Imagine thanksgiving at your grandma's house, preparing the meal and then getting together with all your family and friends and sitting down then eating until you are stuffed. Then do that for lunch and dinner for about 6 days, and that's how missionaries in Taiwan experience "guonian". All the stores are pretty much closed so the members make sure we are nice and full. They keep feeding us and sharing the joy by giving us gifts of candy and sweets. Its wonderful really. Its just a lot of food. I am staring down a full week of that, right before I go home...esh...there goes my girlish figure. But it also helps kill some of the dead time because its hard to do much during guonian. Everyone is really busy and not inclined to be distracted by salvation. But we press on!
This week we had some interesting things happen. We were out exploring our area, contacting and tracting when we decided to park our bikes and walk down a street and just contact everyone on it. So that's what we did, and there actually weren't too many people on it until we ran into a couple who spoke wonderful English and talked with them for a few minutes. They didn't really have any interest in the Gospel so when we parted ways we both went in different directions. But they happened to go the direction that we had been going and we ended up taking a right turn sort of in a sudden unplanned way down a residential street. Just inside the turn there was an adorable little dog barking in the doorway and a woman came over to shush him and we started talking with her. Miraculously she let us in and we sat and had a nice conversation with her and the 71 year old grandfatherly friend of hers. He was a pretty legit guy, a Taichi master and a acupressure expert. He also happened to have a sister living in taidong (my third area) whom I knew because her whole family are members. It was a really cool 'coincidence' He had a very good impression of the church. the woman was also really nice and talkative. We talked about everything from the Gospel, to politics, to social-cultural differences between the west and the east. They didn't really have much interest either but before we left we bore strong testimonies on the Gospel and families and the old man backed us up. We left her with a very good impression of our church. As we walked away to get home I really felt like we were supposed to be in that place at that time. Someday she will run into the missionaries again and think back to that night, then accept the message.
Well that is about it. I hope its not too frigid over there where all of you are. Its pretty cold here actually! I'm likin' it. Haha. Have a good week y'all!
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