Missionary Email: Becoming a New Person

Sunday, June 28, 2009 11:28 PM

Hello again from Zhongli. From the looks of it, I will be here forever...my companion leaves two weeks early during this transfer, so either I will go senior for 2 weeks with a native Taiwanese who will become a missionary for 2 weeks, or I will become a three-some with other sisters. That would be hard though because the closest sisters are Bade and Taoyuan. Both are a train ride and then like 10-15 more minute bike ride. So it wouldn't be easy to visit my investigators during that time. But it would be hard to be with a native Taiwanese who doesn't really know the missionary lessons and would be unable to speak to me in English. My Chinese is not at par to be able to handle that yet, and I highly doubt it will until I change companions....But yeah, I think white washing isn't a super common affair, so unless something uncommon happens, I'll be in Zhongli this and next transfer. But that's just my personal opinion...you never know.

President Grimley will be here on Wednesday. We saw President and Sister Nielson for the last time here in Zhongli on Sunday. They came and spoke in the 2nd ward. It was nice to see them for the last time...and we finally got those letters we wrote to them...My companion lost the letters twice...so we had to bike all over the world and waste a lot of time and energy both times just to get them...but I put a lot of effort into them, so that really was a blessing that we were able to find them again both times. The Nielson's told me I looked good and had a light in my eyes and stuff. I guess I was happy to hear that, because its true. I really have changed a lot from when I first got here and I'm a lot better. Still a lot of things I need to change, but as long as I'm making steps and becoming a better person a little every day, I figure that's what really matters. You can't become a new person in one day. I used to want to, and tried, and failed. I mean, maybe some people can, but for me, it's just step by step.

But yeah, it was really cool, President had us missionaries get up and we sang I am a Child of God. It was a really neat experience. I saw a lot of woman crying in the crowd. I think it was a good thing for our ward.

Then later that night, we had a missionary fireside for the other ward. So this was a good week for the wards.

This week has been pretty slow. It hasn't even been a week since we wrote. I guess the cool thing of the week is that 11 people were at church. So that's really good. Especially since we only have 2 people with dates. But honestly, I was still a little :( because I had a goal for 15, since 20 people said they were coming. My companion said she highly doubted that many would come. She was suprised 11 came. So I guess wo de xinxin bu gou. My faith wasn't enough. Maybe one day.

Mom and Dad...I need you guys to send me a family picture I asked for forever ago! Also I need a way to get my pictures from my camera to the computer...I've been borrowing my companions and she leaves in a couple weeks. I told dad forever ago for just a couple bucks you can get something that converts my sd card to a jump drive. So if you could find that really soon so I can keep sending pictures that would be great!

And Gigi, can you try to get me the following addresses, I would like to write....Amanda Lowder, Sara Medina, Nick Drake, and Cole. Matt Moses will probably have Cole's address, the other ones have facebook. So if you could do that for me, it would be great. I thought of other ones before, but now that's all I can remember.

Okay well time is up, byebye.

Missionary Email: Haowan (Progress in Zhongli, Tawain)

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 6:06 AM

This week was a lot of fun, and I want to send pictures, so once again I'm going to write as fast as possible. And since you put important information up front in things like newspapers, next week Preparation day is going to be on Monday, or your Sunday night, we get move calls Friday. So only Annika and Gigi emailed me, and I still want to hear from them again, but by Sunday night I would like Desi to write me that long email that disappeared I was promised a LONG time ago, and I'd love to see pregnant pictures from Gen and Stuart, I know you have them! And since I can't be there I need to see the pictures! hehe. And mom and dad!!!! You guys are supposed to email me every week! So you can't forget.

This week went by pretty fast. President Nielson is leaving here pretty soon, so we had our last interviews with him as president. It was a sad and happy occasion. I got to talk to Sister Nielson for awhile and I really got to see how a mission presidents wife can be involved in the missionary work. I found out that she receives inspiration about missionaries health and stuff. So yeah, the wives have a really big part in this work. We had lots of laughs. She's such a smart woman. I like the Nielson's a lot. I bet I'll love the Grimley's too. I'm so excited to meet them.

