October 24, 2010 92 Year Old Faithful Member

My companion is so funny. The only English he knows is slang and it makes me so happy when he says things in English. But he has an amazingly good accent.

So once again.... Not a lot has happened this week, but last preparation day after emailing you guys we went to some "temples". I put quotes because it’s more of an amusement park. They had little ride things and games and lots of amusement park food as well as some not so amusement park food.. Eww. Anyway. And the stuff in the temples is really messed up and all about devils and killing people and different kinds of monsters and this like that. Really really messed up things..
Also there was another typhoon, but it was fairly small. It just rained a lot. And the wind was really really strong.
On Saturday we went to visit a former investigator and he didn't really remember meeting with the missionaries. But he has a neighbor who is Mormon and he remembered that. And he told us that this member was old and sick and couldn't come to church anymore. And so he took us over to this old guy’s house, and wow. I didn't know Asians could live that long! This guy is 92 years old. And he has been a member since he was 55. If I had a calculator I would do the math for you and tell you that that was a LONG TIME AGO! He was baptized in 1973! And according to him, he came to church every Sunday and he read his scriptures and prayed every day. But eventually he couldn't take care of himself and his family hired a full time nurse to take care of his and now he just sits in the same spot buy the door all day long eating and drinking and peeing into his urine tube. And he told us that missionaries haven't visited his for over a year. He told us to go to the church and get tithing slips for him because he hasn't paid his tithing in over a year either. But he saved up his tithing money and next week we are going to get a member to help him come to church. He is the cutest old guy I have ever seen. He says the funniest things. He asked me how long I have been in Taiwan and I told him 4 months and he was impressed. And then he turned to my companion who is Taiwanese and said "your Chinese is pretty good, how long have you been in Taiwan?" I laughed for a long time. But the part that made me laugh was when my companion said he was Taiwanese. After he said that the old guy had this smile on his face and said "you look like a foreigner" and then I laughed some more. And so on Sunday we took him the tithing slips he asked for and we tried to bless the sacrament for him but apparently he forgot what that was. Anyway after we said a closing prayer, he asked if he could pray and of course we said yes. And so he prayed for us to baptize all of Taiwan. It made me laugh. I love that old man. So faithful.


Anyway. Today we went to "MONKEY MOUNTAIN!" I took lots of pictures of the monkeys and so I will send you guys some. And speaking of pictures I am going to buy an 8 gig usb flash drive and next week, copy all of the pictures over to that and send it home to you guys. And after you guys copy all of them to an external hard drive or something like that, you can send it back. And then I can delete them off my card and start over again.