Elder and Sister Croft in Taiwan

Two weeks ago was pretty tough for me (Darren). I was experiencing a variety of small frustrations, and three frustrations that felt very big to me: I couldn't communicate with anyone. We couldn't find contact information to visit members of the church or people who had shown interest in learning about the church. My leg around my ankle started hurting badly after a run, enough that I was limping when I walked. From the symptoms, the internet was saying to plan on a 12 week recovery with no running! At times I was feeling useless and hopeless. Sometimes staying in bed even sounded appealing. I feel these types of thoughts and feelings are emotional temptation . Churches often talk about sins, both of omission and commission and temptations to commit sin. I think it is less often that we talk about emotional temptation, but I think they all go hand in hand. I believe that our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are actual beings who know us individually and love us, and want us to

  When we first walked into the Elders' Taitung apartment, we were a little dismayed that all the windows looked like this. We figured someone did it to prepare for a typhoon, but it made the apartment feel dingy and really unpleasant. We asked multiple people whether the tape needed to stay that way and they all just looked at us puzzled, so we decided to take it off. Pulling off the yellow part was easy, but most of the tape got left behind as gunk on the window. (I think the tape must have been there for a year or more). We tried to find a razor blade scraper at department stores, but with no luck. One store suggested a nearby building supply company, and they had a relatively expensive scraper, but I had to have it. To clean all the windows took many hours, but it was worth it. The apartment is now very pleasant and has wonderful views and is bright and cheery! There was an even more challenging cleaning problem in the apartment though. Unfortunately, this before picture doesn&

  This is probably not what you think of when someone says Chinese food, but it is a popular treat here. The base is shaved ice, but it is shaved very fine and is more like ice cream than a snow cone. There is fruit and syrup and all kind of very sweet things that can go on top including beans (yes sweet beans) and boba (chewy balls) and sorbet. I decided to start with something obviously different to make a point. Most of the food Americans think of when we think of Chinese food is really Americanized Chinese food. The Americanized version is often breaded meat and often sweet. I don't think I've ever eaten anything like Orange Chicken or Kung Pao chicken in Taiwan. There is a huge variety of food here. There are a lot of noodle dishes -- beef noodles seem especially popular. The Taidong area has a lot of chicken done in a particular way. Squid, octopus, clams, mussels, and shrimp are also popular.  It is normal to cook almost all parts of an animal. People eat chicken and pi

My (Elder Croft's) biggest worry about this mission has consistently been the language. Part of my desire to be called to Taiwan was for me to be able to learn to speak Mandarin, but unfortunately desire does not equal ability.  When Sister Croft and I were first dating, I eagerly started learning a few words. But, I quickly became discouraged when the Mandarin for, "I want to go to sleep" and "I want to eat dumplings" sounded exactly the same to me. This video has fun with those exact phrases , so apparently I'm not unique. In the 33 years since then, I've done some sporadic studying. Most of the time I can hear the tones now, but my vocabulary is so limited that anything anyone says to me just goes right on by. In Chinese this is, "I hear but don't understand." In October I got a Mandarin tutor from the MTC who helps me for an hour or two a week over zoom. The last session we had before I ended up leaving for Taiwan he challenged me to wr

  President Yang asked us to serve in Taitung (that is using the old romanization. The new romanization is Taidong)! This is an area in the South of Taiwan on the East side of the island. As you can see, it is beautiful! The office helped us rent a car and we drove down the coast early Saturday morning. It was my first time driving in Taiwan. We heard the traffic would be really bad, so we left at 6:00am. That worked out really well and we made it safely. Probably my biggest surprise driving was the speed limits. I'm used to driving 70mph to 80mph in Utah, but most of the time, even on large, well maintained roads, the speed limit here was only 60kph to 70 kph which is only 37mph to 43mph. The fastest speed limit we saw was 80kph (50mph) for a few short stretches. There were times on smaller roads where the posted speed was only 40kph (25mph). Residential area speed are only 30kph (18mph) but that makes a lot of sense because there is poor visibility from parked cars and scooters e

Thanksgiving was special for us in Taiwan. We attended three celebrations. Thanksgiving #1 There is an English speaking ward in Taipei and one of the families in the ward has made it a tradition to have the youth prepare a traditional American Thanksgiving meal for the missionaries. They met on a Saturday and made sweet potato casserole, pies, potatoes, etc. On Sunday evening the youth and the missionaries got together to eat and to share experiences. That was only our second day in Taiwan and we felt very appreciated and welcomed. The youth were great. We don't think they realize how different their lives are. They have lived and traveled in many countries and our associating with a lot of diverse people. Learning languages, and having a lot of amazing experiences. Thanksgiving #2 The next few days we helped the mission president's wife and the other office missionaries prepare a traditional thanksgiving meal for the entire mission. We needed to feed 100 people! I felt like we

