We were pretty much all over the place this week, with our fair share of meetings and exchanges. It was fun spending two days with Elder Bennett, my Zone Leader, who is in my same missionary generation. We actually found a golden investigator, an aborigine girl who was shortly moving up to Taipei. Elder Liu and I taught her a couple days later, and it was one of the best lessons I had ever been in during my mission.
...I'm really struggling to write this letter. My mind is pretty shot, considering the last few days. President has been pretty concerned about Elder Liu's knees, and after testing a variety of methods to fix the problem, he thought that the best option was to send him up to the office and see some doctors. That phone call was a real blow.
Today he's taken the train up to Taizhong, and I am currently with the Pingdong Elders waiting for my short-term (local volunteer) missionary to arrive. I don't really know anything about him, and I'm a little stressed out. If I'm completely honest with myself, Elder Liu is a major reason why this place started turning around. He was able to really, truly connect with people here, heart-to-heart, almost instantly, something that isn't really possible for me because of the language and culture barriers. Because of this, the people were more willing to hear what he had to say. One of the things that I worry about is that, while I will still be working with a native speaker, he's (most probably) not a trained, experienced missionary.
There's one big plus already, though: talking with him on the phone, it sounds like he speaks pretty good English. So while I'm nervous about the whole experience, at least we will be able to communicate a little more than I was able with Elder Liu.
Well, we'll see what the next three weeks have in store! Here we go!
Love,
-Elder Jorgensen
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