October 16th

Its five in the morning.. :/ its really the only time every week we can e-mail. I don't mind:) makes me feel a little more.. healthy? Well first transfer is over as of this week:( But it has been fun and I've learned a ton!!! :) Chinese is coming along. I had one of those cool experiences where someones asks you something and respond without even thinking about what you need to say. It made me feel like maybe I can speak Chinese. :) I love the people here. We have our third baptism here next week so that will be an immersion of blessings from God in one transfer;) This week I contacted a guy by a seven eleven. His flamboyant attitude and pungent stench of old rotten barley, made it clear he had not slept much the night before and was still continuing his wild party with more beer. He said a bunch of stupid stuff like I've been to your church(everyone says that but no one really has) and stuff like that. The best part however was at the end he started to try and speak English.... wow I'm not sure where he learned his "choice" selection of words but not only was it offensive but did not make sense. Anyway I just left with him yelling at me and the whole world staring thinking of course I was the cause of this mans extreme behavior. Well I read this story over again... I'm sorry nothing sounds as funny in a letter as it was in real life. :/ SO this last week me and my comp decided to go home for dinner and make rice curry. we only have a half hour so we were really hurrying. I pulled out my rice and lo and behold... it had bugs in it:p stupid bugs. So we decided to make all of it! let me tell you I've had stupid ideas. I have done things I have regretted but making 4 pounds of rice is the one i regret most as we spent 1 hour MAKING RICE I found how much I never eat rice for the rest of my life. Sadly i still have 1 and 1/2 year left in the land of rice, and at least the next week eating rice for every meal... and maybe snacks.. and maybe while I sleep. Anything to get it out of our sushe(apartment). Well life here is good. :) my comp and I get along and have fun, we make competitions out of everything. This is exciting but I often lose. If its a physical race he is 6"8, and if its a missionary one I still am not by any means fluent so he gets that. However I always find ways to bend rules enough to put up a VERY decent fight;) His family has ten people and one on the way.. HUGE!!!!! We always fine a new way to make each week a little different. When I went on exchanges with the zone leaders we met some people form Cali who didn't really speak any Chinese. They asked where a hostel was and my zone leader had never hear that word before... I started to laugh (the one you hold in as much as possible) when he started to say that hotels were expensive here and they use the small places where a bunch of people stay. They looked at him and then asked me if I knew what a hostel was i nodded pointed to the nearest one and they smile thanked me and walked away without another word to my comp. Really awkward LoL LOVE YOU ALL!!! PLEASE WRITE SOON :)

October 9th

:) well as of Christmas day this year mission is 1/4 over. Weird. Christmas seem so far away... yet so close. I'm excited.. not because I want to leave this wondrous work but because I'm very excited to see my family again and spend the time I never really got the chance to due to my stupidity. Well this week was hard. Not a lot of success. We do however have a baptism on the 29th. He is soo cool. :) I would give you names, but new rule in field is no names can be shared:/ okay so facts My current Area: Tian mu (said tea N moo) It is about an hour out of downtown. it's big but not too "Big" city like. My companion: Elder Jed Harr He is from St. George Utah. He is 6.8 feet. He played basketball at SVU. His family home schooled:) sooo cool. He has a lot of similar views. which is nice. My mission is a very big bike mission. WE BIKE ALWAYS!!!!!!!! Food is... well I'd rather just wait to get home and share journal entries and pictures as so not to re-live all the painful experiences. ;) But a lot of fried... things? I don't know what to call nothing made to something. ;) So this last week our air conditioning unit broke. We spent all our free time switching out units fixing units and getting good old Taiwan soot all over ourselves. We decided we practically perfect in every way.. Even basketball ;) This last weekend we watched conference. Satan did not like that. He did everything to stop it. First couldn't get it at our church in English. so for hours we ran around getting lap tops, speakers, and this and that to watch conference. Then after it all started a drunk guy came running in saying. "i'm here teach me the gospel" wow Satan really hates missionaries. anyway the day continued like that. interruptions and power probs and all the above. but we got to watch it all :) the next day satan attacked everyone personally. I saw in every missionary in our district this sad and angry look. They all had several instances of anger. But I'm glad a few realized who was attacking them and turned their attitude around:) well thats about it. :) Remember to smile :) LOVE Elder Chrisrtopher M. Reynolds

