the U.S. when he was 7 so both his Chinese and English are flawless! He's an awesome missionary and example to me so I'm stoked to learn all I can from him! My first night I was a total deer in the headlights, and I just did not know what I had gotten myself into. Elder Zhao had scheduled two "miracle lessons" which is literally scheduling to have a miracle lesson. But miraculously, they happened! My first lesson ever was with this 40 year old guy named Cai, who had been contacted by the missionaries like 7 years ago and went to church once but nothing ever came of it, we knocked on his door and he let us in and taught about why we need to rely on the God and not ourselves. This really was a miracle because Cai eagerly set up another appointment, and as I was bearing my testimony I really realized that what I was saying was so true. That if we rely on the Lord and not upon ourselves, he will direct our paths. So in the two and a half days that we've been together, we have already taught 10 lessons. There's so much mission work to be done here, and according to my companion, this area is "golden"! The jet lag was brutal and up until yesterday, every day at like 5:00 pm I was dead. However, being busy is awesome and makes time fly so much faster. So now just some miscellaneous info mainly for Ma and Pa. My area is called Taiping and is on the outer parts of Taichung. I live on the 11th floor/12, and my apartment is a lot nicer than I was expecting. We have a fridge and our own washer and dryer which is nice. Our church is the nicest one in Taichung and is reeeaalllyy nice even by U.S. standards, so we do most of our lessons here! I haven't gotten my real bike yet so right now I have to use this infamous bike that has been named "The Blue Truck" lol. I think I've finally realized what I'm truly in for for the next 22 months. Taiwan is really hot. It is really humid. It rains really hard some times and you still need to bike to places. People really do speak really fast.There's a lot of food I'm going to need to get used to. It smells really weird in a lot of places. DANSHI (BUT), the people are kind and friendly, the fruit is incredible, air conditioning has been invented, I have the gift of tongues, and most importantly I have the Lord on my side! Til next week!

-Elder Poon

 In Portland.

 On the way to Taiwan.

 As per father's request - My trainer (Elder Zhao), and I at the mission home. That is a mango tree behind us.

 The apartment.

 Mangoes are life here in Taiwan.

A random parade broke out while we were teaching a lesson last night, it was kinda hard to teach while there was blazing Chinese music, gongs, and fireworks going on but it was cool to check it out afterwards!