I hope you know how depressing it is not to have anyone email me.

In other news, Happy Chinese New Year - Guonian. Yesterday was the Lunar New Year It is the biggest holiday of the year here, sort of like Christmas. It lasts a week plus, and everyone goes home for the holiday, almost no matter what. I heard in the former Gaoxiong Mission, some Taiwanese missionaries that had nonmember families were allowed to go home for the New Year dinner because it is that big of a deal.(It's not allowed as of this year.)

I'm not sure exactly what they do at Guonian for a week besides eat and rest. I guess they also bai-bai and give each other fruit and red envelopes. Nearly everything is closed though, including the restaurants so we have to eat inside. Sign up sheets went up around the wards to invite us over to eat so we haven't had to cook much yet. We had 3 meals at members houses on New Years eve, like those missionaries that eat three Christmas dinners. Because we, the sisters cover two wards we have a ridiculous number of people that have invited us to eat at their house. There is a new rule however that we can't eat with the Elders so we are letting the Elders take the appointments that are double booked. Elders can eat and eat and never be full.

The word fish sounds like the word prosperous, so they eat fish to have a prosperous new year. We have had panfried fish at every meal with members this week. And I mean a whole fish, with the head, tail, skin still on. Everyone just sort of just digs in their chopsticks to the midpart and pull out a bit of meat. It's not bad. I'm just glad no one invited me to eat the eye. The eye is considered the best part and it is an honor to eat it.

Other things we have had at every meal- a kind of reddish sausage that you eat with a vegetable they told me is garlic, but doesn't look like garlic the way I know it. Also, hot pot, which is almost like fondue but it is in water instead of oil - they put a bunch of meatballs, vegetables, fish, tofu byproducts, dumplings, etc in a boiling pot in the table and you just pull out what you want. The first time I had it was my second day on island and I didn't like it. Now I think it's good.

This week the work has been slower because of the holiday. Half of the time it is an excuse, but everyone really is busy. I mean, would you have time to meet with the missionaries on Christmas? Probably not.

It has been good though, we've seen a lot of miracles. We rode our bikes over an hour in the rain on Guonian to meet with a former investigator, which turned out to hopefully be worth it. She will hopefully get baptised either this week or next week. She is out of town so it's hard to get a hold of her, so we are hoping she will still be committed. She has my same xing - Zhan, so that makes me really happy.

Anyway, times up.
Happy new year.
FML


How depressing. Not a single email, and the mail doesn't run in Taiwan for about 10 days so I won't hear from anyone for weeks.