Missionary work is so different down here. I am serving in one of the biggest tourist spots in Taiwan, so we meet a lot of tourists here. Contacting is hard, but I am pretty good at telling the locals apart from the tourists.
I had a really good first week here! The wind is so strong where I am serving, but it is so beautiful. Our apartment is about 5 minutes from the beach. We are going to a restaurant on the beach today for lunch. There are 2 people here who are like eternal investigators who take the missionaries out to the most beautiful areas on pdays, but we can't today because it is raining. We are going to see the waterfalls and the fairy caves next week, though.
The branch here is really small. There are only 15 active members, 5 of those are male members. There is a lady in the branch who owns a really nice restaurant so she bought our meals on Thursday at her restaurant. It's all seafood. (That was my one-year mark! That's about all I did to celebrate it.)
This last week I was able to have a baptism! It was a person who was taught by Elder Dalmer and Elder Ward (the last missionary here), but I got to meet her and she is a really cool person. Her name is Tiffany and she is 15 years old. The baptism was a pretty interesting experience. We had to go to the back of the church and in the backyard they have a "font" that was just filled with dirt and mud, so we spent about an hour just cleaning that out. Then we started to fill it up. However, what we didn't realize (until 45 minutes before the baptism) was that there was a valve we forgot to turn, so the water wasn't filling up! It was supposed to take about 2 hours to fill the whole thing, so we prayed and starting doing all we could to fill it up faster. In the end it was all okay, even though they had to squat a little further down to get all the way under.
We also had some cool experiences here this week. In this area, every Friday afternoon we go to an old retirement home and sing songs to the old ladies there. I had to do a bunch of solos, but it wasn't so bad, because they are all old and they can't hear what we are saying anyway.
This area is so interesting! Apparently it used to be an ancient fortress city, so there are 4 giant brick gates in the city, one is north gate, one is south and east and west. The city really has a beach city feel to it and I am so excited to serve here!
My new companion is Elder Dalmer! He is from Oregon and he is a great guy. He came on his mission only 3 months after me, so we aren't too different in the language or in missionary skills. He is an awesome missionary. He loves obedience. I can't wait to see what I learn from him.
I also saw a cool miracle this week. Yesterday I decided to fast for this new area. After I fasted, however, I remembered that I didn't have that much food to break my fast. So I decided to pray. After praying I went into the kitchen, opened the cupboard, and found a box of mac and cheese! I asked Elder Dalmer about it and apparently he didn't know it was in there. It helped me realize that the Lord takes care of us through all of our needs.
I am excited to work more with this new area and I will keep you updated on investigators.
Thank you all so much for you support!
Oh, and there is a typhoon coming straight for us. It is supposed to be a pretty big one, so I hope it doesn't mess up our missionary work too much. I hate the rain, because no one will come out and meet with us when it rains...
I love you all!
Elder Quist
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| Our most recent baptism, Tiffany |
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| We have beautiful sunsets here! |
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