11/17/13

Jiating! 大家好!!!

This last week started off pretty good. It started on Monday night with meeting with 2 of our investigators. One, Zhang Jiemei wasn't progressing. She's read out of the Book of Mormon before but hasn't been very renzhen about it. And she hadn't read at all recently when we went to see her. Well, I felt prompted to read 1 Nephi 1 with her, get her to truly start reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning. Reading it is good, reading cover-to-cover is even better. Well, apparently when we left it lit a fire under her and when I talked to her on Friday she told me she'd already most of 1st and 2nd Nephi and is almost into Jacob! Though she said the beginning is boring so she doesn't understand why I want her to read the whole thing... I hope someday she'll understand. Then we met with another investigator that has been around since around the time Sister Porter came to Xizhi but she doesn't meet with them very frequently. Well, she's been meeting with us the last two weeks and will meet with us again tonight, so it's a start that she's meeting regularly and more than that, she's started reading the Book of Mormon! Not a ton, but she's reading! Definitely a start! I feel like she's definitely progressing, wanting to see more of what this is all about finally. She also said an incredible prayer at the end of our meeting together. :) I love miracles of progressing investigators!

We had another really cool miracle Friday night. We were out contacting by our church and I went to give a pamphlet to a lady. Well, she started to tell us how she's Christian but she has friends that are LDS, one even married an R.M. that served in her ward when he was serving his mission here in Taiwan. Then she started talking about how she'd really like to know the difference between our church and other churches. She really has a desire to know. So we gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon and set up to meet with her this Wednesday. I'm excited to see how this goes :) So we have a few potentials set up for this week, I'm so excited for it! Especially when they seem to have as big of a desire as she does.

What is possibly my favorite miracle this week was the member-missionary work that happened with an LA. We had a few extra minutes before an appointment on Saturday so we went to visit an LA in the area. Sadly, they had a guard and guards don't let us just stop by to visit anyone :( Well, we had a ward activity Saturday night and our Bishop came over and was encouraging us to talk to the "investigators" to which I responded that none of them came. He told me that's okay, there's still a lot of investigators for you here, that we had about 100 people there and quite a few of them weren't members. Sadly, I still haven't gotten to know our members well enough to know this for myself... But he pointed out one on the front row and was like, she's not a member, go and talk to her. Lo and behold, she's just an LA that's been an LA for awhile! Just about as exciting to me. She said her friend who got baptized at the same time she did has kept in touch with her and invited her to come. It was so great to see that part of member missionary work. So we're now going to visit her later this week too. It was awesome to see the instant connection I had with her when I was able to tell her I understand, I used to be an LA too since she was really sheepish when she told me she's actually a member. She opened up a lot more almost instantly, especially when I told her I know how awkward it is to first come back, you feel like everyone's staring at you when they're usually not. It was great, we're already instant friends. It's been a blessing to see how I can use that experience to instantly connect to quite a few investigators and LAs. I love it. Who knew it would come so in handy?

In other news, winter has arrived in Taiwan. I have been soooo cold these last few days! I don't know how to stay warm as a biking missionary, in the rain, in a skirt. Seriously seems impossible to me right now. But "you xinxin, you banfa" (where there's a will, there's a way). I'll just be forever grateful to my trainer who gave me her coat, gloves, and scarves since she wasn't taking them home and didn't want to pack them when she was leaving Tu Cheng. My response to it is thank heavens :) Helps me now. Haha.

I know everyone's wondering how I'm doing. I'm really not so sore lately, just still bruised up pretty good on my legs. They're a fun combo of green and purple but really, I should've been hurt a lot worse. I'm lucky I just have a few bruises. So I'm happily taking it and trying to hide them from my ward because members tend to freak out at those things... But really, I'm fine. My bike's still in good shape. I am truly blessed :) Thank heavens for guardian angels.

Weird to think I also hit my 8 month on island mark this last week. And tomorrow I hit my 11 month mark on my mission :( Time really does just go way too fast! 7 months is NOT enough time. Guess I better get my butt in gear and make the most of every second of it.

I think that's about it for this week's novel. Hope all's well in your neck of the woods!

我 愛 妳!!!

湯姐妹

Sister Thomsen