Start of transfer 6 10/13/13

I think my favorite miracle was Tuesday night when we found a family for the Taidong sisters to teach. It's funny to see the relationships we've been building with Cai Huizhang's (Hualian's district president) family. We went to visit a referral we'd received of Cai Jiemei's niece and were waiting for Cai Jiemei to arrive to help us peike. Well, across the street from her niece lives Cai Huizhang's mom and 2 of his sisters. His older sister invited us in to just talk to them while we were waiting. She's always super sweet to us. She has yet to develop an interest in the gospel but it's incredible to build a relationship with her anyway because I believe one day it'll come based off of her good relationships. Then, we went to meet with the family and set a baptismal date with them! It was so awesome! Definitely a great last night in Taidong.

Well, being that I e-mailed you last Tuesday then most of the week after that was spent traveling or in Conference, I don't really have much more to report about missionary work at the moment...

I was blessed to say goodbye to my trainer at the transfer meeting as well as see many of my other mission friends.

Also, I got moved to Xizhi. It's basically in the heart of Taibei. I live a 40 min MRT & train ride from Jin Hua itself, the area where we have the temple and the Bu. My companion is Nicole Porter from Alpine, Utah. She's adorable and I already got to celebrate her 20th birthday with her last night. She's a 3rd transfer missionary which means I get to be her breaker too. Every missionary's second companion is their breaker. I was also Zhao Jiemei's breaker. However, I'm learning to love breaking because Zhao Jiemei and I ended up being great friends and had great unity and Sister Porter and I are already getting to be good friends. This is also a test for me however, as she is the first companion I've had that my chinese is the best in the companionship. I had a panic moment when I realized that one on Friday night. But I love how Sister Porter tries anyway. She really is an awesome missionary and I love the fire she has. I'm trying to learn from it, as well as trying to see Xizhi more as she does so I can love it as she does. Luckily, we are in the heart of Taibei where people tend to have relatively good English too. It'll be an interesting transfer I think. I'm ready to see the miracles we have and I hope the first one is the members working more with the missionaries. Sadly, they don't seem to have a very good attitude toward missionaries at the moment and I don't know why. However, that was a big topic in conference and apparently Saturday night's session of Stake conference will be much the same, kind of a huge blessing now that I'm here to see what it's like. It'll also be hard though since my first 2 Sundays here I wont have a chance to actually be with our ward, getting to know them.

This last week I really have learned the truthfulness of the statement that "whom the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies." This is definitely a huge blessing to me.

Last thing for the week is the heads up that next week I get to go to the Temple next week!!! YAY!!! If I got trunky in Taidong, it was always for the temple so now I don't have anything to be trunky about. Yea. :) But this means that my e-mail wont be coming until next Wednesday instead of Monday.

Well, that's about it for the week. Hope all is well!

Ai ni-o!

Sister Thomsen