23 September

Hello everyone! I wrote this awesome email and then accidentally deleted it before I saved it--and I am too tired to write the same things over again. So you will get the bare bones without any beautiful language structures. Sorry. (ps--my next preparation day is on Monday!)

So my sister should have her baby this week--hopefully!--and then my other sister in one or two weeks. Crazy.

And then the news for the preparation day. A couple of weeks ago one of the elders in our district told us that he had wanted to run a marathon his whole mission and this was the transfer to do it. Of course my companion and I wanted to come along (on our bikes) and so he decided that after 5 weeks of training on preparation days, he would run week 6 preparation day to the west coast of Taiwan and back.

So this morning my companion and I left our house at 3 am (to avoid the heat) and accompanied the elders to the coast. It was a very weird Taiwan we saw early in the morning--the only places open were 7-11's, betel nut stands, and internet cafe's with people playing games all night long. And two sister missionaries getting ready to ride 26 miles. :)

Anyway, the elders (2 running and the other 2 biking) went really strong for the first 12 miles or so. But once we got to the coast they kind of died--with knees giving out and energy zapped and the works. Although my companion and I acted as the medical, water, and cheerleader team, once we got to the coast we took off and found a beautiful deserted beach (it was 6:30 am!) and played in the water (don't worry, no swimming) and took lots of great pictures--which was actually our purpose in going. There was no way we were going to miss out on an opportunity to see the ocean--especially at sunrise!

The elders kept running (by this time all 4 were running) while we played at the beach :), but when we finished we caught up to them to see how they were doing. When we saw them them were all staggering and limping and looked like they were about to die. And I turned to my companion, and she turned to me, and started singing "the errand of angels is given to women" and laughed. We thought it would be a funny movie scene of these elders barely able to walk and smiling sisters come riding up on bikes with sports drinks and ace bandages and cookies. :)

Anyway, once we started heading back we left the elders (who still had about 6-7 miles to go and could barely walk) and just came back. They might be still out there, for all I know. But the point it, we went to the ocean today! It was beautiful. And I have lots of funny stories to share about it but they probably wouldn't sound funny on email, so I wll save them for when I get home.

And just so you don't think my mission is all play, I will let you know that Achin, our Indonesian investigator, is getting baptized on Saturday. She is seriously so awesome and has a lot of faith--even though she can't understand anything at church and can't understand much in our lessons, she reads the Book of Mormon every day and has received answers to her prayers. Teaching her helped me realize once again what power the Book of Mormon has to change lives--and also made me grateful that they have a Book of Mormon translated into Indonesian!

Well, I will try to send a better email next week. It is still hot here but I think we only have a couple more weeks until it starts cooling down!!! :)

Sister White