Dear family and friends,
It's weird writing another email after only 5 days. But I feel like
a lot has happened. First, the typhoon never really came. There was a
good 2 hour burst of rain that beats out Utah's annual precipitation.
But that happens a lot here. And there was wind later that night
(Wednesday night), but that was pretty much it. And it felt so good that
night riding home from English class. It was nice and cool. The
annoying thing about that night was because of the typhoon, everyone
stayed home and didn't come to English. Even though it didn't look bad
outside at all. So instead of the usual 45ish people that usually come,
we had 5. 3 of them are in the advanced class. It was pretty sad. So we
all just chilled and talked with them. Which helps them a lot as well.
And one of them is one of our progressing investigators and we got to
meet with him afterwards. We taught the Plan of Salvation and it
answered a lot of questions. We just need to get him to church!
That night starting at 9:00 I got to go on a Zone Leader exchange
with Elder Muhlestein. And since we all live in the same apartment, me
and Elder Gulas switched rooms. It was pretty fun. But the exchange was
really fun. And so far, all my exchanges have had something fail pretty
hard. My first involved getting on the wrong train with my district
leader. The second was extremely flooded out with a fellow missionary
being trained. And now my third with my zone leader and all of the
confirmed appointments fell through as we got to each of them. So we did
a lot of searching and resulting to back up plans. Thank goodness for
back up plans! It was really fun though. Elder Muhlestein is a really
positive missionary. And EXTREMELY smart. He's a Harvard man. He can
solve a rubics cube in 15 seconds. 17 seconds if he goes by the official
Rubik's cube rules. It's pretty cool to watch. But anyway, he's
extremely friendly with everyone he comes in contact with and has a
positive attitude about everything. I learned a lot in that exchange.
Friday almost felt like we got no missionarying done. We had our
regular studies and weekly planning as usual. Then all the missionaries
that came out in my group had a meeting in Taizhong at 3:00. So we
headed straight there afterwards and were there until 7:00. It was
really cool seeing all my MTC friends again though! They're all doing
really great. And the meeting was just to see how we all were doing and
gave our input of how we think the first 5 weeks have been and what we
think needs to be changed about the training. But then that night at
7:15 we had an investigator meeting and we watched The Restoration. He's
struggling with Joseph Smith and Prophets. So hopefully that'll help
him a bit more.
Elder Taylor is the trainer in Puli with Elder Chan and he was on
exchanges with Elder Gulas that night. So he was in our apartment that
night and he's really cool. He's from Bountiful and he's in the movie
"Unitards." I really wanted to see that movie! Oh, and Elder Allen is in
"Unicorn City." What are the odds of that? Also wanted to see that. I
love it.
Saturday was pretty good working with the ward council on
missionary efforts and how they can help. We always get a lot of
volunteers to help. I love this ward! We also had a chance to do service
for a recent convert. Finally! I love doing service activites. Also
that night we had our investigating family and the wife of our recent
convert have their baptismal interviews! They all passed and are
planning for this Saturday! I'm so excited! Two completed families
baptized into this church. I'm so happy for them. I got to hear the wife
of the recent convert talk about how her look at life has changed since
meeting with us, and how much it has blessed her life. It was so great.
It was really great to see all of them at church as well the next day.
They're really loving the ward. I love when everything starts to fall
into place.
And today we went to this place called xitou. It is seriously the
most intense outdoors beautiful place ever. I'm so in shock. It was
beautiful. Way high up in the mountain. We got to hike around and
everything. It was so great. That's Taiwan for you!
Well I love you all! I can't wait to hear back from you next week. Please continue to write. I miss you all!
Love, Elder Buckwalter
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