  Our first week in Taiwan we helped prepare for an all mission conference.  The missionaries met for a morning of training, and a big Thanksgiving dinner (more about that in the next post). And the mission wanted the stake center decorated for Christmas before they came. We spent a good portion of the day decorating this tree. First we were supporting and helping the young missionaries, but it took a lot longer than expected due to two major problems. 1. The limbs kept falling off because of broken parts, and 2. we didn't have as many lights as needed to string them the way we wanted to. In the end it was adults doing the work while the missionaries went to other appointments, but despite the problems, we think it turned out really nice! We also have a Christmas tree for our apartment.

Zone Conference with Elder and Sister Martinez After two weeks in the MTC we went back home! Our visas didn't come through and we couldn't leave for Taiwan. We spent about a month living at home and serving as MLS missionaries in the Salt Lake City mission assigned to the Chinese ward. We just found out we'll be leaving early Friday morning for Taiwan.   At home it was a struggle to know what to do most of the time, but we had some great mission experiences and also got a chance to get some more personal things taken care of and did more Chinese study. We're grateful for these opportunities! Mission Experiences in the SLC Mission MLS training meeting District meeting Multi district council Stake conference Zone Conference with Elder Martinez (Utah Area Presidency) Dinner and a lesson with a wonderful sister who was baptized in China 5 months ago. She is preparing for temple blessings! Lesson with the young Elders and a young woman from China who is working nights to mak

Lots of great people at the MTC. Some of them are only staying a week. All the Senior Missionaries that started at the MTC this week. Our wonderful MTC District with our great morning teacher Sister Gee. (From left to right: Elder & Sister Tanner, Crawford, and Hamblin) And with our great afternoon teacher Sister Price. All people we loved getting to know and learning with!  Our nephew Derek Croft who came to the MTC this week too. Jacob Schwartz who was an intern with my team this summer Our daughter Rachel's picture from her time as a missionary in Thailand. It is on a wall in one of the newer buildings on the MTC campus.

On Tuesday night we attended a wonderful devotional about the character of Jesus Christ. We were taught that Jesus always focused on what he could do to love, serve, and have compassion for others. He did not focus on himself. This was especially true in his most trying times. For example on the night he knew he was going to suffer in the garden of Gethsemane, be betrayed, be put on trial and scourged, he served the twelve apostles by washing their feet, including the feet of Judas who he knew would betray him (see John 13). When he was being arrested, he took time to heal the severed ear of one of the men taking him. When he was on the cross, his concern was for the men being crucified with him and for his mother. Ultimately, it is these characteristics that impelled him to atone for our sins, and die for us. As we strive to be better disciples of Christ, we can be less self-absorbed, less self-centered, and less selfish and learn to have be more loving, more compassionate, and to ser

Today I dropped my lunch on the floor of the MTC cafeteria. This is not the actual photo, because I (Elder Croft) was too busy dealing with it to take a picture. But, immediately a young sister missionary and a senior missionary were helping me. They didn't just offer condolences, they were on the floor picking up food, getting napkins and really scrubbing to clean it up. Also, no one laughed. It is such an honor and pleasure to be among kind, loving people who are looking for ways to help and serve! Another highlight today was attending a devotional with Susan Porter, the church General Primary President. She taught us that the gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of joy because it invites us to receive gifts from God. We sang the Hymn, More Holiness Give Me  and she asked us to choose one of the gifts that we would seek. She also taught that seeking gifts from God is not selfish. In fact, God asks us to do so (see D&C 46:8 and 1 Corithians 12:31 . We also had a disappointment

We've been married for thirty-three years and have always looked forward to serving together as full time missionaries for  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints . This year we felt like the time was right. Yes, it is hard to leave children and grandchildren, but thank goodness for video chat, texting, etc. so we can stay in contact. Today we entered the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, UT with about 120 other "senior" missionaries. There are  about 1500 young missionaries here too. It was amazing to hear all the different types of missions the seniors have been called to: health advisor, gardening, family history, farm, historical sites, member and leader support, mission office support, document preservation, and more. The trainers pointed out to us that even though we all have vastly different assignments, we are all going to be trained for the first week on the same material. All of it focusing on our common purpose as missionaries. For each one of