KFC Man... August 24, 2015

This was a suuuper fast week! Not too much crazy stuff happened. Last P-day we went to this awesome mall right by the mission home. 13 floors of stuff. Everything was American priced so that kinda sucked but I had a really good cheeseburger and we sat in massage chairs for like an hour and that was incredible. I hadn't realized before how stressed my feet were but afterwards it was like I was walking on small clouds! Chinese is wild. Tones are hard, man. For example, one tone is the difference between saying "Endure to the end" and "eat a hand until the end" lol. Every Friday we have weekly planning and the word for "weekly" (meizhou) is the exact same as the word for "american continent" so we always go eat American food after weekly planning. Of all the food that I've eaten here in Taiwan, I think it's funny that the thing that has messed up my bowels more than anything else combined is KFC. I won't go into detail, but it wasn't fun. Besides that, this week was pretty normal. Taught a lot of lessons. Brought the sacrament to our 92 year old investigator! Taiwan continues to amaze me every day and the weather is starting to cool off which is great!

Every Friday for the last month we get to ball with these orphans and some basketball instructors. It was way fun and they're great kids! I think it's hilarious though how a lot of them weren't sure how to pose for a picture! 

Asian graffiti is exactly what you'd expect

One Month in Taiwan August 17, 2015

It's been a little over a month here in Taiwan! I feel like this last week I really started to get really comfortable here. A lot of interesting things happened this week. I ate pig stomach, chicken feet, and stinky tofu which is one of the worst things I've ever eaten which probably means that my Dad would love it lol. I also found this place that has mango milk and it's the greatest thing ever! It's the only place that I can get milk that doesn't suck. I will not become lactose intolerant like some missionaries that go to Asia do! These super old dudes who are investigators invited us over for lunch and I had the best fried rice I've ever had (sorry mom). The guy who cooked it said that we could come back over and he'd teach us how to cook it! The mission is so awesome. Preach My Gospel says that as you gain more experience, your desire to learn and grow will also increase. I feel like my experience finally hit a certain threshold this past week where I really just wanna learn and do stuff to be a better missionary. I organized all my stuff and cleaned as much as I could and this past week I've had the best studies of my life and most of my worries that I had before are gone. It's really the blessings of becoming a better Preach My Gospel missionary, like Elder Bednar says. It's either that or the fact that I bought a ton of stuff at a store last P-day and the total came out to be 777 NT. Quick story: we taught this old Christian minister this week. He was one of the nicest people I've met so far, but we got into a little discussion about the Book of Mormon and how the Bible says you can't add to it. I couldn't say anything in Chinese to refute that, but my companion who is a scripture scholar Bible bashed this guy to the ground talking about Pharisees and the Book of Jasher and all this smart stuff! It was incredible. In the end the minister didn't have much to say, but he said he'd tell his congregations and people that the Mormon's are also good Christians! Life is good.

This is the tree we saved after the typhoon. This is also my "bruh" pose.

This Week I Survived a Typhoon August 9, 2015

This week I survived a typhoon!! It's hard to get any good information about it because we can't look it up online and every person says something different about it, but supposedly it was the worst one in like 60 years! However, Taichung is situated right by some huge mountain that protected it pretty well from the storm. There were a few times during the two-day long ordeal, when the winds got so bad that it uprooted some trees and destroyed a bunch of stuff! Bu​t when the wind wasn't bad we were out in the rain preaching the gospel! There was a point when we were riding to dinner on Saturday and the winds really started to pick up and I thought a tree was gonna fall on me or a branch was gonna fly into me or something, but we were fine and ended up spending the rest of the night in the apartment listening to Johnny Cash sing hymns and catching up on records! In other news, I went on my first exchange this week which was fun and a great learning experience. Lessons weren't as plentiful this week due to the typhoon, but there was a day earlier in the week when we went to Chin Yi University, which is in our area, and we did some great contacting and eventually set up a lesson with this super nice kid named Fun (who we met with yesterday) and we also set up with one of the professors that teaches there! Well, that's about it! I'm off to go get me my first Taiwanese haircut!

Last p-day we went to a hot pot buffet. It was like 12 US dollars which is by far the most I've spent on food here but also definitely the most satisfied and full. Besides hot-pot stuff they had fries, chicken nuggets, popcorn, and ice cream. It was awesome. In this pic is Elder Efros, who I went on exchanges with last week. He pounded like 9 cokes by himself. So impressive.

During the typhoon

The girl we baptized last week is way good at drawing and so she drew this super awesome pic for me!!

Taiwan Taichung Mission -Typhoon Soudelor August 6, 2015

Dear Parents of Taiwan Taichung Missionaries,

As perhaps you are already aware, typhoon Soudelor is expected to hit Taiwan sometime this evening (local time) with high winds and drenching rains lasting at least 24 hours. It is apparently the worst tropical storm so far in 2015. Current weather projections indicate that the hardest hit areas in Taiwan will be the east coast and northern regions. Our mission covers the southern half of Taiwan and does not include any of the east coast. Regardless, we are still expecting and preparing for severe weather.

All missionaries have been notified to “stay close enough to home that they could walk back in case of severe wind or rain.” They are repeatedly counseled not to ride bicycles during high wind and/or rain. All missionaries have 72-hour kits that were recently checked and replenished.

We appreciate your faith and prayers on behalf of our missionaries and all those who will be affected by this storm.

Warm regards,

President Blickenstaff

Taiwan Taichung Mission

Greetings Again From Taiping August 2, 2015

Don't have a ton of time to write today cause there's a lot of stuff we need to do, but the past week has been pretty eventful! This is definitely the hardest I've worked in my life and it's super tiring but also great at the same time!

Look what I found :)

My first baptism! this is Sister Hong, she's been investigating the church for like 2 years and 

I had basically nothing to do with her conversion but it was still a great day and event!

The District. Got tepenyaki for only 110 quai (like $4)!!

Last P-day it rained buckets, just like me and my friend Elder Ah-Fua do when we ball up orphans. Literally, we had an activity this week where a bunch of orphans came to our church to play basketball it was way fun and some of them were actually pretty dang good!

Taiwan is Dope. July 26, 2015

I have completed my first full week in the field! I'll be honest, this was one of the hardest weeks of my life but also one of the coolest weeks and I've learned a ton! I'm still getting used to everything, but it doesn't stink anymore and the humidity isn't as uncomfortable! My trainer, Elder Zhao, has been working me really hard! We taught 20 lessons this past week. I'm super tired a lot of the time, but it's always better to be busy! As for food, everything is so cheap that we eat out for pretty much every meal. There's a lot of really good stuff everywhere you look and I've been trying to try as much as I can. A member of the bishopric took us to this very traditional Taiwanese place the other day and we had fish soup. That was pretty weird lol. I still need to get used to some stuff! My comp loves mcdonalds though, so we have gotten that a few times! The mcds here are surprisingly very similar to those in America! The members here in Taiwan are so awesome and they love to help us out with lessons! There are a lot of convert youth who are super awesome and love to help the missionaries out! We call them our little "Army of Helaman". One sad thing, a member got in a traffic accident a few days before I got here and passed away in the hospital this week. We went to the hospital with a bunch of members a few hours before they pulled the plug and sang to him and that same member of the bishopric that took us for fish soup gave the dying man a blessing and it was super spiritual even though I could only understand a little of it! I'm excited for more experiences here in Taiwan and to learn as much as I can. As always, love y'all!

-Elder Poon

 Finally got my new bike! She's a beaut and rides so smooth!

Our church! They are doing something to it. What it is, I still don't know!

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!