This week was just a happy week. Yesterday we didn't have a very planned out day and I thought it would be really slow, but it ended up being a lot of fun, and we visited an awesome family, and our last appointment was with the Li family, with Yvonne and her husband, and the Shan family did it with us. It was so good. The Shan family talked about how the mom and dad had split up and how they both ended up investigating the church, how the mother was a member referral, and the father saw a flyer about families and thought it was really great and realized his family had fallen apart, and they both investigated, but went to 2 different wards, so didn't even know. Then she eventually was told she has to call her husband for permission to be baptized and they were investigating the church...they got back together and now they are the cutest family I have ever seen and they love each other so much. And the Li family just really needed to hear their story. Yvonne was crying and her husband said he didn't realize how important families were before, and how he knows that studying about the church should bring them closer, but he has to slowly try to find a belief in God. Which the Elders are working on that with him! And doing great. So I'm excited for them. They are both progressing now and it is now something I see happening in the next few transfer that they get baptized.

My other favorite investigator we have right now, Rita, is just so great. I am happy when I visit her. She's willing to make a lot of changes in her life, but last lesson I think we threw too much on her at once, but it's okay, because now we know her problem is the Sabbath because it's her husbands only day off, so clearly we need to also get her husband interested to really help her. But for now she's just so cute and great, she was willing to keep every other commandment except the Sabbath day we told her about so far, and she even told us she'd invite her husband to church and see what he thought about the Sabbath day. So I'm excited for her.

Today we went to a theme parklike place with our new investigator, Lin Yuting and 2 new members, and all the Zhongli 2nd ward missionaries. I think it really helped her get to know us, and she likes church and is really good friends with the 2 boys baptized last week, so I'm excited to start seeing more of her. She's so cute. So now I will try to send pictures of today! Bye bye!

Missionary Letter: Happy Father's Day

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Thank you for all that you do for your little cute children. Especially me! Like paying for my mission. Thanks for making so many sacrifices for us and encouraging our testimonies to grow & teaching us to learn about our Savior. You are a really great Father. I love you!

All the way from Taiwan,

Sincerely,

Fu wenxin jiemei

S. Bruno

Missionary Email: Investigator Commits to Baptism after Randomly Reading a Scripture

Wednesday, June 17, 2009 12:59 AM

There isn't a lot to really say about this week, I'm spending most of my time on the computer sending pictures this week.

This week went by kind of slow, but it's weird because most days I don't remember what happened. Probably because I was lazy about writing in my journal this week, so I don't really remember what happened in the days.

Yesterday we rode around on our bikes for like 3 plus hours because plans ended up falling through, and then all of the things we did were on the opposite sides of our area. It put me in kind of a bad mood because I was so hot and tired and just didn't even want to bike to our last appointment by the end of the night. But I'm glad we did because we went and saw Rita. I love that lady. She's just so happy and nice she helps make me happier. We talked about keeping the commandments and the importance of baptism. So yeah our last appointment was really good.

I'm just going to tell the highlight story of the week, then the rest of my time i'm using to send pictures. This week we had an investigator, Zhen Peiyu. She's a really cute 28 year old girl who works at the Herbal Life store with her mother. She hasn't really been progressing a lot, so we didn't schedule to really meet with her that often, we would just see her when we went to visit her mom, and just encouraged her. But back a couple months ago, she said she couldn't be baptized until the 6th month. Well, we went over the other week and said, Peiyu, June is almost here, are you ready to start keeping the commandments? And she said maybe she'd try. She said she still remembered to pray sometimes. So we decided to set up with her, which we hadn't set up with just her in a long time. So this week we had an appointment with her Sunday night. We weren't really positive what we were going to discuss because Sundays we don't usually have time for companion study. So we went into the lesson, and my companion asked her if she had prayed about the Book of Mormon yet, they met missionaries back in March. And she said she still hadn't. So S. Hill was like, (and this is me translating to my best ability) well what great luck (geng2 hao3)! We have time right now. Let's pray and ask God to give you an answer if the Book of Mormon is true, since he sees that you have faith and pray. And so we kneeled down and my companion prayed, and while she was praying I was praying that Peiyu would get her answer and feel the spirit. And after the prayer we got the Book of Mormon off the table and told her to suibien flip and see what answer God had for her. She turned to Jacob 5. She started reading towards the end of the chapter about how this was the last time he was going to labor in his vineyard, until I think vs. 75. We weren't so into reading the end about burning in the fire. The spirit was so strong and all the while, still on our knees we talked about how the Lord was speaking to her, and she was sooo excited because she said it answered the question she'd been looking for an answer to about work for a long time, about how she needed to be more diligent and other things. And then after about 15 minutes on our knees, or more...they hurt so bad...we extended the baptism commitment and told her God wanted her to keep his commandments. She said okay and we got up, figured out a good date, and had Peiyu say a closing prayer and thank God for answering her question. After the closing prayer, she still had a question. She said the reason she was willing to commit to baptism was because we didn't' give up on her, even though she wasn't progressing like Daidai or her mother who came to church, but we still wanted to meet with her. So we both shared about how we loved her and gave our reason for being out here in Taiwan and willing to not give up on her. We shared quite a few scriptures, mostly in Alma 26 about glorifying in God and about being comforted when people didn't want to listen, but knowing that this is what will bring them the most happiness in their life. It was a really neat lesson. Seriously the best one I've been in so far. So now Peiyu who wasn't progressing since I got here in Zhongli is progressing! And when she gets back from Korea, she just went to Korea yesterday, then she will start coming to church! YAY! :)

