Elder Baird's Something About Socks: WEEK 75 TAIPEI: I do the Chinese New Year thing

Welp. It's the new year. So I guess it's 2022 and I'm 20. Finally. One more year and I'm legal!!! Wooooot!

*nervous laugh*

Let's start at the beginning of the week because Monday was great!

I woke up.

And CLLLLLLEEEEEAAANNNEEEDDDD

Since it is new year the missionaries have to do a deep clean of their apartments because it's tradition to clean your house before the new year comes. Sweep out the bad so there is room for the good.

President takes this as a great excuse to inspect out houses in the name of "loving the people and learning their culture" Needless to say we don' t buy it and know it is a ploy. But I like this ploy so consider me in!

My parents decided that football was more important than me. Oh well.

Then President came himself to check out our house. We passed. I'm a legend. Then he took us to dinner!

I also bought some Chinese jujube tea, but somehow I lost it and I'm sad. So I bought some peppermint tea from the interwebs. (spoiler it's not very good :( )

I also bought a fountain pen. That was fun!

Pretty solid P-day

The next day my fountain pen broke. Lol.

We went to District council and they brought two pizzas and I ate one of them all by myself.

Yum?

Then I called the cops.

No not because of too much pizza, but because that night we saw a car go straight into a rail guard thing and smash it and I wanted to call 119 (everything is backwards in this yrtnuoc) and that was fun.

Then we had a lesson with a guy.

Now this guy showed up at church two weeks ago which was a miracle, but I thought it was strange because who does that right?

But he finally set up with us and asked to meet at the big park next door (think central park, but a lil smaller) and so we were like, sure? At night where there aren't lights. We weren't sure how we would share the Book of Mormon with him if there wasn't enough light for him to see.

But we went there, and before he got there he sent a text and was like "you guys up for some walking?"

We said sure?

We then spent the next 30 minutes walking around the park playing a Pacman game that he likes where everyone else is Ghosts so you can't be on the same path as another person.

We tried to share a little but he wasn't interested really, just asked all the questions about the polygamy and women and government and stuff that is typical. He said he was moving. Then he said he needed to go and he left.

But I got to walk around the park which was nice!

Wednesday was the day of train ticket madness. One of my jobs as office Elder is to help people who are far away buy train tickets. And I had a loooooot to buy.

So I bought them and we were going to send them out when we find out that since the next day is New Year's Eve, every single post office is closed.

So we were like, okay it's never closed that long in America for holidays. We will just go before our deadline.

But nope! In Taiwan everything is closed for at least a week! The post office doesn't open for a weeeeeek! It made us have to think of some clever ways of getting the tickets down. Uber was a good one, but we didn't go with that. I wanted to drive them down there, but President didn't go for that.

But eventually after massive headaches we got it taken care of.

That is when I had interviews with President and found out that I would be moving.

Not from the office, but I will no longer be covering the English ward. To be honest, I was crushed. I have been so happy here and it has been a great time! But my companion who has been in the office for 6 transfers is moving to a place nearby and will be covering that ward and the English ward. While as I am now covering the Tianmu ward.

I'm kinda sad.

This ward has been amazing. And yah.

So I went to bed a lil sad.

The next day I had a mid-life crisis. Not really a mid-life crisis, but a mid-journal crisis. As I wrote in my journal about when I woke up and what I did for exercise or my activities for the day I realized that none of these things really matter in the future. But it's the spiritual experiences that do. But I didn't have any real cool experiences that day and so I didn't know what to write and it was all very stressful.

But we had dinner at Presidents house for New Year's Eve because the English ward doesn't feed the missionaries for New Year. I don't know if you remember when this happened last year (wow a year ago!) but basically in all the other wards the missionaries get basically a lunch and a dinner every meal for 1 to 2 weeks.

But since white people don't celebrate this unless you live in Lehi that doesn't happen for us, which is fine by me because it is waaaaaay to much food! But the Peterson had us over and we had real good salmon! Yum!!!!

Friday we had a member from Tianmu ward (where I'm serving next transfer) take us to lunch and he knows nothing so it was kind of funny.

Then one of our RCs had a party at her employer's house and we ate there so we did have some meals! It was fun to be with all the Filipinos since I'm leaving them soon. And I've grown to love them so much! They're my favorite people I've met on my mission!!! So goooood.

But we played some corn hole while we waited for people to get there and let's just say I won the first game against my companion and then we played two more.

That night I told the members and bishop (who was there) that I would be moving and they were like "Oh, okay" and moved on with the conversation. At first I was like, oof! Rip me.

But then I realized that they knew that change was part of life, so why make it bigger than it needs to be!

So it actually ended up quite comforting!

Until I woke up the next day and President sent us the transfer board and I found out that not only was I going to be District Leader next transfer, but that I was going to be in a trio. In the office. But only two of us are office elders. And my anxiety went through the roof. I hadn't had a bad anxiety attack for like 6 months and this triggered it. Not sure why though.

So I tried to do some personal study but couldn't focus. So I tried to play some piano to calm down and that didn't help. And so I was like...Welp I gotta do something. And I know that the Book of Mormon offers solace and peace. So I decided that I would pull it out and hope to calm down.

And as I was reading I read 2 Nephi 26:8-9.

And even though what it says and what I got out of it are not super related, I got out that as we look steadfastly towards Christ, we will have peace.

And it helped me find the eternal perspective that, one transfer in a trio is not like anything. And I'll only be in this ward for two transfers and in all reality it's only my choices that matter not the situation.

And it brought peace as I focused more on Christ.

It was a great reminder to me of not only the power of the scriptures, but the power of Jesus the Christ.

Then we spent the whole day working on transfer calls.

I finished a textbook on Chinese Grammer. That was a read....

I also finished a book called "Witness For His Names" by Elder Holland. And that was a READ! It is all about the different names of Christ and really helped me get to know him better in a different way. Highly recommend.

I mean I recommend the Grammer book too if you want to not enjoy yourself.

But if you want eternal salvation I recommend the one by Elder Holland.

On Sunday I started something called the forty day fast. I'm excited! We went to church and since it's Valentine's Day all the talks were on love. Christ-like love to be exact.

I liked this focus because my only two actual Valentine's experience involved one where as a 7th grader I asked someone over text to be my Valentine and it didn't go super well....... I was young k?

And the other one was a lot later and it involved me inviting my date to come with me as I got a spray tan. Buying her Korean food in a cup (which she didn't eat). Pancakes (which she didn't eat) . And a stoopid movie (which she didn't watch).

So needless to say this approach went a little better for me. Christ is my Valentine. Yeet.

But anyways church was super good and I got a lot of cool insights!

Afterwards we had lunch with the Filipinos. I was Fasting which kinda sucked cause this was last lunch with them. But they are all so loving and told me that when I come back in however many years they will feed me. Then we took a big group picture featured below.

It was an awesome time!

Then we redid some office stuff and started some work on the 2020 mission history which is cool.

And that was basically the day!

Anyways, not a toooon of time. So I'm just gonna end this here with my love! Have a great Valentine's Day, and don't take your date out to get a spray tan!

Love,

Elder Baird

Something about socks

Love for God means we love His children. Show love to someone close to you today. It will be fun :))))))