For starters, happy birthday this week to my little brother Brig-aka the biggest stud I know!! 11 never looked so good! Also, hope you all LOVED conference this past weekend! We don't get to watch it until this weekend, so we are sitting here like kids on Christmas! I AM SO EXCITED! More to come on that next week.
This week was such a good one. We saw SO many miracles. The Lord is really furthering His work here. HuaLian is on FIRE!
We saw SO many miracles this week with new investigators, being led by the spirit to find new potentials, our sweet Sister Xie passing her baptismal interview, random people walking into the church, and our zone working to hit our goal of 7 baptisms this month! Our zone is so fun down here. It is small, but it makes it all the more fun because we all do everything together including morning ultimate frisbee for workouts, p-days playing volleyball on the beach, and lots of fun in between! We are a little family down here in good old Hualian:)
We really saw so many miracles I could go on for ages, but I'll share one super cool one. As ya'll know, we as missionaries study from Preach My Gospel A LOT, and are constantly striving to become "PMG Missionaries." We are constantly striving to do the things taught in PMG and become the missionaries our church leaders have outlined that we can be. This week, we had a cool experience with this. Sister Zang and I were supposed to go visit this part member family the other night and it happened to be FREEZING and pouring rain. Like, what the heck HuaLian? I thought you were supposed to be beautiful and sunny and not cold?? Anyways, we were sad. But we decided to head to the area of that family's home a little early and do some contacting around there. We had been going for about 45 minutes and were about ready to head over to their home, when they called us and canceled.... We were so bummed to not be able to teach the lesson, and were also a little sad not to have a chance to get out of the rain and cold. My companion got in a pretty bad car accident a few transfers ago and so after walking around for a while, her knees had really started hurting her as well. So all sorts of things were leading us to feel a little bummed. We decided to stop and say a prayer and ask Heavenly Father where He needed us to go. This also required a little humbling to say we were willing to keep on knocking around here if that is what He needed. And, Heavenly Father with His loving guidance, and a bit of a sense of humor, kept us there. As soon as we finished the prayer, a line from PMG came to my mind. "Stay in the area." Being a biking missionary in a HUGE area, we spend a lot of time getting from one place to another. So, we are typically very strategic in planning our activities around the same areas to avoid wasting lots of time biking and traveling. ANYWAYS, so, yes I had this thought. And we said "Hao ok Heavenly Father we will do this for you." We kept going, and turning down a street that Zang JM was pretty sure she had never been before. After knocking into a few people, she realized she had been there recently with her old comp and talked to all of these people. This is when we really wanted to change what we were doing. But I had the feeling again to stay, and we kept going. As we walked, Zang Jm saw a home that looked super familiar and realized it was an LA's house she had visited before. We decided to give it a try. We knocked and the LA wasn't home, but her mom and brother were, and so we had a chance to sit down and talk to them. LONG story short, her family is so prepared and have both committed to baptism! Miracles of striving to be a PMG missionary and humility. It sure isn't easy, but boy is it worth it.
I could go on and on but time is a ticking and I want to share a really cool thought I had this week. In my personal study, I was studying Alma 26- SUPER good chapter everyone please go read it. This chapter is pretty much Ammon's homecoming talk after his 14 year mission. In this chapter, he talks about some of the miracles he saw, the trials he had, the blessings the Lord gave him, and shared some cool experiences. But one thing that he focused on the most was "joy". The biggest result of his mission and his service was joy. As I read this, I took a second to ponder about joy. What is joy? Where does it come from? How do we feel joy? As I was thinking about this, I decided that happiness and joy are very different. Happiness is a warm, comfortable feeling that is usually fleeting. Happiness can come from a lot of different sources- a good book, a tasty meal, a smile, a good sleep, etc. But joy is something very different. Joy is a feeling you feel deep in your heart. It is a lasting warmth. A light. A peace. A feeling only brought on by sacrifice. When I think about my own mission, the greatest word I could use to describe it truly is joy. Joy that has come after months and months of hard work, of blood, sweat and tears (literally), of agonizing over investigators, of rejoicing in their victories, and in the hand of the Lord. Joy is a result of work.
I second the words of Ammon when he said, "my joy is carried away, even unto boasting in my God...Now if this is boasting, even so will I boast; for this is my life and my light, my joy and my salvation, and my redemption from everlasting wo. Yea, blessed is the name of my God, who has been mindful of this people, who are a branch of the tree of Israel, and has been lost from its body in a strange land; yea, I say, blessed be the name of my God, who has been mindful of us, wanderers in a strange land" (Alma 26:35-36). I know GOD is mindful of us, and as we work hard for Him and His people, we will be able to feel joy.
My heart is truly so full. I love this gospel. I love this work. And I am so full of Joy.
xoxo
Sister Richards
Taiwan Taipei Mission
4/F, #24, Lane 183
Jin Hua Street
Taipei, Taiwan 106
1- zone volleyball
2- high school musical?
3- just the daily
4- my companion picked our outfits today;)
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