So yeah, now I will go send pictures, if I have more time, maybe I'll write more later. Probably not though! Bye!

Fu jiemei.

Missionary Email: Last Zone Conference with Mission President

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 10:45 PM

Hey everyone!

I don't have as much time to write this week because first I took care of some business for my ward mission leader and an activity that I hope works out for our Young Women's, but since I can't email non-family members, I had to send it to gigi to have her forward it to the people I needed it sent to. Haha. So funny how many paths I had to go through to send 2 short emails. Thanks for doing that for me Gigi! But yeah I told our ward mission leader about having this testimony sharing opportunity with a ward from America, so I hope that it ends up being something they are able to do, because I know it will help them to be able to express their testimonies and everything. Some of the mothers here have expressed a concern about their children not having testimonies of the gospel, so it would be a good way for their parents to see that they really do have testimonies, written out and all. The only concern is time, so we will see what time frame she's on.

So just a really fast overview since I have only a couple minutes remaining, this week we had zone conference. It was our last one with President and Sister Nielson. It was very touching. There were a lot of tears. But good tears too. Everyone was sad to know this was our last one with them, but there were so many very strong testimonies. I really loved the two zone conferences and one mission conference I had with the Nielson's. Even though I was only here 2 transfers with them, I feel like they really love their missionaries and they are really amazing and great to us, so I am sad to see them go. But I'm sure our new mission president, Grimley will be great. We still have 3 more weeks with the Nielson's, then our mission will change. Taiwan will go down to two missions instead of three, and Taipei boundaries will change. It's kind of bittersweet, you know? Because change is a lot of fun it makes life interesting and each new day unique. But then at the same time change is incredibly hard because you learn to love people a lot. And then in seconds they are gone. Everyone always says the reason a mission prepares you for marriage is because you are with a companion all the time. But I've started to think a big reason people are more ready to get married after a mission is because they know what change is like. You change areas, companions, investigators. Your life changes a lot on a mission. Every transfer. Things aren't stable. I think it makes you feel like when you get home, you are ready for stability. Or at least, in my personal opinion it would. Everyone is different. Haha, just since President and his wife are leaving and wont be able to give everyone parting advice, they have been asking them to give them advice before they leave. So then it was on my mind for a couple minutes during zone conference and that's the conclusion I came to. Although I don't see myself getting married really soon after my mission. But I'll definitely be more ready than I was back in college, when a lot of people my age were getting married.

Okay that subject is boring now for another year at least...lets see something else at zone conference was just they talked about the fire with the baptism covenant. They talked about how we would have fire of adversity/trials. That brought a new meaning to the baptism of fire to us. In District meeting yesterday, Elder Lords asked us why it was that after baptism, it seemed like more adversity was prevalent (sp?) in our lives. The response I gave that came to my mind, although I'm not sure I'm completely right or wrong, was that with the gift of the Holy Ghost, we were then more accutely able to feel the power of the adversary working in our lives. That it was an awareness thing partly. And I said some other stuff I don't remember, but E. Lords responded that what I said sounded good, and another reason he thought it was that way is because when we make correct choices, the adversary isn't happy and is going to work doubly as hard to make us transgress, because he doesn't want us to be happy. He read to us from Moses chapter 1 about Satan. Satan is creepy in the Pearl of Great Price. I read PoGP in my first transfer and decided that. So yeah. That was neat that President and Sister Nielson talked about that and brought it to our attention.

