Heellllloooooo! Ni men hao!!
I hope everyone had a great week! with lots of snow! ;)
Well the big news.....dada da daa! WJM will be getting baptized this Saturday! Yipeeee!!! She met with President Bishop and then we went and ate lunch all together (President and Sister Bishop, Sister Gibson and me, and WJM) and she was just so happy and started talking about how she wanted to serve a mission to Japan. :) Anyways, I love her so much and am so excited for this incredible change in her life. It is still not going to be easy for her, but her life is going to be so much better. Her baptismal covenant will bring her closer to Heavenly Father and through the Gift of the Holy Ghost she will feel more inspiration and light in her life. She loves her Savior, trusts in Him, and wants to follow Him so that is all she needs to keep her on the right path :) Pray for her this week!
The S family didn't come to church this week, but we visited them last week and the dad is doing sooo great! The problem is that the mom is not as into meeting with us - so we are working on that :)
ZJM, the wife of the T family, is doing so well! She is praying and reading every day, little by little, but progressing. :) She truly is a miracle - we taught their family for soooo long with no one really progressing, but Heavenly Father could see the bigger picture and knew her heart was changing! We just love teaching her because she lights up as she asks questions and learns about the gospel and how eternal it is. She has a strong interest in Jia pu which I think will help her to overcome her concerns with not being able to do the traditional worship of ancestors in Taiwan. She always asks if Heavenly Father really loves her, and we always say, "Yes, of course!" and she just smiles. :)
We met a few less-actives this week who we had not met before. One was a young family who has not been to church in years. The mom is from China and married a Taiwan man and they have three adorable kids.....we are praying we will be able to help them remember why this Gospel is so important for their family. We also met another adorable sister who we met at her work (which was an exercise/dance center - big temptation for me! haha) who was baptized years ago with her husband and still just loves the Book of Mormon and meeting with the missionaries. She left the church because her parents opposed and now they go to church at another Christian church. It just breaks my heart - there are so many less active families in our ward......so many families that could be sealed in the temple for time and all eternity, but have this or that that prevents them from coming to church. I just want to help them all, but know that we all have agency - which is sometimes the greatest and hardest thing! I know that if their hearts are in the right place, that can overcome any trials preventing them from coming to church because they have the Lord on their side - so that's what we have to help them see!
A few funny updates........
- Last Saturday our stake had a blood drive at the big college near-by. They asked the missionaries to do a puppet show about smoking.....yes it's true. We kind of had to put it together last minute, so we had the tallest elders hold a sheet and the rest of us had our cute little smoking puppets. It was definitely an experience!
- We went to visit a member's friend at the hospital on Tuesday.....we went to the hospital about a month ago and it was totally fine! Well this time we had to bike a little ways in the heat and then somehow we ended up in the emergency room which I wasn't quite ready for....but we finally found the lady in her room and started talking to her. Well I started to get a little dizzy so I sat down on the chair. Then the person next to her started throwing up.....so I moved to sitting on the floor. Then we started to sing a hymn for her and moved to a laying down position as we sang. O dear.....although I'm a missionary, I am definitely still me! So I testified that Heavenly Father loved her from laying on the floor - I'm sure she won't forget that experience :)
Tomorrow is our Mission Tour and Elder Larry Wilson of the Seventy will be speaking to us. Our apartment is performing the musical number...."O Savior Thou Who Wearest a Crown" Hymn #197...it's a beautiful and sacred hymn.
We encounter so many different Christian churches here on a daily basis and I've never thought so much about what makes us different. Well the Great Apostasy is obviously a huge part with the Restoration. But it is truly the restoration of the priesthood and the Plan of Salvation that separates us from other Christian churches. They can all testify of Christ, but they don't have the power to seal families for eternity. The PLAN can sometimes be harder to teach, but it is definitely on of my favorites to teach. When people here that this life is not the end and that they can be with their families forever, ahhh! they just have this look of wowness! I am so grateful for the Plan of Salvation. I know that it is truly a divine plan of Heavenly Father to help us all return to Him and to one day be like Him. This life is merely but a spec of dust on our Eternal timeline, but what a chance we have to prepare now to return home to Him (Alma 34:32). I'm grateful for the willingness of our Savior Jesus Christ to give us a way to come to earth, have His help, and overcome both spiritual and physical death so that we can become Eternal beings. I'm so grateful for my Eternal relationships, both in Heaven and on Earth, and am so kai xin (happy!) to let these sweet Taiwan people also know they can have them as well. I LOVE the Plan of Happiness :)
I love you all so very very much!! When times are hard, just think of the Plan of Happiness because it truly will make you happy :)
Love you!
Sister J.
Sis. Jarvis and her B-Day cake from the security guard at their apartment building.
He loves the Sisters!
Birthday dinner - Ice covered in delicious stuff!
The English Class Halloween Party - the Sisters went as twins!
Pumpkin Pie baked by a member for Sis. Jarvis's B-day!
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