Elder Andrew Erickson's Taiwan Taipei Mission

Hey, so first full week in Taiwan and it was super productive. This whole opening a new area is super tiring. We try to spend as much time as possible on the streets trying to find new investigators and its really starting to pay off, we've met some super cool people and tonight's schedule is actually full with appointments.  So Thanksgiving was last Thursday so that was fun. We spent the whole day out finding as normal but a couple Sisters in the ward prepared a little "American Thanksgiving" and it was the cutest thing ever. There was of course a big turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, but also stuff like fried rice and other Taiwanese foods. So super grateful for them.  This week we had a little more focus on the members. When we first got in the ward there were a few members that were super excited to have Elders but it seemed like nobody wanted us to come visit them and some actually seemed a bit reluctant to even talk to us. So yeah we knew we had to do som...

Hi Sister Erickson, this is Sister Ni from Taiwan. Your son is currently serving in our ward. He is an awesome and outstanding missionary, we are very blessed to have him! He helped fix our tree in the front yard, which we are so grateful for his service. Thank you! -- love, the Ni Family

​​So Tuesday  morning we left the MTC to Taiwan. The flight was super long but we saw a couple miracles along the way and met some pretty great people. When we arrived Wednesday  night, we were greeted by President Jergenson, his wife, and the assistants, and they're all super cool.  We got to the mission office at like 9:30 or 10 pm  and got some street food, which was super good. We stayed the night in the mission office across from the temple and it was beautiful. Taiwan is sooo beautiful. The next day we got up early and went to the Grand Hotel so more beautiful Taiwan and then I got my trainer, Elder Hammond. Elder Hammond is super cool and is about a year and a half into his mission. He's super driven and has a lot of urgency with how he goes about the work. So yeah he's a great missionary and I'm super excited to work with him. We were assigned to labor in the area of Zhu Bei 3, which is on the west coast of Taiwan and we could actually see the...

New missionary training. Elder Erickson with his new companion/trainer Elder Hammond from Texas. Saying some awkward goodbyes to the girls.

Elder Erickson's zone at the MTC at 4am MST before these 6 missionaries left for the airport. Shared by the sister in the Batman hoodie. They arrived in Taiwan after a very long flight. The sister missionary who is the nurse over the mission shared these photos. Saying " New missionaries arrived tonight! They look great for such a long trip! Tomorrow will be training starting in the early morning and in the afternoon they find out who their trainers are and off to their areas!" That's the senior missionary sister that takes care of patron housing with her husband. The missionaries stay there tonight.  

I (Mom) was sent this kind text today at 10am "Just ran into some excited elders" Thank you to this kind stranger.

Elder Erickson messed up his ankle on Saturday playing basketball. They had a small p-day before Sister Burton left for England. He has had X-rays and is meeting with the Doctor now.

Another super productive week in the MTC. They go seem to go by faster with each week. It's kinda scary but I'm super excited to get to Taiwan. I leave the MTC at 4 in the morning on Tuesday  and arrive in Taipei at 7 PM on Wednesday. This past week has been relatively uneventful. The language is slowly coming and i'm starting to learn some characters. I'm kinda at this odd point where my English is getting worse but my Chinese is still terrible.  Last Wednesday, received the replacement Cantonese district. Most them are British but there is one Elder from Germany and one Sister from Korea. I actually tried talking with the German Elder in German but I found that most of the words coming out of my mouth were Chinese instead, which was a bit frustrating, but I guess it's the language I need right now. It's always nice having the international missionaries in the zone. They offer some very interesting insights into how strange American life can be and some ...

Yeah so two more weeks till Taiwan! My district gets our flight plans on Friday  and then it's the final stretch. So I'm super excited and I now see why the past district said it's easy to lose focus the last 2 weeks. Sometimes you just start thinking about leaving and you forget your purpose here at the MTC. So to combat this, last week I started making some rather serious goals to kinda hold myself accountable at the end of each day. And it has really worked. I really wish I took our teachers seriously when they talked about setting goals when I first arrived here. But again nothing really changed here at the MTC except that I lost more of my friends when the Cantonese district left  on Tuesday . These were some of the best friends I have ever made and I only knew them for 5 weeks here at the MTC. But yeah I'll attach some pics with those studs at the end of this email. So yeah I'll miss them but the new Canto district is coming in today. And since me and Elder...