So last Preparation day, we went down to Yingge and made pots. It was a lot of fun. I have some fun pictures I'll send one of these Preparation Days where we have time to pay for more time on the computer so we can send pictures, but today isn't one of them because in 8 minutes we are headed over to Taipei for Temple day. We get one every transfer. How lucky am I to be in this mission and get a Temple day once a transfer on preparation day. Pretty lucky I think :). The other mission gets to come once a yearish. And people in our mission too far away don't get to either. So I'm lucky to be in Zhongli, far enough from Taipei that it's a TAD cooler...but close enough it's not impossible to go for temple tours and temple day. By the way, I found out Taipei is nicknamed the concrete jungle...for good reason. It's hot here and it's not even summer yet! I'm so glad that when it's starting to get this hot next year I'm going home! I think it would be very hard for me to get through two summers here. AHHH. Me, accustomed to Idaho sent here to Taiwan. Haha. I'm hot! And it's really humid. Some days right before and after the rain it's hard for me to breathe. People used to say that about Rexburg, but I didn't feel that way. But now I do in the humidity. :)

Our investigators are doing okay. We found 6 new ones last week so I'm really excited about a new pool of investigators. My companion and I have been praying for new ones. We also fasted for them to come to church and the one we wanted most to come did! So our prayers and fasts are being answered. It's hot and the work is progressing. Life is good!

I didn't hear from mom and dad this week, don't forget to write me!

K bye!

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.

Missionary Emails: Barf-a-rama

Sunday, May 24, 2009 11:52 PM

Well, it looks like last weeks letter didn't send through. Maybe it was because the computer had only one minute left, I don't know, but lucky you because now you get two letters from me this week! And in less than a week too, so it's okay that I only got one letter from dad a paragraph long telling me how disappointed he was I didn't email him today, when I tried to..haha. Because that's KIND of my fault. I didn't expect much today because I didn't mention that we were getting move calls and so this P-day is a different day. I'm kind of sad though because I was hoping someone would tell me about why my investigator thought that about the DaVinci Code. And mom was probably really confused about that letter I forwarded to her, but now it will make more sense.

This week has been quite the week. Saturday night was a not so great experience. I got a really bad migraine during our lesson at 2. And I had a hard time focusing...but we got through the lesson without it being AWFUL bad...but then it started being a pounding headache once they left. We ended around 3:15 and we had a 3:30 brunch appointment with a lady in our English class, who isn't too interested in church, but she loves us and wanted us to come to her house to eat. But she ended up having a rushed day so she couldn't come to the church until 4. So anyways, we get to her house around 4:15, and I straightaway run into her bathroom and vomit up part of the xigua (watermelon, or literally western melon) drink that our 1 o'clock appointment had us drink. And I was grateful that our lunch was late that day so I didn't have too much to barf up. I thought I was done but was weary about eating anything at her house, because my headache was pretty bad and my stomach didn't seem like it would jieshou shiwu (accept food). So I was just upfront and told her I had just barely tu'ed and didn't think I could eat. She was nice about it. She gave me this drink with herbs and had me put this killer burning stuff on my head. It's like vicks for your head. It was really weird feeling and I wished I hadn't...but too late...hahaah. But it was an awful feeling. I didn't barf again at her house, but I just couldn't focus, and my head was like radiating from the Chinese medicine she had me put on my head. I felt bad because I like her a lot and wanted to talk, but it was hard. But she understood. She tried to get me to go rest, but I just wanted to get back to the church and I thought I would be fine as long as I wasn't barfing. She was in the car with us, driving us back to the church and telling me to take a rest...and I was like, I'm fine I'm fine...we have a 7 o'clock, I'll rest tonight. But then...we were one stoplight from the church and I barf in my mouth...but I didn't want to get it in her car, so I was just praying, please let me not barf anymore until I get out of the car...please please please...because I was just holding it in my mouth with my cheeks all puffed up. And the second we stopped in front of the church I dashed out of the car and barfed in the cute little bush right outside the church. I thought I was okay and went back to get my stuff and apologize, but then more barf came...and I barely made it to the bush..so my companion got my stuff and the lady drove off, and I proceeded to barf all over the bush, all over my shoes, all over myself. In front of everyone on the street because I couldn't make it inside the church. So after I was covered in barf on my arm, shoes, etc etc, we went in the church and called our 7 o'clock and rescheduled...I tried to clean up enough to ride my bike home...then we went home. And I took off all my barfy things, including my shoes and put them in the washer...then I got in the shower and washed off my legs and arms with soap...I mean it was sick because it was everywhere, my socks, my undershirt, you name it, it was covered in barf. Nice visual huh? :) And then my companion and I talked until bedtime because I was in too much pain to fall asleep. I took some excedrin and it made it a little better, but I wasn't able to sleep after midnight. So that was fun for me! We had biked a lot that day, so it could have been heat exhaustion, it's just weird to think it was heat exhaustion though because I drink a LOT of water..? I have this huge herbal life water bottle and I drink it all day. But one other embarrassing thing too, is the lady whose house we were at was all asking me if I was on my period yet in front of her husband and 16 and 12 year old sons. They are just really open here?

