July 10, 2016 - Typhoon, Sort Of

Well there was a crazy category 4 typhoon in Taiwan last Thursday night.  It had winds up to 140 MPH. It was huge!It made landfall on the east coast of the island. I am in the north central part of the island. The weird thing is, the storm completely missed us here in TaiZhong. We are protected by the mountains that separate us and TaiDong (Where the storm made landfall). We didn't even see a drop of rain. It really was strange! Everyone in the city was preparing for it all week. Other than the crazy storm prep this week, we went to a meeting with our new mission president, President Teh. He made some pretty big changes. We have a TaiZhong mission rule book and at the meeting president said "The white handbook is sufficient" and he told us all to throw away our old rule books and not to hold on to things of the past. Some rules were taken out and some were added to our new mission. We can now ride in the elevator of the church...! He also said I could play at EFY in August with David Archuletta. So that should be interesting!

My new companion Elder Gasser is really cool. He is enthusiastic, he likes sports and music. He is from Payson and their family raised some horses and he has four sisters and no brothers, just like me. 

We picked up our new mission T shirt. 

The character on the front is Zhong the zhong of Tai zhong  (台中) it means middle of the island. and Taibei means north of the island. Taidong means east of the island. Tainan means south of the island. They weren't too creative with their names, but very practical.

The abbreviation on the back stands for "Teach Repentance and Baptize converts"

The Chinese is "yu xinxin yu banfa" which means "With faith there is a way" 

​The back also says "With faith there is always a way" and the sleeve says "champions"  My old mission president, President Blickenstaff, always signed off his letters by saying "Sincerely President Blickenstaff Mentor of Champions" So that was kind of a cool little tribute to him.  

Independence Day party at English class

Silly Selfie as I left this morning. 

Because of the potential typhoon nothing else really happened this week. All of our plans got cancelled even though Taizhong was unaffected by the storm. 

I love you all!

Sincerely Elder Erwin