Letter # 78

Hey everyone,
This week was filled with many blessings. I know that last week I expressed the blessings that I felt we had received with the baptism of the Zhou family and the others. But I don't think that blessing really hit me until yesterday at Sacrament meeting. We had 5 of our investigators get confirmed and receive the Holy Ghost yesterday. Sister Zhou was crying the entire time. After that they all got up and bore there testimonies. It practically took the entire meeting. But it was so powerful. Every single one of their testimonies were powerful and everyone knew by the things spoken that they were new members planning to stay and truly endure to the end.

My companion and I were talking about it yesterday, and we had decided that the people that were baptized in October, were truly a special group, and that the Lord had special things for them to do in the Ward. One thing I thought that was particularly cool was that in the confirmation of the 15 year old that we baptized, the person giving the blessing kept talking about his mission, and how he needed to prepare himself for his mission. After the blessing I talked to him and asked him if he was listening to the blessing. He said yes. I asked if he was going on a mission then? We both kind of laughed. He said that he had a while before he goes and then he went on to asking me questions about what he had to do so that he could go. Basically the whole experience at church yesterday was great.

The Ward is completely thrilled, especially the Leadership. Another great miracle that happened on top of that was the Guo family. I have talked a lot about them. The mother of the family is one of our new members. She was baptized about one month ago and her 9 year old son followed her two weeks later. But because he was getting confirmed this week and had to say a quick testimony at church, the husband of the family was willing to go. It was amazing, because the night before I had a feeling that it was something that I wanted to pray about. Then the next morning at Church we were standing in the door waiting for everyone to walk into church and there they were. The whole family walking together. Everyone was in their Sunday clothes and the Father was in his suit. We were both shocked. Just another tender answer to my prayers that the Lord allowed me to experience. Tonight we are taking the whole Guo family over to the Bishops house to have a Family home evening and dinner. We are praying that the Dad will be able to make it.

One of the other really cool things we saw this last week was when we went over to the Zhou family house. When they were baptized the ward gave them a big picture of the Washington D.C. temple. "I don't know why that one?", but it's still big and pretty. Anyway we got there and we saw the big picture of the Temple right in front of the main room on top of the mantel. It looked like a Mormon family home when we walked in. It made me laugh and made me so happy to see how fast they were progressing.

This week, our finding efforts did not go as well as we would have hoped. We had huge goals and we worked really hard but we still were not able to see as many new investigators as we would have hoped for.

Oh, here is some new for everyone. In case you were wondering? The country of Taiwan has Halloween. Probably about 1% of the population actually knows or does anything about it. This week we were asked by the Taipei city government to go to this Halloween fair that they were holding for families and be volunteers there and work at some of the booths and basically just play around with the kids. It was right in Central Taipei so President asked my companion and I to be the ones translating and maintaining everyone, making sure that everyone was doing what they were supposed to. It was fun but a little exhausting. One of the activities we had to do was tell scary stories to all the kids. Elder Clavel, Elder Acorda and I got up and tried to tell this scary story about how Halloween got started. Elder Clavel was the narrator. I was the designated "witch" or the person that did all the actions, and Elder Acorda was the sound effects. It was a disaster. There was no real story line and not enough time to prepare and the in the middle of the story we were interrupted by a homeless man who walked through our performance and said some things that kids probably shouldn't hear. It was so funny all the Missionaries were just busting up laughing at us 3 up there trying to tell this story. The week was overall good. We are excited for this next week. My time is short but I am trying to leave it all out here. I try not to think about it. But it seems to be a haunting thought in the back of my head constantly letting me know that it is almost up. I have grown to love this work so much and I am so so grateful that I am still a "full-time" part of it. I love this Gospel and all that it brings. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has the sweetness that everyone needs in this life. I love it with all my heart.

The Scripture this week is one my companion picked. 2 Nephi 9:28-29.

O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish.

  But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God.