Friday night we got move calls. The new transfer starts today. This transfer is only 5 weeks long. We'll get a new mission president on July 1st. So they will do the transfers with the new president. It will be sad to see the Nielsons leave, but I'm sure our new president and his wife will be really great! I'm excited to meet them. Our mission will also grow and get some of the Taizhong (Taichung? depending on your pinyin) mission. Kaosiung will officially close. So this will be a fast transfer. I'm excited because my companion is coordinating sister and coordinates splits, and both the Bade and the Taoyuan sisters are training, so I'll get to see my old MTC friends Sister Watts and Sister Olsen. Oh! And I guess it's important to mention in the move calls, I found out I'm staying here in Zhongli with the same companion. Our district leader got moved, Elder Atwood to Banciao. Sad, it's hard to move when you only have one transfer left! Our zone leader E. Huang went home. And Elder McGee got transferred to Taipei 2nd. It was weird to see so much change. E. Atwood was really unique and a fun district leader. We were sad to see him go. And E. McGee has been here in Zhongli a LONG time. The members really love him, and they will miss him a lot. They were all really sad to hear he was going, but they are great, they'll probably love the new missionaries coming in.

I really loved our district and zone! I realize every time I have to say goodbye to people, I get a little sad, but I'll get to see E. Atwood at zone conference once more, and E. McGee has a little while left. So he'll be around. I guess it will be nice because at conference my companion was so excited to see all these people she knew, but I wasn't that excited because I only knew a select few people. I was excited to see them, but S. Ackerson is down in Hualien so I don't get to see her, so that just made me sad to see some of our MTC district and her to be missing. But each transfer I'll know more people and get more and more excited to see old district/zone members when I do! haha. Like now i get excited to see the 2 girls I went on splits with last transfer too. Woo. Now I'm old. Or at least not a trainee. Older than the brand new olds. And now my Chinese is improving lately. At first it didn't feel like it was, but this last week I feel like I'm understanding a lot more. I'm trying to participate in the lessons more. It's coming really slowly, but surely.

The last event I will talk about this week is exciting news...Li Yufeng, or Sister Lee as my companion calls her in her family emails, I just pinyin the Chinese instead of make it into English, but she actually speaks English REALLY well, so her name in English is Yvonne Lee. But like I was saying, Yu1feng1 made a baptism goal this week! WOOOO. I was really excited because she is special. Even our bishop and mission leader told us her family is special. She had a goal before and it passed, then she didn't want to make another goal for a long time. It was really nice she was willing to try her faith and make a goal. I don't know if she'll actually get baptized on that goal, which is in 2 weeks, because we want to wait for her husband who might a little longer, but we talked to the Elders and they are going to team up with us on this family since they live closer and can therefore follow up in person more often with him at nights. And they are Elders...So I have a feeling he'll start progressing a little faster and I can totally see them being baptized together this transfer. I have high hopes for them. I really love them a lot. And even if it doesn't happen this transfer, I know they will be baptized.

So yeah, those are the things I remember this week, other than that investigators are pretty much the same, coming along slowly. Not progressing in a lot of ways, church is one of the biggest problems. We are starting to feel like we need some new investigators because some of our old ones are less and less interested. We've been praying for new investigators. I'm sure we'll be blessed this transfer and see miracles. We've already met a lady married to a Canadian who is willing to meet with us, and even her husband said he'd meet with us too. She's funny because she said S. Hill's Chinese is better than her husbands, but her husbands Chinese is pretty good when we spoke to him! It's just probably hard to have the language barrier in a marriage and want to talk about your feelings and not being able to. It should be interesting because we talked about it, and he needs the lessons in English and she needs them in Chinese! So we'll just...um translate everything or something!? We'll figure it out. Maybe after a lesson or two with him he'll be willing to meet with Elders too? We'll see. He said he could see about coming to church next week when we told him there was a translation into English.

Okay I'm going to see how much time I have to send pictures now! bye!