Hello Momma! I am doing great here in xin ying! Sorry this week I only have 3 minutes! We did alot of stuff today and didn't end up with hardly anytime to email! And next week our p day is on wednesday so I will not be able to email next monday. Sorry!!! Love you all and hope you have an awesome week! The gospel is true!
Love -- Elder Ripley
PS tell becki thanks so much for the pakcage! The tie is awesome and the cookies are delicious!
Hey Momma! Sounds like the super bowl was pretty sweet! So the ravens won? Haha what made you decide to cheer for them? Who did they play against? Whoah that is so crazy that you met Zach! Of course I remember him! How is he doing? He should be getting ready to graduate in the next few months right? That is so awesome that he is learning chinese too! Maybe when I get home I can speak to him in chinese. Japanese and Korean too!? Super crazy!Yes I am back in xin ying! This is the promise land. I forgot how much I love this place! Yes Liu is the name they gave me in the MTC. It is a last name. Zhang lao is the translation for Elder! So we are both Elder Liu because we both have the same last name! I don't have a chinese first name yet. I use Liu zhang lao every day! When introducing themselves the chinese people will usually just tell you what their last name is. As far as water goes you cannot drink the water out of the faucets in the house, but every kitchen sink will have a purifier. The purified water still isn't super great so I always buy bottled water at the grocery store because it's super cheap and tastes...more fresh I guess? I don't know I feel like its alot better.This week went pretty good! Elder Liu is super great, I am glad I get to be his companion! He is from taoyuan, it is close to taipei. He just graduated from highschool and is 18! So young, I feel so old now, big number 20. We are going to work pretty well together. Even though I have served here before, Elder Liu and I are both technically new to the area so we kind of have to start over as far as finding investigators goes. It is nice that I already know the area and the members and everything though. We have been working to find some new investigators this last week! Contacted quite abit of people, but our biggest miracle last week came when we visited some one I had previously taught when I was in xin ying before.I am glad you liked what I had to share! Church is such a great place for receiving answers to prayers. I feel like sometimes we may feel like we haven't been getting answers to prayers but I realized I only feel that way when I have not been dilligently searching the scriptures, praying, and participating/ listenening at church to find those answers! God is listening to our prayers, we just need to learn to listen to His answers!Well we are going to get going and go play some b ball with some members. Love you family! Hope all is well! Have a super great week this week! If you get a chance thank President Bluth and the stake presidency for sending me the chirstmas letter. Also, can you give me Bro. Mckleskeys address/ phone number? I need to send it to the office!
Love you mom!
-Elder Ripley
