Week 55: How to Baptize a Convert in 20 Days (August 20, 2017)

To the people I love most,

I hope you all had a wonderful week with school starting, summer coming to an end, and all the fun that comes with all of that! I love the excitement of a new school year and all of the great things that entails! But, I am really happy not to have to worry about school for a while still and get to focus on the best work there is:)

We had another great week here in YongHe! I am still amazed by the fast pace here in the city. I'm still getting used to the heavy traffic of people and cars and scooters all the time and the fact that I can literally just walk outside any place and there are people to talk to! ha It is so awesome. In previous areas, I had to be a lot more creative in finding and think through where people would be and who would live in our area and etc etc etc. Here it is just simply, GO. I love it!

This week was exciting because Sister Reinhard and I finished up our last exchanges! WOO. Man exchanges are so fun, but so tiring. hah I love working with all of the cute sisters around here, and learning from each of their examples. Plus exchanges always bring cool miralces:)

This week brought many miracles from great member work, to new English class break throughs, to progressing investigators, to the most delicious smoothies (lately our favs include banana smoothie (banana, tofu, soy milk) and pumpkin smoothie (boiled pumpkin, apple, cinnamon, tofu, soy milk, ginger)), and so many more. 

Our #1 miracle continues to be Mistral. We met her 15 days ago, and she is going to be baptized in 5 days... I'm making a new movie called "HOW TO BAPTIZE A CONVERT IN 20 DAYS." She has been golden from the very beginning. She has come to every activity we've had, all of church 3 times, passed her baptismal interview yesterday, heck we taught her ALL of the commandments in 30 minutes because she just didn't have any problems with any of them! Our district leader came out of her interview with his jaw dropped because she is so awesome. SO. BLESSED. I. COULD. CRY. So yep. Homegirl will be baptized this coming Saturday! 

As far as other investigators go, we are continuing to help our other homies progress towards baptism. They all have different concerns and things holding them back from taking that leap of faith- some it is waiting for their answers, others keep going out of town, others it is making the sacrifice to get to church each Sunday, and others is fear of water?? But, we have so much faith in them and will continue to work hard to help them to cross that finish line, or more accurately would be starting line. 

This area has many prepared people, and we are working hard to help them come unto Christ!

Two cool things that stuck out to me this past week were:

1- working with members 

2- using the Book of Mormon. 

I continue to be so impressed by the members here and their willingness to just open their mouths. We had a member this week willing to drop everything just to walk us over to her tailor because she thought she was nice and could use the gospel in her life! And you know what, MIRACLES FOLLOWED. It is so amazing to work along side so many of the faithful members here in Taiwan. I love to see their example. They make me so pumped to be a member missionary when I go home! (not trunky just excited to be a missionary forever)

2- The Book of Mormon is amazing. Last zone conference, we watched a training by Elder Christofferson where he referred to the Book of Mormon as "the tool of the harvest." And I have seen that so manifest throughout these past couple of weeks. We are using the Book of Mormon more in every aspect of the work, and seeing so much success. Our investigators now understand how to read the Book of Mormon better and receive answers through it, members have more direction to know how to share the gospel with their friends, and our contacts are so much more powerful.

With that, my own testimony of the Book of Mormon has strengthened so much. Lately in my own personal reading, I have been trying something new. A great way for me to be able to apply the things that I learn from the Book of Mormon is asking myself questions. I realized that I actually do this a lot in my own personal study, but I decided to take it one step further. I have been starting to write a question to ask myself or a question to ask an investigator on every page of the Book of Mormon. The idea of this is to be able to have more direction while reading that it will feel more personal to me, and be able to help my investigators read and understand the scriptures more! I have LOVED thinking of questions for each page as I have been reading this past week, and already feel like it is helping me gain a deeper understanding and love of this holy book. 

Well, I'm pretty sure I have talked about the Book of Mormon every week for this past month, but I just LOVE it. Sorry not sorry:)

Go read it people. I hope you all have a wonderful week! Good luck!

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

1/2- #taibeiisbeautifultoo (<- but hualian is still prettier. hah) Sister Bernhardt go to go p-daying with us!

3- One of my RCs, Jessica, came and visited me last p day

4-Taiwan- just your average Miao (Buddhist temple)

5- the jungle and city (with the taibei 101 in the background)

6-our English class reading the Book of Mormon because we told them it was their new textbook for our spiritual shares ha
7-8:Mistral. Just Mistral.
9- our new part member family and a very elaborate plan of salvation lesson haha!