I just want you all to prepare yourself for this email because it's a crazy one. J/k not really, we just saw SO many miracles this week. Seriously, I am so overwhelmed with gratitude for all of the blessings we have been receiving lately!
Like every week on the mission, this past week was full of ups and downs. The ups this week totally outweighed the downs! The downs of the week ranged from freezing weather and pouring rain, to cat attacks (more details to come), to saying goodbye to SIX INCHES OF MY HAIR. Yep. It's fine. I told the man I wanted a trim and one snip later my life flashed before my eyes and I was done for. SO...yep. Even better, I went home to assess the damage, and realized it wasn't even cut straight so, I had to fix it myself. I had heard of the infamous "Taiwanese hair cuts" and I am here to testify that everything you hear is true. That may be my one and only hair cut on my mission...lol. But sacrifice brings miracles right?? ha!
Whether the Lord counted my hair loss as a sacrifice or not, He really poured down the blessings upon us this week! We saw some incredible miracles. The first is about our investigator He Jǐemeì.
He JM is a 50ish year old woman that we have been teaching for quite some time now. I met her when I first came to ZhongLi, so it has been about 4 months now. She progressed a ton at first, but has been stuck in a rut lately. At each lesson we teach her, we invite her to act and she does it but doesn't really know why and we ask her to talk to her husband and she says it's too hard and it is just this same process over and over again. We have been praying hard to know how we can help her get out of this rut and really progress and become converted. And this week, we received the answer to that prayer! We met with her this week and put in a lot of preparation to her lesson. We knew something had to change and so we started thinking about this lesson days in advance. Praying for her, studying for her, roleplaying for her and doing all we could to bring our "A" game to our lesson. We are in the middle of teaching her commandments right now, but we decided to just wait a second on teaching, and just ask her a lot of questions. We wanted to see where she is really at and give her a chance to share how she feels and let the Spirit testify to her through her own words. Long story short, the lesson was incredible. We were able to hear why she continues to learn about the gospel, why she is willing to keep commitments, and help her to see how this gospel really can bless her personally. She told us, "You all have this light about you that I want. This gospel brings me this peace that I always want to have with me." Our peike (member who came with us to the lesson) then reminded her, the only difference between us and her was that we had all been baptized and had the Holy Ghost, so we could always feel that peace. We talked about this and really helped her see that she did have this great desire to be baptized. Her concerns though were still very much about her husband, but also that she didn't feel like she really knew it was all true yet. We asked her if she had prayed about it. Really sincerely prayed about it. She said she had tried, but didn't really know how. We went over sincere prayer with her, and then, through the promptings of the Spirit, asked her if she would be willing to pray with us right then and ask God if it was true. We all knelt down in our little class room, and sweet He JM offered up the sweetest prayer and asked Heavenly Father if it was true. She couldn't even get through the word "Book of Mormon" before she just started to cry. The Spirit filled the room and she closed her prayer and just sat there for a sec. I asked her how she felt, and she said "I don't know how to explain it. I just feel so warm. When I asked, I felt this peace fill my whole body, and I just wanted to cry. It was a happy cry. I have never felt this way before." I then asked her what she thought those feelings meant, and she said "I think that was my answer." I said, "He JM, do you believe the BOM is true?" She said, "I know." AHHHHHHHHHH. We died! We were smiling so big we probably looked like kids on Christmas!! Man it was incredible.We saw someone gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon right before our eyes! It was such an amazing experience; most of the time we do not get to see this part of the conversion process. But Sister He is going to be baptized soon now that she knows for herself. SO SO many miracles and answers to fasting and prayers. God is listening people.
Wow so sorry for the novel, I just couldn't leave out the details!
Next was some great progress with our adorable 11 year old investigator An Tong. Her father is a member, and has recently recruited us to teach his daughter! The problem is that he is a little crazy. In our lesson this week he took it upon himself to explain to us that if you made any mistakes during the week, you couldn't take the sacrament. When we tried to tell him otherwise, he freaked out and said "drink tea" about 15 times like a broken record. ha! Our Peike went mad trying to tell him how dumb that was and Sister Cooper looked at me and gave me a "Oh no, now look what we've done, we've broken his sanity," kind of look. haha Luckily he recovered and in the midst of the chaos just simply asked An Tong if she wanted to get baptized. Yes. We asked if she wanted to come to church. Yes. So after transferring that information to her dad, he FINALLY agreed she could get baptized! They have some fandui (opposition?) from family members, so this was a huge step!! We are pumped for An Tong! She is a super smart little girl (she remembered the Plan of Salvation perfectly from when we taught it to her 3 weeks ago...) and needs the blessings the gospel can bring her in her growing up years. Lots of awesome things happening people.
Finally our other little baby 9 year old investigator Minnie passed her baptismal interview, so we are having a baptism this week! She is another blessing of working with members.
We had lots of other great miracles, but I know if I were most of you, I would've tapped out of this email a while ago so I'll leave it at that for today. ha! But one more funny story.
In an effort to work with the weather one night, we went knocking in one of our recent convert's neighborhoods. It was pouring and most people were weirded out by the two cold, wet foreigners at their doorstep trying to teach them about Jesus. So after about an hour of unsuccessful knocking, we went to our cute recent convert Yi Chen's house to teach her a lesson. She is 15 and most of the time she is alone and loves it when we visit her. We were grateful to have shelter from her rain, but her house brought a new challenge...her demon cat. We went in and were met by a disturbing smell and red gunk everywhere. The cat not only BIT ME (for the second time), but also managed to throw up all over the table and front room. (insert one hundred thumbs up emojis...) I was dying at the whole situation; Yi Chen running around trying to get us hot drinks and make us blow dry our hair and sopping wet skirts, me avoiding the cat, and Sister Cooper threatening the cat with her heavy bag while covering her nose to avoid herself not throwing up... Good times all around. ha!
This week, in both my personal study and relief society, we studied the talk "Serve" by Carl B. Cook of the Seventy. It is a great great message about service (obviously) and doing our part to do the Lord's work. What I particularly loved was a line he shared reading, "Gear down, Power up, and Serve." We are all busy yes, we all have things to do or things we want to do, but we need to give of ourselves to the Lord and just serve. Gear down- humble yourself, remember the Atonement and rely on the Savior. Power up- go forth with faith, work hard, be diligent, choose to have an attitude of love and service. And Serve. Just go serve. Serve in your callings. Serve a neighbor or friend. Serve a mission. Just serve. I loved this great reminder this week, and loved thinking about how I can make the service I am rendering more meaningful. I have chosen to serve a mission, but everyday I choose to serve those around me and the Lord by the way I act. By my diligence, obedience, patience, love, etc. I challenge all of you to think about your efforts to serve those around you, and most importantly the Lord as you go throughout this week. Gear down, power up, and just serve.
I love you all, and love my mission! I hope you all have a great week! See ya'll in a quick 7 days.
xoxo
Sister Richards
李姐妹
Taiwan Taipei Mission
4/F, #24, Lane 183
Jin Hua Street
Taipei, Taiwan 106
1- me vs the squatty potty
2- yes my life
3- the saddest day of my life
4- sweet minnie and the treasure map we made to teach her commandments:)
5- freezing all this week
6- an tong!
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