Dear family,

Before I forget, I am going to the temple next week and so will not email until Wednesday.

It has been some of the most eventful days I have had in ages. Daddy's story about the fire alarms going off at the cabin just set the tone for the story I'm about to tell you.

So it is late on Friday night (about 10:10, about 20 minutes before we go to bed) and all was quiet at our apartment. I was folding laundry, my companion was cutting fruit for her breakfast, Sister Liu was following up with the district leader...and the carbon monoxide detector started going off and didn't stop even when we hit the quiet button. I had had quite a time installing the carbon monoxide detector in Yuanlin (long story. Just know the walls here are made of cement) and so I knew exactly what it was and how the detector worked. They trained us on the CM2 detectors after a couple missionaries died in Europe last winter. So I called the district leader, who called President...who sent the office elders to come pick us up because we couldn't sleep there that night until it got checked. We were all complaining, we were so tired and didn't want to leave and had to pack all of our stuff because we didn't know when we'd come back. The time we all dearly wanted to be asleep we were sitting outside our dalou looking bleary eyed waiting for the elders to drive over. I was just glad they didn't make us ride our bikes the half hour like they originally proposed.

Once we got to the mission home we stopped complaining immediately. I was afraid we were going to have to sleep on the floor in the office or something, but instead we got to sleep in the guest room at the mission home. All I can say is I highly recommend setting off your CM detector. Oh, the mission home was so clean and comfortable. It was airconditioned, carpeted, the beds were soo comfortable and the linens divine, covered in pillows. It felt like being at home, or visiting relatives. Wealthy relatives. I giggled to Sister Brownell, "Do you think this is what heaven is like?" We couldn't hide our glee. The showers had hot water AND water pressure, simultaniously! It was like a miracle. The next morning President and Sister Bishop made us an American breakfast- I was not expecting that, it was above and beyond their call of duty. I was ready to go buy something at 711. I felt so taken care of. It was like being in a house at America, they had condiments in English that they bought at costco and herbal essence shampoo in the bathroom. It's funny how the little things make you feel like you are at home.

After our "getaway" to the missionhome, things went really well. The Zone Leaders committed us to have 30 sitdown lessons this week, and by Friday we only had I think 14. We had a ton of miracles though all right in a row and by Sunday night we had all 30. It was crazy. The more you exercise faith in the commitments extended by your leaders, the more opportunities God has to show you His miracles. Literally, we went from a park sit down, to the first house we tracted to being let in, and then when we left the elders were calling me telling me a lady showed up at the church crying and wanted to know the meaning of life and how she can be happier. It was miraculous. Everything fell into place.

Today was a lot of fun too! We had heard there was a waterfall in the mountains and decided to ride up to go see it. We stopped at a buddist temple which was actually the first cool one I have seen in a long time. I've seen so many miaos that they rarely interest me anymore but we had fun today. We rode and rode and came to a what is called a Bat Cave and wandered around in a dark little man made tunnel...kind of silly to be honest but fun. We had heard about the waterfall and that was the destination, so even though we heard that it was still an hour away we decided to keep riding. It was quite the mountain biking, we had to walk sometimes because it was too steep - it was also farther than we expected. It was worth it. The waterfall was nothing to speak of (literally) but we found pretty green pools and boulders and did our study time there. It was so relaxing. I sent a couple pictures that I thought illustrated the day pretty well.

I sent a big box of books home today...It cost about 40 dollars American ouch but I figure it is cheaper than the airplane overweight charge and less of a hassel. It should be there...in a couple months. Haha.

Times up. Love you all. Sorry I couldn't respond individually to anyone. I hope everyone is okay.

FML
Sister Johnson