August 6, 2012
My week!!! I don't even know where to begin!!! How about with last Monday? Okay. It was a lovely little preparation day. We were lucky enough to meet with 2 girls who wanted to learn how to play the uke and guitar. I have been teaching Sister Wainright how to play the ukulele, so she taught one girl, and then I taught the other girl a few guitar chords. It was so fun! We then shared the scripture (D&C 25:12) about how the song of the heart is a prayer unto God. I love how anything we do in our lives can be linked to the Gospel and God's plan of happiness for us! Plus, I love playing music every chance possible haha.
Tuesday I had my very first Sisters Exchange! Once every move call (6 week period) we get to spend 24 hours with another sister in a different area. My companion for the day was Chen Jiemei... she is Taiwanese, aka spake no english! It was definitely a growing experience. I got to visit beautiful Nantou... probably the most beautiful place I have ever seen. We met at a train station halfway between my city and hers and then began the hour long bus ride up and over the mountain. We were on a tiny bus that sounded like it would break down any minute, but the scenery was more than enough to keep my mind off the thought of potentially falling to our death off the side of the mountain. Luscious green EVERYWHERE! Leaves the size of half my body covered trees that towered above us. Green green green, greeny green green. I live in a very populated city with zero green, so it was a welcomed sight. As we trekked through the mountain, I felt as if I were on a jungle safari... Except no animals and on a really tiny island. We arrived in Nantou, ate a quick meal, and got to work! We had a lesson with one of their investigators and talked about the power of the Holy Ghost. At the start, she offered us coffee candy, so we ended up teaching her the Word of Wisdom. We talked about how since God is our Heavenly Father, He knows what is good and bad for our bodies. He loves us so much that He wants us to be healthy! It was a great start to the lesson because one of the blessings of keeping the word of wisdom is being able to feel the Holy Ghost more abundantly in your life. She commited to keep the Word of Wisdom and start praying and reading the scriptures. Afterwards, we got stood up by a few folks so we started tracting. We were able to teach a few people about prayer and one about God's plan of happiness for us. It was a great day filled with rain and success! The next day I headed back to good old Zhanghua. It is crazy how fast a place can feel like home! Speaking of fast, guess who has been in Taiwan over a month now! Song Jiemei. Isn't that weird? I keep doing double takes every so often. Am I really thousands of miles away on a tiny tiny island with almost 25 million people? Am I really speaking Chinese? This is that "mission" that so many people talk about. Stories for years and years to come will be created in these next 15 months. I feel so blessed! I absolutely love the people here.
We teach a free english class every wednesday night (My companion and I teach the intermediate class) It's always a lot of fun, and afterwards we got to have a lesson with Lin Jiemei. She first met missionaries over a year ago, and has been wanting to be baptized the whole time. However, there is a rule that you cannot be baptized if your family (spouse or parent) fanduis/objects. Her husband refuses over and over again, but it is so inspiring to watch her continue to do all the things she knows is right. She has such great faith and I pray one day her husband's heart will soften. So often here there are fanduis against baptism. Right now we have 3 others that dearly want to be baptized but have parent or husband fanduis. How sad that some families cannot accept such a wonderful decision, however one day they will be blessed for their patience and diligence! That night it started raining pretty bad, and we woke up the next morning to a TYPHOON!!! I love the rain. Thursday I was seriously on cloud 9 all day! It poured and poured, the wind howled and roared, and we kept going and going! The great thing about typhoons is that nobody will leave their house. On one side, that means there are not very many people to contact on the street, but on the other hand, that means all the people we want to visit are there! It's a missionary's dream come true. We were able to visit so many people that day, tract to tons of houses (tracting is where we knock on their doors and share a little message with them) and stay soaking wet all day. People kept getting mad at us for being out in the weather, but we didn't care. This message that families can be together forever is far too important to stay inside! My bike was more of a boat and at one time we were peddling through 4 or 5 inches of water with the wind practically blowing us over. I have a tradition. It's called "if it's raining, I'm singing" so I sang all day! Making up songs about typhoons, 7-11s (have I ever told you there are HUNDREDS of 7-11's here?), or church hymns, etc. It makes the work so much more fun. One funny/probably-not-so-safe thing that happened was when my companion went to ring the doorbell to a house and got electrocuted a bit. I say funny because she didn't get hurt, so don't worry, but we were much more cautious after that haha.
