Mad Artistic Skills

It's no secret that I can't draw. Even my stick figures look like the work of a 5-year-old. One time I had to draw a pig at work for a unity activity, and this happened. Another time I had to draw a cat in class, and my classmate thought it was a mosquito. Needless to say, I try to avoid drawing wherever possible.

On my mission, however, we often took cards and little notes to the people we were teaching. And, well, the card has to big enough to justify showing up unannounced at their house to give it to them, but my Chinese handwriting was even worse than my drawing skills. This presented a quandary--take big cards with a teeny bit of Chinese on them? Or make the cards myself, knowing that the recipients would snicker every time they looked at them?

I often opted for the latter. After all, if the people weren't at home that we were taking the cards to, we would just tape them to their door. Even before they saw who had signed the cards, they knew that the sister missionaries had been there!

Since Christmas is not celebrated in Taiwan, I decided that one year for Christmas we should make Christmas cards and take them to people in the ward and others we were teaching (so that we could spread Christmas cheer on Christmas day). It took several days of making cards during our 30 minute language study (because writing in Chinese always took the whole 30 minutes...for one note or card!), but by Christmas day my companion and I had the impressive stack of cards you see below.

All the ones that look like they were made by a child? I made those ones. (Especially the ones involving felt and/or foam.) The artistic looking ones? Made by my companion.

I made sure to give the ones I made to people with children. :)