I found a church!!!

Before coming to Taiwan I was a little worried about what I was going to do about weekly masses. I had already talked to my priest back home and he gave me a book of prayers and the parts of the mass in English in case I ended up having to go to mass in Chinese regularly, but truth be told, I was just worried about finding a Catholic church period! Most of Taiwanese practice Taoism or Buddhism with less than 5% of the population practicing Christianity (let alone Catholicism!) Needless to say, I wasn't 100% sure what I was going to end up doing for the year.

As I continued to research I discovered that there were a decent handful of Catholic churches in the larger towns (aka, not mine!) and some of them even claimed to offered mass in English!! I was determined that I was going to find one! Fast forward to Saturday morning, I was looking online for what I could find (side note, I'm not sure what people did traveling before the internet! lol) and found a large Catholic Cathedral that offered mass in English twice on Sundays!! Downside, google maps claims it will take me almost 2 hours by bus to get there...I'm all about going to church, but that's a lot of travel time.

I was determined to find something better! I continued my research and found that there is actually one in my town! (I live like 2 miles outside of the town of Xinfeng although my address is still technically in Xinfeng). Excitedly I hoped on the bus (and surprisingly even knew which stop to get off on!) and in less than 10 minutes I was at the church!!! To my surprise it was not only a Catholic church, but also a Catholic school! It took me a little bit to actually locate the church...you'll see why momentarily!...but when I did I couldn't have been any more excited!

The church is TEEENY and sits about 100 people although we packed that baby church to the point that there was standing room only! I had to giggle to myself though, out of the 100 or so people in attendance, all were Asian (mostly Filipino) besides myself and the priest from Africa! Needless to say it was great to find mass in English, and I look forward to going back again!