Xinying

Saturday night we met Sofi's friends from the Xinying ward at the Xinying night market.  Front row: Ying Ying, AB, Gibson and Winnie.  Middle row: Helen, Becky, Sofi, Brandan.  Back row: Abe, Shu Zhing, Bo Zhang and Chester.

The Saturday night market in Xinying is famous for its street food.  Our first stop was a smoothie stand.  The strips of paper above the stand lists the flavors of smoothies with the price at the bottom.  Our family tried watermelon and lemon, pineapple and dragonfruit, banana milk and mango milk.  They were all delicious, but the mango was our favorite.

As we walked through the market, everyone would buy different kinds of food and pass it around for everyone else to try.  We tried breaded pork cubes, sweet potato balls and all kinds of food on skewers: chicken, tofu, green beans, mushrooms, corn on the cob.  We liked most of it and it was easy to pass the food we didn't like to someone else.  The treat in this photo was delicious.  It's a sweet crepe, spread with chocolate.  The cook folded it quickly into eighths while the crepe was still warm and it turned crispy as it cooled.  It tasted like a cookie with layers of wafery crepe and chocolate.

Sofi loved spending time with her Taiwanese friends on our trip.  As a missionary, she had to keep an eye on her watch and "hanging out with friends for a few hours" wouldn't fit in a missionary schedule, so she relished our open ended evening.  Most of her friends are single adults and spoke Chinese while we were with them.  Ying Ying (wearing green pants) is married with one son on a mission and one son deciding if he wants to serve.  She ran into our group at the night market and joined us for the evening.  Ying Ying is an English teacher and we enjoyed getting to know her. She served a mission on Temple Square and graduated from Snow College in Utah.

Sofi was speaking Chinese with her friends so we're not sure how the conversation went, but Sofi let her friends know that Gibson wanted to buy a Gudetama pillow.  We were halfway through our trip and he hadn't found one yet.  It seemed sudden to those of us not following the conversation, but the friends decided to find a pillow for him.  AB looked up a local store on her phone and called ahead to make sure they had a pillow.  Our family had taken a taxi to the night market.  Everyone else rode there a scooter.  They invited us to ride scooters with them so we could zip over to the store before it closed.  All the Taiwanese friends put their keys into a helmet.  Each person in our family pulled a set of keys out.  The keys we chose belonged to the person who would give us a ride.  Winnie gave Gib a ride.

Abe got a ride from Chester and spoke Chinese to him all the way to the store.

Brandan got a ride with Bo Zhang.

Bo Zhang had the fanciest scooter, an electric Gogoro that was only 3 days old.  Sofi rode with Shu Zhing, Helen with AB and Becky with Ying Ying.  It was super fun to zip through traffic to the stationery store.

As you know, our quest was successful and Gibson was able to buy his pillow.  The pillow barely fit in his suitcase and it took two people to close his suitcase anytime he opened it afterwards.  In the photo are AB, Gibson, Shu Zhing, Sofi and Ying Ying.  After buying the pillow, our friends gave us scooter rides to the train station so we could catch a train back to Jiayi for the night.

We returned to Xinying Sunday morning to go to church in the Xinying ward.  Ying Ying and Winnie offered to pick us up at the train station.  We thought this might mean another scooter ride, but it turns out people own both cars and scooters so we rode in cars to church.  One of Sofi's companions, Sister Wu, met us at the train station and spent the day with us.  Sister Wu is from northern Taiwan and is going to school in southern Taiwan now that she is finished with her mission.  Sofi was her trainer after being in Taiwan for only 12 weeks.  Sister Wu hadn't been to the MTC before coming on her mission and didn't speak much English.  Sofi didn't speak much Chinese.  They had a rough three weeks together before Sofi's mission president decided to send Sister Wu to the MTC in the Philippines.  Later in her mission Sofi was Sister Wu's STL and they became good friends.  Sister Wu served in the English branch on her mission and her English is now quite good.

With Sofi, Ying Ying and Sister Wu translating, the rest of us got the main idea of things at church, even if we didn't understand everything.  We were interested to learn about differences between English and Chinese translations of the Bible.  It appears the Chinese version is missing critical verses.  Our church doesn't endorse a specific version of the Bible in Chinese and it's easy to see why.  After church we got another ride to a suburb of Xinying and joined the ward for family home evening.  Our host, Sister Wu, is wearing glasses and sitting in the front of the photo.  This Sister Wu is not related to Sofi's mission companion.  Wu is a common last name in Taiwan.  In fact, the woman with long hair on the right of the photo is also named Sister Wu and is unrelated to the other 2 Sister Wus.  About a third of the people at church came to family home evening.

Sister Wu made lunch for everyone: clam chowder in bread bowls, stuffed banana leaves, apples, stuffed cucumbers and bowls of rice topped with fried eggs.

Many of the ward members are the only member of the church in their families.  They study the Come Follow Me lessons together for their family night.  They asked Sofi to lead the discussion.  It was fun to see and hear Sofi teach in Chinese, even if we couldn't understand what she was saying. Sofi was unusual as a missionary for her ability to read Chinese.  Chinese is hard enough to learn that most missionaries, especially sister missionaries who serve shorter missions, only learn to speak Chinese.

We met in Sister Wu's studio.  Her house was across the street.  Sister Wu makes crafts like crocheted hats and bags and sells them on the internet.  She had mostly cleared her studio to make room for the ward members, but some of her handmade items were on a shelf.

After family home evening, we got a ride back to the church and then walked to the park to visit with Sister Wu.  It was a little too hot to relax, even in the shade.

Here is Gibson climbing a tree.

As we walked to the train station from the park, we passed the apartment building Sofi lived in when she was in Xinying.  We said goodbye to Sister Wu at the train station.

We had an early night back at home and enjoyed resting quietly.  We had an unusual dinner of the few easy to prepare gluten free foods we found at the grocery store a few days earlier: mini hot dogs, 2 kinds of mango, red dragonfruit, carrots, cucumbers and bananas along with half a bag of Doritos and half a bag of sweet potato chips someone sent home with us after family home evening.  It was a blessed Sabbath.