Another Lovely Day in Taidong

This starts my 3rd week here in Taidong, which seems really fast. I think I'm going to be saying that my whole mission, maybe I'll just make it a blanket statement so you don't have to hear it from me every week. Time is so distorted. 3 weeks will go by before you notice but looking back you cant tell if its been a year. Each transfer is like a new lifetime. Its really messing with my time perception.

Anyway, today our P-day is spent on a huge stake activity. The Stake here is the Hualian stake and stretches to cover the hole lover eastern half of the Island of Taiwan. Its a big area. It is an excercise activity, and I don't exactly know what that means (people tell me its like a huge track meet) but everyone is really really excited about it. So we are going to participate. It is about an hour and a half away so we have to meet at the church at 7 to get ourselves a ride. Which means that we had to get up at 5:30 to get to this lovely net cafe to email by 6. Early day. Afterward we are going to take advantage of the mountain-esque beauty here in southern Taiwan and go mountain biking up to some suspension bridges. I'm excited, that should be really fun, and really beautiful.

Weather here is starting to get really hot again. So far if there is a wind its ok, even pleasant. The sun is shining and buildings are far enough apart that you can see the blue sky. Its a good place. One of my favorite things here in Taidong is biking to visit all of the investigators. We have a very large area that we as sisters cover so sometimes its a 30 to 40 minute bike ride and its just really relaxing. The traffic here is no where near the insanity of the Taipei basin.

We had a pretty good week. Can I remember most of it to tell you what happened? At the moment no. We are so busy that the days and the activities seem to smudge and get all blurry until they sort of blend together. But it was a good week. We really are very busy, we usually have something of non-stop lessons all day, which is good, but doesn't leave much time for finding. (I like teaching better then contacting or knocking doors, but both are very important obviously.) Sister Collyer is really an amazing missionary. She invites absolutely everyone for baptism, on the street, on her bike, with people she has been talking to for less than a minute. I think its a little...strange...but its our purpose, so I'm glad that I have a great example to learn from.

Tonight we are going to go help an investigator paint her house! and I'm pretty excited. Its not often here that we get service opportunities outside of teaching English class. That's actually how we met her though, through English class. She has potential. I hope that she realizes how much the gospel will help her raise her children!

Well that's all the time I have!

I love you all, I hope you February was excellent, are you ready for march? Enjoy the St. Patrick's day green for me!

Sister Melissa Thiessen

Life Banished to the Far South

My first week in far away Taidong was so long is was short. I know some of you will know what I mean here. It was packed and bursting with missionary activities...which should be expected because of my current occupation...

You know it occurs to me that my job description is rather amusing. I put in all my time for a year and a half to living with another young woman I don't know, riding a bike in skirts, blouses and dorky helmets, talking to absolutely everyone I see, in a language I can't speak, about Jesus. Whether they want to hear it or not. Yeah. Its pretty special.

But I digress.

Sister Collyer is probably the most missionary missionary I have met so far. She is so dedicated to the work, that the things that distract her, are about missionary work. Sometimes its almost alarming hah. but she has a heart of gold and she really loves the people. She invites every one she sees to baptism. Everyone, haha. Even the creepy guy in the work truck that chews so much binglong (a nasty plant like tobacco only red) that his grin is stained cannibalistic red. She has no fear or awkwardness about it.

I can already tell that my time down here will be unlike all my previous experience on my mission. I know Sister Collyer can teach me a lot, if I can suck up my hesitantly and pride and just do it. She really pushes me to go outside of my comfort zone, especially with talking to everyone at church. The members are wonderful down here, we have people come up and ask us in church if we have time for them to come peike (sit in on a lesson with us, which is very, very important and notoriously hard to come by in many other places). They love the missionaries down here, and the branches (there are two) are very small, so, it is very important that we really get to know them all.

Sunday was an interesting experience. I felt a lot like the new zoo exhibit. We are like the only white people in Taidong, and I'm pretty sure I'm the tallest woman in Taidong...maybe the tallest person period actually...So there was a lot of staring, and "Oh! Your soooo tall!"s. The children thought it was very amusing though, I'm pretty sure they saw me more as a new jungle gym than a new toy.

Saturday we had a baptism, it was pretty cool. This woman is amazing. She was the most faithful of investigators, really. When she saw the missionaries on the street, us or the elders (there are two sets of elders in Taidong) she would stop them and follows up on her commitments herself! ha. People keep telling me this is a language of miracles. I would believe that, this week we have 19 baptism dates. In my previous areas 5 a week was lucky.

