Sister Richards takes Taiwan: Week 33: The Gospel Blesses Families/Blaire was baptized (March 19, 2017)

Hello team!

I hope everyone is doing well! Life is so good over here. This past week was another great one! With transfers around the corner and the very likely chance that I will be leaving my dear home of ZhongLi (jong lee), I have been soaking in every last moment here with the people that I love so dearly! I have been here 4.5 months, and so the odds are high that I'll be peacing out. Especially because I have already gone two transfers with Sister Cooper and she has only been here two transfers... So, yes we shall see. But, I do have members and investigators who are supposedly praying for me to stay so you never know;) haha

There isn't too too much to report on this week. Many of our investigators are making great progress. We had a few set baptismal dates this week, and others working hard to overcome some commandment problems. Tea man. Never has it been a more real problem than in this country. hah They love their tea! Doesn't help that it is sold on every street corner. Take the number of churches in Utah, times that by the amount of construction in Provo, and you've about got the number of tea shops on one street. hah SO yep. We are working on that one. But lots of great progression. We are feeling very very blessed.

Big news of the week is that Blaire got baptized! Ok let me give this a little background. Blaire is my RC Serena's older sister from XinZhu (my first area). When I was serving in XinZhu, we worked really hard with Serena to get her older sister Blaire to start meeting with us, but only just started the process before Sister Cullen and I got moved out of XinZhu. After we left, they closed the area for one transfer, and so most of that progression died, until last transfer when they put sisters back in and they were able to start from where we left off! And thanks to the awesome sisters currently serving there, Blaire was baptized last week! Blaire is now the last member of their family to be baptized. This family is seriously the biggest miracle to me. We met Serena and she was golden. We met her, taught her, and baptized her within a month.... A week after her, her mom got baptized in PingDong (a city in the south of Taiwan), a month or two after that her dad got baptized, and now her older sister Blaire is finishing off their family. Their entire family is now a part of this church and are anxiously waiting to head into the temple to be sealed a year from now! SO INCREDIBLE. The effort of many missionaries all over this little island and the Lord's direction and hand in all things, have led to this family becoming an eternal one. The gospel truly blesses families.

This week we had an awesome zone conference with half of our mission up in Taoyuan. We had Elder Funk from the Asia Area presidency come up and give us a training along with our amazing Mission President and wife. We all learned lots and lots of great things, but one thing that stood out to me was something President Jergensen said. He was talking about keeping the doctrine of Christ at the center of everything that we do, as directed recently in the missionary worldwide broadcast, and only doing things that help us bring others to the doctrine- faith, repentance, baptism, holy ghost, endure to the end. As he was talking about this, he reminded us that there are many things we can do to do this, but one important thing we need to do, is decide what we are NOT going to do. I loved this. Decide what you aren't going to do. I think this is such an important principle to live by. On or off of a mission. There are a lot of great things to do, good things to do, and so on and sometimes it is hard to know what to do. But decide right now what you AREN'T going to do. Decide now what you will do when situations arise so you can say no. Maybe as a missionary it is more of deciding to never leave the house at 10:31 versus 10:30 etc. I think at home this even has more applications. We can all think of applicable situations, but I challenge each of you this week to decide some things that you are NEVER going to do to help you stay righteous and be worthy of the spirit.

I love you all and love this work. Next week, I could be comin to you live from a whole new place with a new comp, maybe even a baby?? I don't know. THE OPTIONS ARE ENDLESS. SO pray for me. hah But have a wonderful wonderful week, and take some time to rededicate yourself to the Lord! He will continue to bless you all so much! Much love wo ai nimen

xoxo

Sister Richards

李姐妹

Lǐ Jǐemeì

Sister Micah Richards

Taiwan Taipei Mission

4/F, #24, Lane 183

Jin Hua Street

Taipei, Taiwan 106

Last week's misty p day excursion...