Be careful what you wish for...

So lately I have been trying to connect with a young man that I became acquainted with when I was serving in the Young Men's Presidency here in Taiwan. Lately he seems to be slowly distancing himself from things that he used to be so actively attending before and I just haven't been that active in catching up with him since I've been back. I wasn't serving in Young Men's anymore, he wasn't my Home Teaching Companion like he was before, but I still felt responsible as a friend to see how he was doing. Through this effort I started missing serving with the Young Men and wished that I was still involved somehow. Well then...WAPOW! My wish has been granted. I am now the Young Men's President. You know when you start to get a feeling about a calling and it turns out that it was probably the spirit telling you about upcoming events. Well maybe that is what was happening to me because here I am getting called to the calling that I kind of started doing already through trying to reconnect to this Young Man in danger. Now our ward has one more Young Man since I left for home over the summer so we have doubled in size! The bishop also wants me to work on reactivating a Young Man that fell inactive when I first got here last year. I had grown close to him back then but life just took over. Hopefully I can reconnect with this dude too and see if I can't try to get him to come back to church. Regardless, I am happy about my new calling even though I am still a ward choir director and a seminary teacher.

Also, this week I was able to go to an incredible monument built to the Buddhist main deity, the original Buddha. This is the first time that I have seen a religious Buddhist building that is new and I was so impressed with the architecture and the attention to detail. To tell you the truth the place looked like a scene straight out of the Nickelodeon show Avatar. The courtyard was so gargantuan and the Buddha statue in the backdrop was so enormous that it was just so incredible to be there. The only thing missing was the signs of excavation. It seriously looked like an ancient relic temple being unearthed in the jungles of South America. It kind of excited me and made me want to run around like a little kid jumping off of benches and doing made up karate moves. Definitely a must see for anyone that wants to come out here and visit me (hint, hint).

Well, as I start this next month I know that things are gonna get really busy for me. This month I have a big performance that I'm preparing for the singles conference of my church, I just started teaching another middle school English Class, plus I am still preparing for the big presentation for early December. Things are starting to gather speed. I pray that I don't get hives this year like I did last year from the stress!

And just like that things are back to normal

So I'm a little late with this posting. I kind of find it funny that when I have more time to do things that I need to do I am less effective or less motivated to actually get those things done. I had a three day weekend this last weekend and really took advantage of the time to take it easy and have a great weekend. Also, this weekend was GENERAL CONFERENCE!! That just contributed to the niceness of the weekend and probably why it was a little more difficult to write a post. This week I was trying to prepare to listen to the talks from General Conference and figure out what I needed to hear. There's a lot of things that I have goals for this year but I find that unless there is something dramatically wrong in my life I don't have something specific that I'm looking for, but I did find a lot of comfort and validation for the things that I am progressively working on this year. I especially loved the first talk from Richard G. Scott about scripture study and memorizing scriptures. For the past week teaching seminary has actually become something that I've enjoyed doing. Besides how exhausted I feel I have really loved reading the old testament and preparing the lessons. I also really enjoyed memorizing the different scriptures in Chinese. I need to be better with that part of my life, and I don't say that like what people normally say that they need to be better when they really are doing fine. That is one of the goals that I have for myself this year. I feel like the very close and intimate relationship I had with the scriptures when I was young has been like I moved to a foreign country and I just check back with that good friend every now and then. The fact of the matter is though that wherever you move or wherever you are the scriptures are never too far to contact and be close with. They are so much more available in my life than they ever have been before. I've got some kind of copy of them on every single electronic device that I own and those that know me know that my electronics are never more than an arm-stretch away. I need to be a better friend and get to know the scriptures again.

Speaking of needing to get to know the scriptures I received some bad news on Monday. Everything is going back to normal because I am no longer teaching seminary in the morning. They have called a new full-time teacher to teach in the mornings so my substituting is no longer needed. Based on my reaction when I was told that I would be teaching in the morning this seems like it should be a relief but I didn't feel like that when I received the news. I am very sad that I'm not going to be with those students in the morning anymore. But I think that I still want to continue to read the Old Testament because I realize that I really don't know that book as well as the other books of scripture. Another good thing to come from this is now I can attend Institute again which I was not able to before because it would keep me up too late. All in all I think it is a good thing but I still am a little disappointed. This does free me up to any and all callings now though *gulp*. Who knows what the Lord has in store for me next.

Ding Dong! The sitch is Red!

Hello all! Yet another snippet into the life of Clinton. I had to post these pictures because first of all one of them has me with my new very Taiwanese fashion glasses on and also what a night market in Taiwan looks like. This place was huge and was pretty fun to look around though most of the places, me and Daniel decided, were mostly clothing shops for girls. It was pretty fun to walk around though. Definitely have to go back there if anyone of you people decides to come and visit me (just so you know that was a hint).

Well this week has been rife with new projects to be started. First project I started this week was french! There is a teacher here from Paris named Adrien and he comes to our school to teach the French club. Here is a super cool guy and we've become acquainted whenever he comes on Wednesdays. Well at the end of last school year I realized that I have an opportunity that I'm not taking advantage of. I took 2 years of French when I was in high school because I was pretty interested in the language, mostly because girls were interested in the language (they weren't interested in the language perse as much as hearing guys speak the language). Well anyway, any and all such knowledge that was gleaned from those two years has since laid dormant in the recesses of my mind since learning Chinese and using that foreign language to supplement any need of international communication. Well I thought that since there is this guy here that is a native fluent speaker of French and he speaks very good Chinese (with a french accent which is super funny to listen to) I should be taking advantage of this opportunity to dust off my French knowledge and have him tutor me. We correlated our schedules and worked out that he would stick around campus after he taught his french club and tutor me for as long as I needed it every week. We started this week and I'm excited to report that I understood at least 50% of the french that was spoken which surprised me. I'm not sure if it was from words that I remembered from taking it all those years previous or that he was speaking in very rudimentary french or the English-French similarity or a combination of all of them but I thought I did pretty good. Now I was pretty much dumb when it came to speaking but I hope that that will come quickly without too much pain and anguish.

Another project that I'm starting is yet another performance that I need to prepare for. Not only am I supposed to provide a singles conference with a night of Jazz music hosted and performed by yours truly (something that I have never attempted by myself, let alone in a foreign country!) but now the school wants me to do a "music of Christmas around the world" presentation of sorts to hundreds of high school kids in December for an hour. So I've got a little bit more on my plate to collect and plan for the future in my "me" time but I think that I'll enjoy the preparation, and even the getting up in front of those people will probably a thrill as well. I'm just not looking forward to the imminent nervous break-downs that are sure to come caused by worrying about all of the little details that I will want to have perfect that Taiwan people seem so inept at providing comfort for. Maybe that's being unfair. I've only dealt with places and school systems in Utah county for things like this and let's face it, that area is the land of over-achievers so maybe outside of that very accommodating bubble maybe everybody else is just like them. It just drives me nuts sometimes because it is such an anarchy of chain of command! You see, the stress is already starting. Well anyways, I'm hoping that this year's fall semester will not include last year's interesting experience of shingles again. I do think that these things will really make my fall semester full of growth which I can't complain about because that is one of my big goals this year, to take advantage of growth experiences and milk them dry. I pray that while I'm sucking the marrow from life this year that I don't die choking on a bone.