The typhoon had mostly passed by the time Friday morning rolled around so it was just a rainy day. I feel like rainy days always bring miracles. We were tracting by a member's house when all the sudden a woman just walked up to us. In case you are wondering, that never happens. We are always stared at, pointed at, gawked at, or avoided, but rarely confronted. However, a woman walked up to us and just kind of stood there waiting for us to say something. We started talking to her and got her to commit to come to church. I love it when the Lord reminds us that He will always put people in our path, sometimes very literally! Saturday night we went to the Elders baptism in our ward. We have an investigator named Liu Jiemei who wanted to come see a xili (baptism) since she will have hers in a few weeks. She has 2 adorable sons, and a little before the baptism started, we were all in the room and my companion and I started singing. The older son is 6 years old and started dancing. It was the cutest thing ever! It made me miss all my wonderful nieces and nephews even more!!! Please tell them all that I love them so much! Tell Lindsay I am so happy she made the decision to be baptized and I know it will bless her so much!!! I'm so proud of her :).
Sunday was wonderful as usual. It was a little disheartening when several of our investigators didn't show up, but we were able to help out with some of the Elder's investigators so it was still great. It was really funny in the second ward when during sacrament meeting, an old man stood up and started yelling at the person bearing their testimony in Taiyu (taiwanese) I have no idea what he said, but I guess it wasn't very coherant taiyu because nobody else did either. His wife was able to calm him down and then we proceeded as normal. However, 5 minutes later it happened again. And again 2 more times haha. It was an interesting experience! That night my companion and I had a lot of lessons to cover so we went on splits with members. There are 2 sisters that are the world's greatest member missionaries. They help us out so much and we were able to each take one and go chuanjiao. We were able to teach 4 lessons in just an hour! It was such a miracle and we are meeting with some of them this next week. I know I say this a lot, but I LOVE teaching about prayer! That connection between our Heavenly Father is so important and we get to help them start it! Anyone can pray. Anytime, anywhere, and about anything. How cool is that?
Well family dear, I love you all dearly. I hope babies to be are all doing well! I can't wait to hear about baby Ryan! Shari, when do you find out if it is a boy or girl? Has Rachelle sold her house yet? started building yet? How was Keri and Jason's trip to TN? Lindsay's baptism sounds like it turned out great! Do you have any pictures? How is Christy's back/new house? Tell Tyler and Alyssa to email me about EFY. I hope all is well with all of you! I love hearing from you and seeing pictures, so feel free to send them :) I must be going now, for there is much work to be done! You're all in my thoughts and prayers!.
Till next week, I wish you enough
My week!!! I don't even know where to begin!!! How about with last Monday? Okay. It was a lovely little preparation day. We were lucky enough to meet with 2 girls who wanted to learn how to play the uke and guitar. I have been teaching Sister Wainright how to play the ukulele, so she taught one girl, and then I taught the other girl a few guitar chords. It was so fun! We then shared the scripture (D&C 25:12) about how the song of the heart is a prayer unto God. I love how anything we do in our lives can be linked to the Gospel and God's plan of happiness for us! Plus, I love playing music every chance possible haha.
Tuesday I had my very first Sisters Exchange! Once every move call (6 week period) we get to spend 24 hours with another sister in a different area. My companion for the day was Chen Jiemei... she is Taiwanese, aka spake no english! It was definitely a growing experience. I got to visit beautiful Nantou... probably the most beautiful place I have ever seen. We met at a train station halfway between my city and hers and then began the hour long bus ride up and over the mountain. We were on a tiny bus that sounded like it would break down any minute, but the scenery was more than enough to keep my mind off the thought of potentially falling to our death off the side of the mountain. Luscious green EVERYWHERE! Leaves the size of half my body covered trees that towered above us. Green green green, greeny green green. I live in a very populated city with zero green, so it was a welcomed sight. As we trekked through the mountain, I felt as if I were on a jungle safari... Except no animals and on a really tiny island. We arrived in Nantou, ate a quick meal, and got to work! We had a lesson with one of their investigators and talked about the power of the Holy Ghost. At the start, she offered us coffee candy, so we ended up teaching her the Word of Wisdom. We talked about how since God is our Heavenly Father, He knows what is good and bad for our bodies. He loves us so much that He wants us to be healthy! It was a great start to the lesson because one of the blessings of keeping the word of wisdom is being able to feel the Holy Ghost more abundantly in your life. She commited to keep the Word of Wisdom and start praying and reading the scriptures. Afterwards, we got stood up by a few folks so we started tracting. We were able to teach a few people about prayer and one about God's plan of happiness for us. It was a great day filled with rain and success! The next day I headed back to good old Zhanghua. It is crazy how fast a place can feel like home! Speaking of fast, guess who has been in Taiwan over a month now! Song Jiemei. Isn't that weird? I keep doing double takes every so often. Am I really thousands of miles away on a tiny tiny island with almost 25 million people? Am I really speaking Chinese? This is that "mission" that so many people talk about. Stories for years and years to come will be created in these next 15 months. I feel so blessed! I absolutely love the people here.
