Tuesday was incredible! We didn't have a lot planned for the day so we had some good finding time today. We targeted formers specifically and got one set up for tomorrow and all the rest had bogus addresses so we made sure to fix that in the system. We also had 2 lessons, and we did a practice baptismal interview with our friend and he passed except for his small smoking problem which he's actively working on! He's gonna make it! I'm still super excited for him. Another awesome part of the day was doing a study in a 7. I was looking for a snack and was just walking around and all the sudden I saw in the fridge a Mountain Dew bottle! In Taiwan, Mountain Dew has only been available in Costco, which isn't convenient a lot of the time. It is now in 7/11s!! Elder Lee and I bought a combined 20 bottles to stash up with. They are cheap compared to other sodas so it is pure heaven. I had earth's best snack because I splurged for the Snickers too. I was on cloud 9! The last great part of the day was I had 7 gospel conversations today by myself. The push is 20 per companionship per day and I got 7 by myself. That's a personal high for me and it felt good talking to people. I'm finally feeling Chinese click and it's incredible.
Wednesday definitely didn't end how I thought it would. We had a normal day with appointments and studies and whatnot. Pretty normal and since it's Wednesday we had badminton with some other people that live in 鳳林. When we left the house for badminton we realized we both didn't have keys and we were locked out. We had to call a locksmith, who couldn't help us. Then we called our landlord and she was in 花蓮 and couldn't come to help us. So we did the next best thing and took a train up to the city, met up with our landlord, got our keys and waited an hour to take a train home and got back around 11 at night. It was crazy and let's just say I'll never leave the house without keys again.
Zone day! Thursday we had Zone Council in 花蓮. Elder Lee and I got up there early and he spent the morning doing college stuff until we got lunch and had our meeting. The meeting went well and I got to know some of the new people in the Zone so that was cool. We had dinner together after and all that fun stuff then we got home and did studies. Pretty chill day but very filled with learning. Probably the funniest part of the day was having different people randomly point out to me the mannerisms that I have. It was actually wild. One person pointed out my walk (and I learned that other missionaries have learned how to imitate it), my talk (how I talk with my hands and gesture a lot), and even my posture (still not the best but I'm working on it). It was funny everyone loves my cowboy walk, it's a hit! Goes to show people are watching and observing you all the time!
Freaky Friday. Actually, it wasn't that different. We did the morning routine with studies and then we went to help one of our friends dig out some sweet potatoes and other veggies from his farm. It was actually really cool because there was a group of elementary school students there for an activity and so it was a good time! We headed back and got changed then grabbed some dinner then visited some formers in our area book. Found 2 real addresses and 2 more bogus ones. Slowly but surely the area book is going to become perfect. We ended the night doing contacting and waiting for a package from the mission office. Our apartment is pretty janky and gets super humid so they sent us a dehumidifier and hopefully, it works!
Super Saturday! We spent Saturday morning helping our group leader build his home! It's coming together nicely. It is really taking shape and looking way good. We spent the whole morning doing that and by the time we came back and got ready it was time for English class. We had 2 students show up! One of them was a new student, so that was pretty awesome. Today we also had the chance to go and read scriptures with our baptismal date friend! His baptism is 2 weeks from today and I can't wait! We made it back home and did studies the rest of the day so it wasn't that exciting, and a little backward since we do studies in the morning then go out at work. Still a super great day nonetheless.
Chill Sunday today for sure. We had an awesome church meeting in the morning and had a man randomly walk in and attend Sacrament Meeting so that was good and he said we could stop by his house in town but when we went he wasn't there. We'll keep trying and he said he would come to church every week so that's really good too! After Church, we did our studies and then had our weekly planning session because we didn't do it on Friday! So we spent lots of time inside today but you gotta do what you gotta do. We biked out to visit one of our new investigators but he wasn't at home so that was a bummer. It's ok though we ended out the night taking a train to 花蓮 because tomorrow is Zone Conference!
Monday was not Preparation Day! So it was a normal missionary day but we also had Zone Conference today! It was great to have the whole Zone together and be with President and Sister Peterson. They are super great people and the training we had focused on the Book of Mormon today. It was the same exact things we talked about in Zone Council last week so I don't know if I learned anything new per se but it definitely reaffirmed truths that I knew before. I did enjoy a quote from Sister Peterson, she said that we can "pierce the darkness with the spiritual light of the Book of Mormon". I really enjoyed that. I also was sung to for my birthday which is this Saturday. Pretty excited for that, but I don't think anything too special will happen. After Zone Conference, we just did some studies and stuff for the night. A lot of missionaries are staying for preparation day so it was fun spending time with the other missionaries and discussing things too.
Elder Heber Chase Ciminski
謝希伯長老