Elder Hagedorn: Transfer 2

Hey good people!

I am now in a new city! I'm in Xinzhuang! Before I was in Zhubei, like midwest Taiwan. Now I'm in the suburbs of Taipei and it's a lot more city. Pretty big change!

Another crazy thing is right when I got here, 2 days ago, they decided to change the area. Before there were 2 sets of Elders, splitting the area because it's pretty big. But they decided to just combine areas so the other Elders have both left and now my new companion, Elder Beck and I, are taking over a huge area! And we're also taking all of their investigators so we have SO many investigators! Before back in Xinfeng Elder K and I were really struggling to find people to teach but here it's the total opposite! We are going to be scrambling from place to place teaching. We have about 30 investigators. Crazy!

Actually my first day in the area one of our investigators got baptized! So that was cool to see Brother Bao get baptized and get to know him a little bit. He seems like such a cool guy. I spoke a little Taiwanese to him and he was really impressed! (Taiwanese is like the native, aboriginal tongue here in Taiwan. Not Chinese. Spoken by all the old people haha) My new companion Elder Beck knows a good amount of Taiwanese so he's already taught me a bit! Elder Beck is awesome by the way. We're like the same person. We like the exact same music, we both play guitar and have one and both like basketball (going to play today) and we're just the same. We already love each other :)

But anyways all the people I've met here so far are so nice and awesome! I met some other members who own a chicken shop and when we visited them at their shop they showed us they were selling some chicken butts! Hahaha they were so funny looking! There was just a huge tub of chicken butts right there on the street. Must have been like 300 butts or so. Ha man I thought that was pretty hilarious.

Another funny thing is last night we were at a member's house eating dinner and the toilet was super complicated. I'd never seen one like it before, it had a whole bunch of buttons and stuff all over it. So when I was trying to flush it I had no idea how. One of the buttons had a picture of someone sitting, as if on the toilet, and then little dots coming out of the butt. I figured that meant in order to flush after going poo, you push that button so I did. After pressing the button, this little straw looking them appeared inside the toilet and then to my surprise and amazement, it started shooting water up in the air!! The water continued to shoot out of the little contraption and splatter on the floor as I stood there, probably with my mouth open and with a weird, confused look on my face.

Realizing the water was spraying everywhere, I snapped out of it and put my hand in front of the stream of water to stop it and pushed the button again but nothing happened. I figured maybe I'd just wait it out, maybe it's on a timer. But after ten seconds it kept on spraying and I had no idea what button to push so I just kept standing there with my hand covering this little straw-like sprayer thing in the toilet not knowing which button to push to stop it because all the buttons are in characters or misleading pictures. Ah it was pretty funny. Eventually I got the thing to turn off but man that was a funny time.

I think I'm going to really like it here in Xinzhuang. It's SO pretty! Our part of the city is pretty epic. I'll take pictures for next week but I already love this place. I've met some amazing people. I just met an awesome guy yesterday at church, Ronnie, he's from Uganda and going to school here in Taiwan studying business. He speaks Swahili, English and a bit of Chinese. Anyway he came into church a bit late so I went and sat next to him to translate and got to know him a bit. He wasn't actually an investigator so we taught him after church and man he is a spiritual giant!! So humble and surprisingly poetic. He was talking about humanity and God and stuff and how God should be the same to everyone and how feeling peace and the Spirit is most important and he said something like, not a perfect quote but close,"When I look at the flowers and I see blue and red and white and green, or when I look at the beautiful high mountains or the great sea, I think of how wonderful God is. God loves us so much. He loves every single one of us! When the sun rises, it shines on everyone. And so it is with God." Man he is an amazingly humble guy.

Well everyone basically I'm super happy to be here and I miss the people of my last area but I'm very excited to start fresh!

Love,

Elder Hagedorn

My old district! Last P-day going on a hike. Elder Orchard being the awkward tall guy due to the slope. Ha oh man we were cracking up at that. Gonna miss that guy! He's now in Hualien(east Taiwan. Total country. Super beautiful) and I'm in Taipei.