February 21, 2011

Hi Everyone,

Taiwan is 4 weeks away from tomorrow. Words can't express how excited I am. I honestly can't wait. This week was such a spiritual week. Tuesday night's devotional was absolutely incredible. Elder Pearson from the quorum of the Seventy spoke and it was absolutely unreal. His talk was so great, and he spoke so straight forward and bluntly, really made me want to be a better missionary. It was a mission changing talk, that´s for sure. I´m really lucky I got to be here at the MTC for it. I realized this week that this is in no way my mission. This is the Lord´s mission, and I´m just privileged to be able to be a tool in his hands and represent him to the people of Taiwan. With that attitude adopted I´ve worked crazy hard this week and I´ve seen it pay off.

We got new missionaries this week which was really exciting. There are quite a few Taibei bound missionaries (6), they seem like a solid group of missionaries so I´m really excited. I´m pretty shocked at how much Chinese some of them knew coming in. I guess they actually went to their high school Chinese class. My bad.

I´m really glad to hear mom´s book is doing well and that the book signing went well. Did mom figure out how to do a cool authors signature or did she just use her normal standard cursive that has been the easiest thing to forge ever since the fourth grade? That's great news though, how is everyone else doing? update me.

Elder VandenBerghe is still just Elder VandenBerghe. His sister made him some purple satin pajama bottoms (purple is his favorite color). They just happened to come on Valentines Day, so I told everyone on our floor that his 26 year old girlfriend back home gave those to him as a Valentines Day gift. That was funny. He had to explain to people throughout the whole week that he doesn't have a 26 year old girlfriend. He wears those bright purple pants with his purple hoodie and wears his purple towel as a cape and runs around the residence halls. I dubbed him the purple prince, and today someone slipped a note in his coat calling himself the crimson crusader and informed him they are his arch nemesis. Ever since he's been freaking out trying to figure out who put the note in his coat. I know everyone reading this is assuming it was me. I wish I could say it was but I did not have the honor of doing so, although whoever the crimson crusader is, I love them. This is a quote he had the other night when we were talking about girls in our residence halls after a long day. I specify that it was a long day because I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and just assume he was tired, but he said "I like it when girls have a tiny bit of mustache." We were all taken back, and I asked "so you prefer a girl with a little bit of a mustache to a girl with no mustache?" He replied "yes." He definitely keeps things interesting.

I'm just so excited for these next 4 weeks to pass. I've loved the MTC and I will not take these next four weeks for granted. This is the time at the MTC when the learning begins to really take off because we now have that bit of a foundation, but words cannot express how excited I am for Taiwan and to take this gospel to his children there. Real investigators, with real conversion. I love the gospel and cannot wait to be in ASIA sharing it.

Love,

Elder White