Taidong is also beautiful. The weather is pretty much the perfect temperature, though I hear that it gets unbearable in the summer. The houses are still very Taiwanese looking (a little shabby and run down-ish) but the tin garage doors are all painted. Fanciful colors or designs and cartoon characters. There is a definite aboriginal feel to the art on the streets, and the architecture often. There is a backdrop of misty green mountains cupping the city. The streets actually have room to breathe, not congested every moment with insane scooter drivers and buses. Taidong will be an interesting experience.

Well that's all for now. I really love you all, and miss you terribly.

Love Sister Melissa Thiessen.

Pic on Left is Mel with the Elders in her district. They found a COSTCO and Mel got them all in on her card so they could get American Pizza.

The photo on the right is Mel with a Mini. She sent this for her dad who loves them and has a 1973 Austin Mini Cooper S, that is this color blue. It is pretty amazing seeing her dad who is 6'8" in his Mini.


Mel's email didn't come through last week, so this post is a 2fer. This week and last week's blog.

Greetings again from Taiwan Well I don't have much to say for this week, it passed very quickly it seemed. My district had a very successful week, every conpanionship contacted 30-40 people a day at least and we gained many new investigators and a handful of baptizm dates. This is impressive, because our district is the youngest (has more new missionaries) than any other in our Zone and probably one of the youngest in our Mission. But it was a hard week, emotionally and physically. I got into my first mission bike accident! My companion and I were hurrying to the MRT (train) station to get to district meeting and we came to a stop light. I applied my breaks to slow down and they locked up. My bicke stopped quite suddenly and I did not stop. I wiped out pretty spectacularly all over the road. I was blessed because there were no cars behind me so I remained un-ran over. Also, my dress and my tights remained unripped, miraculously, which I was very greatful fore because I don't have too many of those items and cannot find them in my size in taiwan. Language has slain me this week. The Danshui missionaries (the elder companionship that is in our area and sister Li and I) has a invantory about our language. Sister Li was upset because we all spoke English when we were together and she felt left out. Its a sticky situation because of the newness of half of us, and our inability to speak chinese. We eventually worked out a way to hopefully deal. Sister Li mentioned that she has a really hard time understanding the words that I use in English sometimes, and Elder Benson (the district leader) turned to her and said, Sister Li, I have a hard time understanding the words that Sister Thiessen uses in English some times. We all laughed and I assured them all that I would try my best to dumb down my english. This week while buying fruit at a local stand I made an amazing discovery!! I picked up an apple to access its freshness and what did I find! It was a Washington apple! I was so happy I had to go find Sister Li and tell her. But then! I turned around to pick up a different variety and what did I find!! Another washington apple, but what did it say? A YAKIMA WASHINGTON apple! All the way accross the world in taiwan, a little peice of home found me all on its own. I stole a couple of the stickers, and bought a couple of the apples. And they were delicious. mmm. This week begins the new year. Chinese New year that is, it is their biggest holiday. They all congrigate as families and eat a ton of food. For missionaries that means invitations for big meals, weight gain, and no lessons. There will be a lot of door nocking and street contacting this week. Well I am out of time. We are off to go find Costco! I am hopin to weasle my district inside with my American card! Love you all! Sister Thiessen.



Today starts my 3rd transfer. That leaves only 9 more. hmm. I've already been out a half a year! Let me hear a big "Woooooooooow" out there folks.

So on Friday we had move calls. It was an interesting situation. We were all certain our beloved district leader, Elder Benson, was going to be called away. Then Thursday he was given the call to train, which upped his chances of staying in Danshui. We also all expected Sister Li to leave, but me to stay. Elder Benson came back with his new trainee on Friday morning with a huge smile plastered on his face. He was staying in Danshui. He'd said that he'd heard whispers that maybe Sister Li and I were both staying. Things were looking pretty good from my perspective up until Friday night. The assistants accidentally called Sister Li instead of another sister and so she found out early that she was transferring to Xinzhu, a city south west of Taibei almost in the Taichung mission. She was...very...upset. It was pretty bad. When she had calmed down enough to rationally speak she called elder Benson to confirm, he had not yet heard from our zone leaders though. When he did call back I answered. He told me, with a heavy heart, that I was also moving, and that they were closing the sisters in Danshui. It was a serious blow. He informed me that I would me moving to Taidong, the very most southern tip of Taiwan. So I went from the extreme far north to the extreme far south in 2 transfers. Taidong is a 7 hour train ride from Danshui. The irony here is that the one person we were all sure would leave stayed, the lone man haha.

