March 14, 2011

Hello family and friends.

In 8 days I will be boarding an airplane to fly to Taiwan. I can't even explain how slow these next 8 days will be. This week we received our travel plans, so I will tell you about them. We will report to the MTC travel office at 4:00 a.m. on Tuesday March 22. We will fly out of the Salt Lake City airport at 7:00 A.M. heading to Detroit, yes I said Detroit. I don't claim to be a geography expert in any way, but I did win the geography bee in 6th grade, and I'm pretty sure Detroit isn't between Salt Lake and Taiwan. Almost every older district heading to Taiwan has flown through L.A.X. We'll arrive in Detroit around noon, and fly out of Detroit at around 1. So we have a very, very short layover. From Detroit we have a nonstop to Taiwan, and we will arrive at the Taipei international airport at 9:40 p.m. local time March 23. So we will begin travel at 4 a.m. march 22 in our current local time, and end travel at 9:40 p.m. on march 23, Taiwan local time. We did the math and we have 22-23 hours on airplanes.

Our MTC branch president goes over to Asia a lot on business and said that if it's the route he is thinking we will fly out of Detroit, over Alaska, come down over Russia, then Japan, then we will reach Taiwan. I hope so, that will be awesome. I'm really really excited. wo kaixing wo hui kandao heiren zai detroit, yinwei liange nian zai taiwan wo bu hui (Uncle John can translate, probably horrible grammar) I'm also pumped because the Taichung Elders will fly with us before they take a bus down to their mission, and so we'll have a total of 16 missionaries on the flight which will be sweet.

This week I did Choir for the first time here at the MTC. I had no idea what to expect but it made me wish I'd being doing it more often. To my surprise I actually liked it. I hit all the notes, and really made the song my own.

We (Chinese Elders) had the whole residence hall floor to ourselves until about 2 weeks ago when some Spanish elders moved in because their building was being converted into sister housing. Since that time there has been an outbreak of athletes foot among the Chinese elders and I fell victim to the epidemic. Thanks Elders, because I wanted to use my weekly 6 dollar allowance from the church's tithing funds for flip flops and cream.

This week our district finally got to host new missionaries, something we'd been wanting to do since day 1. As district leader me and my companion got to work traffic. Probably the best thing that's ever happened to me. We got to wear huge yellow neon jackets. We would send the cars down, and then park them in the spaces giving traffic signals to the drivers. I really developed some good traffic signals, as I directed and parked cars. My traffic signals made me look like an SEC referee among MWC referees (the other elders). This week we got the assignment again so I'm really looking to perfect each signal. I'm even entertaining the thought of integrating leg work into my traffic signaling, we'll see. I'll let you know how it goes.

Such a good week in the TRC "teaching resource center" we we're teaching the people as themselves, we had an RM who just got back 4 months ago from Taibei and an native Chinese man. We had an awesome gospel conversation and testimony sharing experience with them. The spirit was so strong the whole entire time, and then afterwards we realized that we had just done it all in Chinese without a problem. I feel comfortable conversing the gospel in Chinese. haha Anything else not a chance. But Chinese is no longer what it was in my mind 3 months ago, not this far eastern, completely foreign language I thought I'd never speak. I have a LONG ways to go, but I know before I know it, I'll really be speaking Chinese.

This week we were practicing teaching tithing and we split into pairs in our district, I teamed up with a sister and she began giving me the analogy if I give you ten of your favorite food and then asked for one back would you give it back. When we pair up in these teaching practices I like to have fun with whoever I'm being an investigator for. When she asked what my favorite food was I said jinguo, translated to forbidden fruit. She didn't catch on so she was talking about giving me 10 forbidden fruit. My teacher was laughing and she was oblivious to it. It was funny. I laughed.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to give a priesthood blessing to a sister in our district. It was a great experience, and I know without a doubt that the priesthood is God's power. I'm thankful to be able to hold it and use it to bless others.

MOM dear elder me about my bike info. Love you all, I will send a box home next Monday of things I won't take to Taiwan. I'll send a bunch of letters with it you can give to people. Bye. Love you.

Elder White