Happy Thanksgiving! I am so grateful for all of you!!
If I could describe this week into three words, I would say: Miracles, Baptisms, and Curry.
This week was just incredible. And incredibly busy. But what's new?:)
I loved this week. Honestly, one of the best weeks of my mission. We saw so many miracles, and I want to share with you all a bit of the joy that comes with being a missionary, and seeing the hand of the Lord in our work every single day!
A huge miracle this week just came from being able to use technology! With everyone's busy lives and schedules, we had many investigators not able to meet with us this week. But, because of technology, we were able to Facetime with them instead! It was such a huge blessing! We are able to keep much better daily contact with these people, and help them progress even when we are not with them!
It also allowed me to be able to talk to one of my investigators, Hank, from HuaLian who got baptized this last week! Hank is the little brother of Xiang Ting that we baptized a little while ago. He is adorable, and has such a sweet testimony of this gospel! I loved teaching him and his family when I was there, and they are still doing so well!
I have three more miracles I want to share. This week the Lord really showed me that He is in the details of this work, and all He needs us to do is have faith.
The first happened on exchanges with sweet Sister Eyring! We had a busy night scheduled, but the first investigator of the night happened to be SO late! We were stressed because we didn't have wiggle room to move things around... But, we went forward with faith, quickly moving around what we could, and keeping lessons very brief and to the point. First miracle of the night was that that very late investigator happened to bring her mom to our meeting, so we were able to get two new investigators instead of one! HUGE miracle because we were lacking on our new investigator goal for the week, and this helped us reach it! But it didn't stop there... As I said, we had to move a lot of things back that night, but we had scheduled to visit a member family, that we weren't able to get a hold of. We were late getting to their home and were worried if they would even be there because we weren't able to get in touch with them the day prior either, so they might've forgotten. We got there, and sure enough, they weren't home. But right after turning away to walk back to our bikes, I saw a cute girl and just said "Hello!" This girl then proceeded to pull out her earphones, say hello back, and walk over to US to start talking to us! We started talking to her and learned she was a student, had gone to church (not ours) before, but hadn't been a while and was interested in coming back and learning more. She was SO prepared and exchanged just about every contact with us she could. hah We are excited to meet with her next week! But this was SO cool to me. We stuck to our plan, went forward with faith, and literally met the most prepared girl on the doorstep of our "failed attempt" to visit our member. THIS IS THE LORD'S WORK NOT OURS. He is putting those prepared people in our path, we literally just have to open our mouths and say hello.
Miracle #2. Stake Conference. On Saturday night we got a random text from an unknown number saying, "Hey, I'll be coming to church tomorrow!" We had no idea who it was, but after looking around the congregation, we realized it was an old investigator, ZHong JM! Zhong JM is a super cool mom who has a member family in America, and I met with her about 2 months ago. She was progressing well, but ran into some family opposition and kind of fell away. But this week, she decided to reappear! She did indeed come to church, and this week happened to be stake conference! She loved the messages shared, feelings she felt, and shared something really cool with me. She said, "Over these past two months, I have been reading the Book of Mormon and praying almost every day. I talk to my cousin often about the church, and Heavenly Father somehow keeps leading me back here. I keep running into your church members or church things, and I believe that is God telling me it might be my time. I told my husband I was coming here today, and he wasn't happy. But I believe if I trust God, God will help me change, and once my husband sees that, he will be supportive and want to learn himself. I think it is my time." SO COOL. I promised her that God would help her along this journey, and she agreed to start meeting with us again! SO AMAZING. I love that Heavenly Father keeps on preparing is people, even when we aren't in the picture! SO COOL.
Last but not least, the biggest miracle of all. YUN ZHEN. On Wednesday night we had a lesson with Yun Zhen, and it was then that we realized that our original scheduled baptismal date for her was coming up a week from then. But, we still had no news from her mom. I don't remember how much I have shared about Yun Zhen, but long story short, she is a foster child living with a member of our ward. She is 11 years old and the cutest little girl ever. She has such a great desire to be baptized and to follow gospel teachings. But she had always been waiting for her birth mom's permission to be able to get baptized. She's asked her grandparents before, trying to avoid having to ask her mom, but they said no. So, this time around, we knew it would be really hard for her to be able to be baptized. But, we had faith! So our lesson on Wednesday
came, and we decided to act. We acted on faith and called her mom. I have never seen anyone have so much faith. This little 11 year old had so much faith that her mom would let her be baptized that she didn't doubt for a second. She had more faith than even I had in that moment! But like Enos promises us in Enos 1:12, the Lord blessed her according to her desire, because of her faith. Her mom said yes and Yun Zhen was baptized this past week! Such cool miracles.
I never cease to be amazed at the great work of the Lord. I am reminded everyday that it is not my work, but His. And how lucky am I to be a part of it. Transfers end this week, and Sister Zhong and I are PRAYING to stay together. Hopefully I'll be talking to ya'll next week from sweet Yonghe. I love you all! have a great 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 power of technology haha - sneaking a pic while she was reading scriptures
2-6- Yun ZHen's baptism!
No comments:
Post a Comment