Good mornin' folks!
For starters, Mistral got baptized! So amazing to see her take those great steps! She has such high faith! Still has a lot to learn and a lot of growth to do, but she has a great desire to follow Christ's example and the plan God has for her! I am so excited to see her continual growth over this next little bit!
In other news, this week Sister Reinhard and I added a third companion! One of our roommates finished her mission and went back home to good old 'merica this past week, and so we were lucky enough to get her cute companion Sister Jensen! She is adorable. She is the same generation as Sister Birch (my trainee), so it has been fun seeing her learn and grow as she is still very new to missionary work! It has been pretty crazy these past few days trying to balance THREE areas, but the Lord is definitely helping us out. More people though truly bring more miracles. This week, we were able to find 8 new investigators, and some SUPER cool ones at that.
I think one of the biggest miracles we saw this week was with our new investigator, Penny. Oh man, she is so cool. A couple of weeks ago, we got this referral sent to us from America (this very rarely happens) about this girl, but all the referral said was her name, address, and some missionary's email.. so we were very confused. But we decided to go over to her home and check it out. She wasn't there when we went, so we left a note for her with our number asking her to call us! After a week of not hearing anything, we tried visiting her one more time, just to find that she wasn't home again. At that point, we kind of just gave up on the mystery referral and forgot about the whole thing. Until... du du du dunnnnn FRIDAY comes around and who do we get a call from? PENNY. She just called us and said "Hey are you the missionaries? I want to meet." um, YES.
We were so excited to meet her, and she definitely did not disappoint! She told us the crazy story of how she ended up with us that day. Last year, she went to live in Chicago for an internship for about 6 months to learn English. Before going, she was very Athiest and pretty closed to the idea of religion. She is very "sciencey" and likes evidence, experiments, and proof. She actually reminds me a lot of my RC Cindy from Hualian in that way! But when she moved to America, she had a pivotal moment that changed her views of religion. She was in a class where her teacher gave her class a prompt to write a paper on something they disagreed with that he had shared about himself or whatnot. She chose to write about disagreeing with Christianity. She said that Christians just choose to make everything that happens to them "a sign from God" and a part of "God's plan for them" and don't leave anything to chance. After submitting her paper, her teacher replied to what she wrote, and simply said "but if you reject this, then you have to accept the opposite- that everything that happens is simply by chance and has no greater meaning." This really struck her, and she realized that she was wrong. There was no way there couldn't be a God, because her life had to have more purpose than a series of events randomly happening. This was the start of her journey, and it was after that experience that she started opening up to religion.
While in America, she went to many churches, but happened to meet the missionaries from our church in her very last week in Chicago. But, being the amazing missionaries that those sisters were, they taught her a bit in that week and have kept in contact with her every since! Teaching her and reading the Book of Mormon with her over Facebook since March. Over those months, she has really started to develop her own faith and the seeds of her future testimony have been planted! We are just the lucky ones that get to help her harvest those seeds:) We had a great lesson with Penny, and she expressed that she is already seeking to know if this is really true. She also shared that as soon as she knows, she will be willing to be baptized! She was such a cool miracle this week, and I am SO pumped to keep teaching her!
Well, long story short, life is so good. Miracles keep on rollin' in, and God is so good to us. I never cease to be amazed at Heavenly Father's infinite grace and mercy towards all of His children. He really does love us.
AND I LOVE YOU TOO. Have the best week!
xoxo
Sister Richards
李姐妹
Lǐ Jǐemeì
Taiwan Taipei Mission
4/F, #24, Lane 183
Jin Hua Street
Taipei, Taiwan 106
1- the Shuanghe district
2/3- Mistral's baptism
4- baptism prepping
5-Taibei 101
6- My best friend came to visit me :) CINDY
7- My trainer Sister Cullen went home this week:(
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