Six Months Down!

This week I went on zone leader exchanges in Jiayi city which is a very big exciting place. But the coolest thing was zone conference, which was even cooler this time because I went to Gaoxiong city (Kausiung in English, I think). Before I went to Taichung for zone conference but because I’m serving in the south now rather than the north, I now attend the Gaoxiong zone conference. Gaoxiong is a pretty crazy big place. It is the second biggest city in Taiwan and kind of reminds me of NYC with all the huge buildings. Tight next the chapel where we meet, there is a 85 story building! So tall - bigger than anything we have in the states. It is such a cool place. I really hope to serve there sometime soon. I love the big city feel. I’m praying it will happen in the near future. We are teaching some great people right now. We were supposed to baptize a really cool guy last Saturday but he still felt unprepared. I think he'll get baptized before this transfer ends. We also have three college students we are teaching. All of them are great and are progressing a ton. I have faith two of them will for sure be baptized in the next 3 weeks. Those two have already received parent permission to join the church - so exciting. Then I met this amazingly cool guy yesterday. He’s 20 years old and also in college here. We met with him for the first time last night and turns out he has read the Book of Mormon already. He has been taught everything by some missionaries in Taipei, wants to get baptized, but here’s the catch... he only wants to get baptized in America, specifically in Utah... I do not know why. So right now we are trying to convince him it does not matter where you get baptized, as long as you have water and the priesthood you can do it anywhere. He’s so cool though! He always calls us and wants to go out with us to contact, tract, teach, etc. He loves missionary work and hanging out with missionaries. He asked me my favorite candy last night and this morning he got up at 7 am to delivered me 10 snickers and Reeses. such a nice guy. He’s also a photographer, so he took some really cool pictures of us over by this big bridge today (I'll send them when he gives them to me). I really hope we can get him baptized though. To be honest this new area is not much different than my last area. I would say that people here are a lot nicer and less likely to stand us up, however it’s not a significant difference compared to my last area. My old companion would always tell me, it doesn’t matter where you are, every area is the same. Yes, we still teach English classes every Wednesday. However, instead of having 3 classes and 40 people come, we have one class and about 7 people a week. It’s not as effective as my last area in that aspect but I always enjoy teaching English. It makes me feel better about myself when I see them struggle to speak my language (rather than the other way around). Oh I finally got a picture with some kids for you, mom. The glare in the background is kind of bad though. I hope you still enjoy it. I'll try to find more kids for more pictures. That little girl is my Blair kids replacement by the way. She’s a new members daughter, I took that picture in the chapel at her 1 year-old birthday party - so much fun. That’s a typical Taiwanese tradition by the way. When a child turns 1 they place a bunch of objects in a circle, put them in the middle and see which one they pick. It turned out she picked my comps nametag... we joked around she already has the desire to serve the Lord. Oh, I hope you also enjoy my 6 month celebration pictures. Well that’s it for this week. I love and miss you guys. I can’t wait to hear more from you again next week!
Love, Jeremy