October 2nd

This friday will be one month on the Island!!! :) I fell my chinese is getting better. I can at least communicate and Some people really do feel it's good (which helps my inner heart feelings that's for sure.) This week has been crazy. We had another baptism!!!!!! His name is Ricky Lee (everyone here uses and loves american names.) He is way cool and came all the way from breaking every law in the book to being the best man I've met in a long time. He even brought his girlfriend to the baptism and church:) It felt so good when after the baptism Ricky came up and gave me and my comp a giant LOONNGG huge and said "I love you guys" It made my day!!:) It's amazing to see the change God can make in someone if you give him the chance. He never stops suprising me. :) God is pretty grand if I say so myself. Last P-day we went to 101. cool but clouds were coming in fast and it costs 20 dollars (alot for a missionary in taiwan) so we didn't go up. but we got pictures from the outside and they are cool. :) well this week we didn't get to watch conference. :( lol becuase of time difference we are a day ahead of you so we would have to watch it sunday and monday.. which would mean it conflicts with work for members. So we watch it this weekend. :) (you could send me fave qoutes ect. so I can be ahead of the game;) Today were going to costco:) I;m soooo excited. It's nothing like the one in america... stock chinese food is not like stock american food. VERY different! Last P-day we also went to what we thought was a food expo... Nope! ended up being a buddist sculpture/ culture expo. ha ha we felt a littl out of place. But we found a shop that makes gaint bells. sick!!!! we wanna buy a 40 ton bell. :) This week I've been studying about life and insight. I love the word insight!!! In life everyone says share an insight about this or that. It takes a lot to share an intellectual insight. for you must be able to put yourself inside the the subject to have insight. For me personaly (dui wo geren lai shou) As i have been studying Kirk/Talmage/PMG/scripys and a very good mixture of pondering I feel my insights have becomeing more insighful only becuase I can actually put myself inside the thought and then reap understanding. This week I have studied about a few things after insight. first was will and won't versus can and can't; two totally different mind sets that are making all the difference to me. Well when I get all these thoughts organized I'll write you all about them:)

September 25th

Today is P-day. crazy... I'm in Taiwan learning Chinese. Chinese is coming along. I still have people that look at me funny because they don't know what I'm trying to say. But sometimes i have conversations where they get every word I say. The past few weeks has been really windy, so biking has been a little difficult. I'll send some pics asap. my camera broke so I'm relaying on my comps camera and he is really good about it. :) so this week I was talking to a member and He asked what i did before I came on a mission. I told him about school and work then at last said I did ballroom dance and cabaret. He looked up cabaret in a dictionary because I didn't know to say that in Chinese. In Chinese it translated to strip dancer... he look shocked and asked if when I dance I had to take my clothes off. LOL I could not stop laughing. I had McDonald's for the first time on a mission... I don't remember grease, fat and Gross veggies ever tasting like a bite of Heaven. Well truth is we got bagels at Costco and from then on nothing tastes good. ha ha Every food here is crazy. Most common pizza (and pizza is not common) is duck. pppuuuueeewwwkkkk. I'm learning how much I love American crappy food. nothing is as good as a fast food meal from any joint. Our daily meals right not consist of... food I'm not even sure of what it all is, so I won't explain until I do:) We write at an Internet cafe every week. LOL kinda ghettoly cool. I learn more and more about God's work and how to effectively do it everyday! This week I was thinking about how much I really wanna learn from this experience. I feel like my life is kinda like a lake. streams and rivers are all that keep me beautiful and alive. these streams are god's love and people he has placed in my life. Satan tries to dry up my streams and damn my rivers so as to stop my full potential. every day when I read, pray and ponder I am hiring rangers to watch over my grounds and stop any invaders from destroying my life source. :) I feel the days when I don't do these or they are not good then My rangers STOP working for me. It's like I stop paying them. I feel it's easy to get tired and a little sad here. But I hope as I focus on God and his work I can remember what The whole idea for life is, and how I can better share that with God's children. I'd love to hear what everyone is up to.

September 18th

Hm... life is pretty crazy right now. So this week we had some crazy circumstances where we got to do some cool things. Last Tuesday we got to take part in a clean the world day. It was sick if I say so myself. We really only cleaned for about a half hour, the rest of the time was spent listening to a lady yelling in Chinese about a million different things. I had a day this week when God really blessed me, for a day straight I actaully had a little success helping people come unto God. Way cool... and definitely testimony growing. We have a baptism soon, his name is ricky Lee and is probably the coolest man you'll meet. He has had a lot to go through and I'm grateful we got this far. So i totally spaced my new comp thingy:) His name is Elder Harr. He is from St. George utah and went to SVU. He plays basketball and and is 6.8" way tall!!!! it's fun though. We have a lot in common and he is cool with what we don't so life here is grand:) Well Taiwan is probbably the most different place I could ever go. I love it but not in the way I thought I would. everything is fun and just like china, but there is this... I guess missionary spirit. I love it but yet it does make me miss my old life somehow. But thanks to God he has taught me what is really important this week.