Elder Andrew Erickson's Taiwan Taipei Mission

我的朋友們 (My friends) , Well another week at the MTC has gone by. It has been a bit of a struggle. Last Wednesday, me and my comp 董 長老 (Elder Donalson) made a promise with one of our investigators that if he kept the Law of Chastity, we would not eat meat for 1 week. So its been rough. But countless vegetarian wraps and plates of plain rice later, I finally had the ham omelet at the temple this morning. So that was an amazing experience haha. However, in my lesson with another investigator yesterday, we told him we'd give up speaking English for 1 week if he obeyed the Word of Wisdom. So yeah it's been a super fun 24 hours and I'm really looking forward to these next 5 days of pure Chinese.  But another little trial this past week was  on Monday , my Canadian friends, Elder Alvarenga and Elder Laplant left to the France Lyon and Paris France missions respectively. So that was quite the sad experience. But I guess it just means I'm that much closer to leaving to Tai...

S o this week was another super great week. We had a speaker his name was Vai something. He played in the NFL for a long time and is now like some big sports news anchor guy. But he was really cool and had a lot of great insight into the power of your personal influence.  This week we also completing renovating our dorm. We decided to take the top bunk off of elder Donalson's bed and use 2 mattresses to make a couch. It's been rather useful this past week for when the other elders on the floor come in to our room to hang out. But yeah this is what happens when we're at the MTC for so long. Last week we had our first TRC tho and I guess I forgot to write back about it. So TRC's are when members in the nearby areas come and we have to give them a lesson in the language we're learning so Chinese for me and my district. So these members don't pretend to be investigators or anything; they just be themselves, so we're able to discuss more advanced doctrine...

So this past week I've started really getting used to the schedule. I've kinda figured out why English speaking missionaries are only here for 3 weeks. Yesterday me and Elder Hyde were walking back from getting our sack breakfasts at around 6:30am  and we noticed as we were walking back we passed the same missionaries in the exact same spots as the mornings prior. Everyone here works like clockwork and everyday seems identical to the day prior. I'm starting to see how the mandarin missionaries literally go quite insane in their 9 weeks here at the MTC. Last Wednesday we got a new district of mandarin missionaries in the zone; 4 elders and 4 sisters. They seem nice but we really haven't got to know them yet, and its just making me miss the district that left to their missions last week. The language is coming a lot faster. I started making a huge effort to SYL all the time. SYL stands for speak your language and the MTC really tries to push for all language learning miss...

Hey Mom,  So that last Dear Elder earned me the name Elder Buggy. So thanks for that haha. And thanks for that Taiwan flag. All the elders greatly appreciate it and wanted me to let you know they love it. Our dorm is in the top floor of the residence hall at the end of the main path and the flag is hung in the window. So when the sun goes down and we turn on our light in the dorm, there's just Taiwanese flag visible to all of the MTC (or at least all the important parts. But anyways this last week has been great. I've been able to adjust my study habits to incorporate the spirit better and as a result my lessons with the investigators (we have two now) have became significantly more fluent. And there was general conference too, so that was absolutely amazing. I did go to a couple choir practices but never got around to turning in the application for the general conference choir. While it would've been an amazing experience, I was most definitely not qualified to be apart ...