Serving in the Taiwan Taichung Mission: Week 18

Hello Everyone!

I can't believe we are halfway through July! I feel like it was just the beginning of July! So crazy!!!

What a great week we've had (well, at least from Thursday on =] )! There are so many stories I'd love to tell, but I think I'll just pick a few, since I don't think anyone wants to read a novel =]

Stories of the week!

*Finding Formers*

*Stake Young Men/Young Woman's Activity*

*Nail Painting Activity*

*Our hilarious recent convert, Tiffany*

*Our incredible investigator/soon-to-be-recent convert, Melody*

*Out of area adventure!*

*New Investigators!*

Hold on for the ride, here come the stories!

*Finding Formers*

We (my companion and I) have been very diligent the last few weeks in trying to find investigators, since without someone to teach, being a missionary is very boring. Well, the things we've been doing have not been leading us to any investigators. And so, we decided to look at old teaching records (when you teach someone, you fill out a record so that you know what's been taught, etc, etc) and we pulled out some that had addresses so we could just go visit them. We started out on Thursday night and we visited a few houses, and the last one was a husband and wife. They were home, remembered who the missionaries were, and they kindly let us in. We visited with them for a bit, shared a short message and the said we could come back! Yay! We were so excited and so grateful! The next day we found two formers, and while they weren't as interested, they listened to our message and we hope we rekindled something in them to help to prepare them to receive the gospel.

*Stake Young Men/Young Woman's Activity*

We've been hearing about this activity for weeks now. Rumor had it that young men and women were going to be coming and doing missionary work with us. We were told that on Saturday from 9-4 we would have 6 young girls with us doing missionary work! We were freaking out because that is a lot of girls, a lot of time, in a small area! We got to the activity and discovered that we really only had 2 girls coming with us, thye could ride bikes, and it wasn't completely from 9-4. Long story short, it went really well, the area we went to go tracting was great and almost every house had people home, so they were able to talk to people, and so it was all just really great! The girls were so brave and such great missionaries! It was also fun to see some other missionaries that we don't often see.

*Nail Painting Activity*

My companion and I have been planning a nail painting party for a while. We wanted to have an activity that would get sisters in the ward together and our recent converts and investigators could get to know people and become closer with the ward. We were excited, but then realized that none of our investigators or recent converts could come...zao gao (like...oh man!). So we really weren't sure how it would go, nor how many people were actually going to come. As it turns out, we had one recent convert come, four sisters from the ward, and 3 investigators! It was great! One investigator is the one we met last week and her kids, and we think they had a great time. The other two (a couple) had walked into the church about 10 minutes before it started. The guy had met some elders on the street and they invited him to come take a tour of the church. There weren't any elders there at the time, but we took them on a mini-tour and invited them to stay for the activity, and they did! It was so great. So, yes, it was small, but we had some great fellowshipping going on, and I was super grateful! I also got to play with kids for most of the night, so I was thrilled =]]

*Our hilarious recent convert, Tiffany*

Oh, Tiffany! I love her! She is so funny! The long story short is that, she is Taiwanese but her chinese is horrible. She came to our activity and wanted to know what missionaries can and can't do. After talking to her about it, she eventually just asked if she could read our missionary handbook, so I gave it to her, and she loved it =] A pregnant lady from another ward had come to vacuum the church in hopes of inducing labor, and Tiffany just could not let her vacuum because she is pregant! So Tiffany vacuumed the entire church and was just loving it! I don't think she'd ever vacuumed in her life =] So anyway, those are just some funnies about Tiffany. She is so great and she has such an incredible testimony!

*Our incredible investigator/soon-to-be recent convert, Melody*

Oh Melody! What can I say about her! She is incredible! She is getting baptized this coming Saturday and we couldn't be happier!!! We were a bit nervous because we hadn't finished teaching her all her all the doctrine she needed to be taught before getting baptized. But we had given her some pamphlets to read and she read them. She called us last Friday and she had had an incredible experience! She felt like this Saturday was too soon to get baptized, but we told her to go home and pray about it. When she was reading one of the pamphlets, she was reading about repentence and finally understood what it was and that she needed to repent and be baptized and that this was the true church and it was what she wanted in her life! It was just such an incredible experience and I'm so grateful I've been able to be a part of helping her to get to know the church. She had her baptismal interview on Sunday and passed and is all ready to get baptized on Saturday! We are so excited! I will tell you all about it next week!!!

*Out of area adventure!*

Today we went with our recent convert, Sara, to this really cool country-club like place and we had so much fun! It wasn't in our area, and so we had to get permission to go, but our zone leaders said that was fine. We took a bus and a taxi there, and then just a taxi back home. The place is called Monseur and its a little village like thing that is super, uber cute and has a few little shops. It is in the mountains and so it was super beautiful! We had so much fun taking pictures and I was so excited to take pictures! I wish I had had my professional camera with me, but it was all still good =] We were there for about 1 1/2 hours and it was just fun! I hadn't been anywhere fun yet, and so this was something fun to go do.

*New Investigators*

We finally have a few new investigators and are super grateful! I already mentioned the mom and kids, and the husband and wife. We also have another girl, the only sad thing is her dad already said she can't be baptized, and so she is going to have to wait a few years till she is old enough to be baptized without parental permission. I don't know her very well, but I'm excited to meet with her!

Well, I think that is about all! We had a great week, and I have high hopes for this week! I included a few pictures and I hope you all enjoy!

#1: People at our nail painting party!