P-day was so amazing on Monday! We woke up in 吉安 and had a great morning. It was a little special though because of Chinese New Year and in the tradition of doing a lot of cleaning at this time of year, all the missionaries deep cleaned their apartments! Since we weren't at our own apartment we helped clean the other Elder's apartment and I had a lot of fun doing it. Cleaning is so fun and it feels great afterwards! I found some cool little trinkets I'm taking back to 鳳林 with me but one of those trinkets is a pair of slacks! So it's not all useless 😜. After the cleaning we went to the beach and played some football and frisbee. I had probably the best games of my whole life! In football we were going to 4 and the first to get 4 points wins. Of those 4 points I scored 3 kickoff return touchdowns and got 1 interception and ran it all the way down the field for the 4th touchdown. That good of a game reignited my dreams of playing rugby (sorry, Mom probably doesn't wanna hear that). In frisbee I made a sweet diving catch to score a point for my team and all in all today was a great day athletically for me. That made me super happy 😊 (it also paralleled nice with the Super Bowl going on at the same time. Which I forgot about until another missionary talked about it). We finished off the day with an amazing dinner with the Bishop's family and today is officially 過年 time so there was a lot of food and it turns into a game since they won't let you stop eating! The food was so good so I didn't mind eating a ton of it. Because of the New Year there are so many fireworks going off all day I love the atmosphere! At first impressions this is gonna be a great week!
Tuesday was such a cool day. I got to go to the land of my forefather. By that I mean I finally got to go to the area Elder Pope talked about the most (of his previous areas) when I was in training, 玉里! We are now in a district with those Elders and the Elders in 鹿野. And that means the 3 most remote areas of the mission have assembled into the three kingdoms. It's pretty awesome and we had a great District Council. The 鹿野 Elders couldn't make it so it was just 4 of us but we just talked about our areas and got to know each other more and our areas too. Even though it wasn't an actual training I felt so much upliftment because we can all relate to our areas and can really take our challenges and concerns and bring them in to receive awesome suggestions from others going through the same things. I am glad this district has been formed because it's going to do a lot of good! Travel ate up a lot of time but that's the reoccurring theme of being in this area. The travel time is great and the reimbursement amounts are super great! I wouldn't have it any other way, 鳳林 is heaven on earth.
Wednesday was a fun day. And with it being the 6th of the month it also is another month mark on my mission, number 8! Onward, ever onward! The work never ceases. Today we had a good time knocking. We did a little exploring and a dog started following us around and we ended taking some pretty awesome unplanned pictures (me and the dog), and it was a cool view! Then a bit later we ended up finding the house the previously mentioned dog was from and we talked with the lady living there. She seems pretty set in her religious preference but we still left her with a Book of Mormon and hopefully she'll feel impressed to read it! When we were leaving the house two of their other dogs came up and I started petting them and squatted down to get close to them. Then as we were walking away the lady said that one of the dogs bites people, but it didn't even hint at that with me, not even a bark or growl. As Elder Crimm and I were walking way all I said was, "I'm Daniel dude." It was super cool! I know all the times dogs haven't given me a hard time has been a blessing from Heavenly Father and I sure am grateful for it! I also saw some clovers that had heart shaped leaves so that was cute. Overall today was an awesome day!
What a day. Thursday was lots of biking and a lot of it probably wasn't necessary. We had set up with our friend previously talked about in previous weeks (the Book of Mormon miracle one) and we biked all the way to his house (45 minute ride) and when we show up his Grandma walks out and tells us he had "things" and had to leave. So it was a bummer that that happened. All is well we will learn for next time. We had an awesome dinner tonight as part of Chinese New Year celebrations and that was basically the day! Nothing super exciting since we also did Weekly Planning also. That went super well though I took some pages from my Kansas book and I feel super good about it all! We made a "Plan 2 Baptize" and I have the faith that if we follow the plan we will see some results!
Friday was a super great day. We had a great morning and had our apartment inspection with President! He video called us and we showed him our clean apartment and I'm pretty proud of it. When I first got here things were super dingy but after some hard work we've got it super clean! We have 3 guitars in the apartment which is fun. Elder Crimm plays one and I fixed up one of them and now I'm learning the guitar! It's pretty fun I got a PDF from Elder Crimm of a whole lesson book so I can really learn the basics and build up. As for today's events we had a great lunch with a member and his family and man, during Chinese New Year they feed you a ton. I ate so much I felt so uncomfortable after. The food was good though, I absolutely love Taiwan food. We walked around a lot today as well trying to find people and I was able to swap some more stories with Elder Crimm and get to know him a bit better so that was fun as well. All in all a really good day!
Saturday was such a great day! We just did some knocking and whatnot up until our dinner! Tonight it was the last New Year's dinner with members! And this one was with 陳榮光 and his family! Their family is so cool we had a great time talking and we even heard Brother 陳's conversion story. He's been doing stunts and other cool stuff his whole life, but I loved what he said about the gospel changing his life along with his wife's life also. He hasn't had it easy either, lots of accidents and such that made him angry before he heard the Gospel, but he's always so happy and I truly believe it's because of the Gospel. I know that the Gospel has made my life have so much more happiness, so I know it can be that way for others also. Lastly, on a fun side note when we got to their house they had a Maze Runner movie playing, I think it was The Death Cure, it looked really good so I'll have to check it out someday. I've definitely cherished those little exposures to "worldy" things as I have gone further along in my mission. Tender mercies? I think so.
Sunday was a slow Sabbath. They usually are and I think it's pretty nice. We had a great church service and I blessed the Sacrament again. The prayers are becoming more familiar in Chinese and I can understand the meaning so it is more than just sounds. It makes a difference! I am glad I have had the chance to do it so much and become more familiar with them. Aside from church, nothing super exciting happened. Except for the fact we killed 2 more spiders as big as my hand. The first one of the day I got on video but the second one I missed! I flubbed up and I'm pretty bummed because it was quite the ordeal killing the second one. It was in a corner in the roof and we ended up taking one of Elder Crimm's sandals and throwing it at the spider to get it to hopefully fall on the ground and then when it fell we put a box full of heavy things on top of it to crush it. It was pretty gnarly but I will sleep better knowing that two less giant spiders are crawling around the chapel! Hopefully we don't have any more run-ins with Aragog and his posse.
The Chinese New Year time is over and it was exciting! Lots of fireworks going off all over the place and a lot of people coming too see their families. It was an exciting time and it was great to experience the culture even more! 新年快樂!
宋長老
Elder Ciminski