We teach a free english class every wednesday night (My companion and I teach the intermediate class) It's always a lot of fun, and afterwards we got to have a lesson with Lin Jiemei. She first met missionaries over a year ago, and has been wanting to be baptized the whole time. However, there is a rule that you cannot be baptized if your family (spouse or parent) fanduis/objects. Her husband refuses over and over again, but it is so inspiring to watch her continue to do all the things she knows is right. She has such great faith and I pray one day her husband's heart will soften. So often here there are fanduis against baptism. Right now we have 3 others that dearly want to be baptized but have parent or husband fanduis. How sad that some families cannot accept such a wonderful decision, however one day they will be blessed for their patience and diligence! That night it started raining pretty bad, and we woke up the next morning to a TYPHOON!!! I love the rain. Thursday I was seriously on cloud 9 all day! It poured and poured, the wind howled and roared, and we kept going and going! The great thing about typhoons is that nobody will leave their house. On one side, that means there are not very many people to contact on the street, but on the other hand, that means all the people we want to visit are there! It's a missionary's dream come true. We were able to visit so many people that day, tract to tons of houses (tracting is where we knock on their doors and share a little message with them) and stay soaking wet all day. People kept getting mad at us for being out in the weather, but we didn't care. This message that families can be together forever is far too important to stay inside! My bike was more of a boat and at one time we were peddling through 4 or 5 inches of water with the wind practically blowing us over. I have a tradition. It's called "if it's raining, I'm singing" so I sang all day! Making up songs about typhoons, 7-11s (have I ever told you there are HUNDREDS of 7-11's here?), or church hymns, etc. It makes the work so much more fun. One funny/probably-not-so-safe thing that happened was when my companion went to ring the doorbell to a house and got electrocuted a bit. I say funny because she didn't get hurt, so don't worry, but we were much more cautious after that haha.
The typhoon had mostly passed by the time Friday morning rolled around so it was just a rainy day. I feel like rainy days always bring miracles. We were tracting by a member's house when all the sudden a woman just walked up to us. In case you are wondering, that never happens. We are always stared at, pointed at, gawked at, or avoided, but rarely confronted. However, a woman walked up to us and just kind of stood there waiting for us to say something. We started talking to her and got her to commit to come to church. I love it when the Lord reminds us that He will always put people in our path, sometimes very literally! Saturday night we went to the Elders baptism in our ward. We have an investigator named Liu Jiemei who wanted to come see a xili (baptism) since she will have hers in a few weeks. She has 2 adorable sons, and a little before the baptism started, we were all in the room and my companion and I started singing. The older son is 6 years old and started dancing. It was the cutest thing ever! It made me miss all my wonderful nieces and nephews even more!!! Please tell them all that I love them so much! Tell Lindsay I am so happy she made the decision to be baptized and I know it will bless her so much!!! I'm so proud of her :).
Sunday was wonderful as usual. It was a little disheartening when several of our investigators didn't show up, but we were able to help out with some of the Elder's investigators so it was still great. It was really funny in the second ward when during sacrament meeting, an old man stood up and started yelling at the person bearing their testimony in Taiyu (taiwanese) I have no idea what he said, but I guess it wasn't very coherant taiyu because nobody else did either. His wife was able to calm him down and then we proceeded as normal. However, 5 minutes later it happened again. And again 2 more times haha. It was an interesting experience! That night my companion and I had a lot of lessons to cover so we went on splits with members. There are 2 sisters that are the world's greatest member missionaries. They help us out so much and we were able to each take one and go chuanjiao. We were able to teach 4 lessons in just an hour! It was such a miracle and we are meeting with some of them this next week. I know I say this a lot, but I LOVE teaching about prayer! That connection between our Heavenly Father is so important and we get to help them start it! Anyone can pray. Anytime, anywhere, and about anything. How cool is that?
Well family dear, I love you all dearly. I hope babies to be are all doing well! I can't wait to hear about baby Ryan! Shari, when do you find out if it is a boy or girl? Has Rachelle sold her house yet? started building yet? How was Keri and Jason's trip to TN? Lindsay's baptism sounds like it turned out great! Do you have any pictures? How is Christy's back/new house? Tell Tyler and Alyssa to email me about EFY. I hope all is well with all of you! I love hearing from you and seeing pictures, so feel free to send them :) I must be going now, for there is much work to be done! You're all in my thoughts and prayers!.
Till next week, I wish you enough
Sister Smart
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