It is a big sadness. We had so many investigators that are going to be left in an awkward place. It was a big deal, we packed up our whole apartment and had to go over all the records with our elders, so they could take over. Sister Li and I had no little amount of sorrow in doing this.

This morning I said goodbye to Danshui. Everyone tells me I am the lucky one. Missionaries, sisters and elders alike pray to be moved to Taidong, its rumoured to be the best area of the mission. Certainly the prettiest. All the members tell me its gorgeous. They tell me that I will love it. But I will very much miss Danshui, I got very attached to the members, to the investigators, to the stormy beauty of that seaside town. And especially I will miss my district, and my elders who were like my family away from home.

I took that train ride, I am now stopped in the middle in Hualian, a rich touristy city on the middle east of the island. The closest missionaries besides those in taidong reside here. Its a Huge zone. And it is beautiful. Oh, the wonders and fun of the missionary life. My companion is one sister Collyer, whom every sister I've ever talked to has nothing but praise and good words for. I really am blessed. I confess, I was one of those missionaries who prayed to come south, but not so soon! haha. But the Lord knows what he is doing. And I am slowly adjusting to the fact that I have moved. ha.

To reminisce on the past transfer, I have to say that though it was really hard some times, having a bundi (native) companion helped me enormously. My speaking skills are only marginally better maybe, but really my listening skills have improved by leaps and rockets. I understand so much more than I did even 4 weeks ago. Last night before I left Sister Li she and I had a long conversation about what had come to pass this last transfer. Before we went to bed I looked at her and said "Sister Li, do you realize that we just had that entire conversation in Chinese? 6 weeks ago, I could hardly speak to you."

The Lord does love his missionaries. We just have to be patient enough to be molded by his hands.

Love you all!
Sister Melissa Thiessen

Happy Chinese New Year! I think you should all start celebrating, they take almost a week of school and work and hang out with family and eat. A. Ton. We have had meal appointments every day for the past week, both lunch and dinner. the type of meal appointments where after every meal you leave and are so full you never want to see food again, much less eat again in about 3 hours. Its been fun.

This week since most of these appointments have been on the little island that parallels Danshui we have spent a lot of time traveling. We leave in the morning, not able to finish our studies to get to an appointment for lunch and it takes about an hour to get out to the island by bus and MRT (train). Then we are there for the expected couple of hours. then we have to travel home and try to get some more studies in, then we have to do it again for dinner. Usually we have returned home late, past the 9:00 curfew. But because of this travel time and spending pretty much all day every day with Elder Benson and Hall (our Danshui Elders) we have all become very close. We refer to ourselves as the 4 musketeers. This has been the best week of my mission thus far, even if we haven't been able to do almost any missionary work outside of working with the members. We have a lot of fun together.

Unfortunately next Friday harrolds move calls. I think we will be moved, at least two of us. Elder Benson will probably be moved up to Zone leader, and I think either Sister Li or I will be moving. Its a sadness. We are all a little bummed about it, In the words of Elder Benson "I don't know if another transfer can top this one, its been epic." Even the rest of our district is really cool.

Last week on p-day we all trooped to Costco, an endeavor that took us all day. But it was worth it, it was much like a group of children going to Disney land. We were all ridiculously excited to buy American food, like cereal, salsa and tortillas. And Costco rolls! It was just like the Costco's of old, but yet still managed to retain an Asian feel. Like the pizza in the food court was pepperoni, Hawaiian or teriyaki chicken and mushrooms. And instead of just chicken bakes they had bagogi bakes. Interesting. But I had myself the first real salad I have had since entering Taiwan borders. And I was like mana from heaven.

Besides that, this week we have really gotten to know all of the members in Danshui. They are all amazing people! So faithful in the gospel. Every appointment we go to we ask to hear their story about how they became acquainted with the gospel. Sometimes they are pretty amazing. One Brother Zhong received a Book of Mormon from a friend at work, and without much more than a brief invitation to give it a look read it front to back. Then, having a thirst for more, by himself, got his hands on the gospel principles book and a number of other church resources. After a few weeks of coming to church one of the members was shocked to hear that he wasn't baptized yet. When are you getting baptized? He asked, have you set a date with the missionaries? No, brother Zhong replied, he hadn't even met with the missionaries, but he thought next Saturday would work well for the baptism if that day was too soon. Wow haha.

Well, this transfer is coming to a close, and I'm sad to see it happen. But I'm late for another lunch appointment. I love you all!

Sister Melissa Thiessen.