Missionary Email: People Learn in Steps

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 11:59 PM

Hello, and welcome to another Preparation day in the hot and humid little island of Taiwan. This week was kind of discouraging if you think transfer wise, but happy if you think long term wise. Both of our people with dates for Saturday reset them for next transfer in week 2. I'm just glad they reset their dates and that they are still progressing and growing. Because that matters more than if we are here or not. I might still be here next transfer though, since my companion is going home in the middle of next transfer. But you just never know. There's still 3 weeks before I have to worry about it.

I'm getting used to Zhongli... I know how to get to all the places we go regularly. The first transfer here, I didn't really pay attention and everything just seemed different and I watched the stuff on the side of the road more than the paths. But now I can ride in front sometimes if I'm in a petal fast mood...and if we are going down hill. Going uphill no way...I'm slow.

So this Friday is my companions birthday. Not really sure what I'm going to do for it since we are going on exchanges...so I'll only be there in the morning for it anyways. We'll see.

Hmm, I have my planner in front of me to try to figure out what to write but it all seems pretty boring and repetitive. Even though each person and lesson is unique, hearing about what missionaries are up to probably isn't SUPER interesting. We are in lessons, riding bikes, etc etc all day.

On Tuesday Yvonne's baby piao piao had her 2nd birthday. It was us and the Neili Elders, and Lin jiemei and 2 of her 3 sons. We thought it was pretty convenient that Yvonne invited a peike (member) for us. :) It was a little ... for her husband though, because S. Lin tried to commit him to baptism, but I'm sure it's fine. It never hurts to hear about baptism. We didn't know if he was ready for it yet though. Well, we know he wasn't. We had to explain to Yvonne that you have to learn principle by principle, and we met with her a lot to prepare her for baptism...and that we could still prepare her husband, but we just had to meet with him more often and teach him principles. You can't just in one day say...you can't drink coffee or work on Sunday and you need to pay tithing all in one day. Or at least not generally. Of course their will be the exception. But that's an exception. Most people learn in steps. I know I do. So yeah, the birthday party was a lot of fun. The baby was really cute and we had a lesson with the Elders. Ate cake...Wooo. Yeah then we met with Yvonne again later in the week about baptism. Her date was set for Saturday, but we already knew she wasn't ready for that, she had told us on Sunday. We reset it for her husbands birthday. It's still over a month away, so I know that if we are really diligent we can get her husband ready for that date as well. We might give him to the Elders. We are waiting to see how that works out, because it's easier for them to get over there, but he's not there that often, and his wife is always there when he is, so it might be better to just keep teaching them together. We'll see what happens though. We set up to meet on Thursday with the both of them.

Our other person with a goal, Wang Zixia missed church on Sunday. Her husband had family over and wouldn't let her go. She also talked about how she didn't feel ready. We talked about teaching her smaller lessons over again and meeting twice a week so she could remember everything. She said that sounded okay as long as it was times when her husband wasn't home. We tried to set a date at the end of the transfer, but she thought that sounded fast. We told her to pray about it and told her that Yvonne had a date for 7/14 next transfer, and she could do that if she wanted too, since she knows Yvonne. So we just had her commit to pray and we'd set a goal on Saturday at Eddie's baptism. Which she is coming to. Woo. Eddie is a really amazing investigators the Elders have been teaching. We are all excited for Saturday.

We had a really amazing Sunday. We had 10 investigators show up to Zhong1, or afternoon church. It was a miracle really. We invited one girl to try to come on the bus, and she came! With 2 friends too.

We are also meeting with this young mother who I already love a lot. She's married to a Canadian. Her name is Rita. She came and brought her baby to church. She said that she really loves the feeling singing hymns brings. And that she just is happy at church. She has a big testimony of prayer because once her husband lost his dogs 30 minutes from their house, and he prayed and promised God he would go to church for a month if he could find his dogs, and his dog found his way home. He really loves his dogs. And he said the dog was kind of a stupid dog so it was amazing he didn't get hit by a car and found his way home. He's a nice guy. And Rita is really cute and sweet. He is also a blogger. He recorded me and my companion singing a hymn in Chinese, so somewhere out there is me messing up a couple times a hymn in Chinese. That's the only English I'm aware of, but I also know there are a lot of people here that take pictures of us and say they will put it on their blog. Yikes. I'm on Chinese blogs. Ooooh blogs...haha.

It's really hot and humid here lately. It's definitely getting to be summer. We go to Taipei twice a transfer and do the temple tours. We went this last week and it was really hot in Taiwan. As I walked to the church from the train station, I noticed how even breathing here is different because it's just really thick. The smells are new, the people look different. There isn't even a lettering system. Just characters. So I understand now why my teacher in the MTC said that life seemed a little surreal sometimes. In Taipei, for a few minutes it really did seem surreal. I was in a place completely foreign and it seemed like a dream for about 15 minutes. Then I remembered how I can't see objects or color in a dream, so clearly it wasn't. But I'm starting to understand that feeling. haha.

Today we are going with the Taoyuan Sisters to make pots in Yingge. It should be fun.

Anyways, there are only 4 minutes left and 2 weeks ago I think my letter didn't send because I waited too long...so I will now send this! Byebye.