Hello hello hello from Taiwan! Happy Valentine's week, everyone. I'm sending as much love as I can from the opposite side of the world through this email! This week's been great - we had our first baptismal service this week! WOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! It was so awesome; I couldn't stop smiling. I played violin with my companion (she sang) and performed "Come Thou Fount" - I think everyone loved it, especially Lu Jiemei (the person who got baptized), which was great.
Okay! I've only got about fifteen minutes to write this, so I've got to be fast. So the audience of this email list is a mix of people of different faiths and different religious beliefs - I love that, and I have to apologize to some members of that audience. Most of the emails have been focused more on a Mormon audience, so this week's email is going to explain a lot of the terms that I use weekly and talk a little bit about what it is I acutally do as a missionary. Mormons - the stuff I'll talk about is unique to Taiwan in a lot of respects, so hopefully you'll be interested too. :)
- I serve with a district, or six missionaries who cover a couple different areas. In this case it's Hualian and Jian, two different townships of the same city (hualian). I actually see the elders (the guy missionaries) pretty much every day, since we teach our lessons at the chapel most of the time.
- Lessons - what is it that we actually teach? The gospel of Jesus Christ - faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. Our purpose is to help people come unto Christ by helping them receive the gospel, which includes all of these elements. This is why I'm always talking about baptism - we can have faith on our own, and we can repent on our own, but we cannot be baptized on our own. We need baptism by someone holding the proper priesthood authority of God in order to make it back to God's presence after this life, which is our goal. So, this is why my companion and I commit people to be baptized on a certain date the FIRST time we meet with them. It's a little scary, but I know that baptism really is so important! However, a lot of people lose interest and fall away, even if they commit to be baptized. So missionary work is all about committing everyone and helping as much as you can to help the investigators keep their commitments (pray, read the scriptures, go to church, keep the commandmens) to help them reach their baptism goals.
- Investigators - who are they? "Investigators" is the word for people who are interested in the Church, so the people that we teach. We have a lot of investigators, which is great. But like I mentioned earlier, they all progress at different levels. I pray for my investigators every day so that I can know how to best help them come unto Christ.
- Contacting. So when I'm not teaching, what is it that I'm doing, exactly? Contacting! I'm talking to everyone I can about the Gospel, and hoping that I can teach some people and commit them to be baptized, right on the street if necessary. All missions and all missionaries do contacting differently - in Taiwan, the most effective way is normally when you're on the street going some place. We'll pull over to the side of the road if we se someone walking and tlak to them, or we'll knock on car windows at stoplights, ask them to pull over, and then talk to them. We always teach them something, and then always invite them to do something (whether it's pray every day or even just giving us their phone number). There are always funny experiences with contacting; this past week's best one was probably when we were on the train to Taitung (we had a companion exchange, where we went to a different place to see how different people do missionary work). I was trying to teach the girl across the aisle about the gospel, but whenever I would try and say something to her, her boyfriend who was sitting next to her would choose that exact moment to be extremely affectionate with her. It was, as the Chinese would say, very "ganga" (awkward).
Spiritual thought - I forgot my scripture reference, but I want to say that it's Alma 8:5 where an angel tells Alma (a prophet) that he has "great cause to rejoice." The people here often say "xinku ni," which basically means "it stinks to be you." But you know what? I'm so incredibly happy every day - even when bad things happen! And I know that that honestly wouldn't be possible if I didn't know with all of my heart that this message is true. God lives. Jesus is His Son, and is Our Savior. I know that this is true, and I love telling people about it!
Alright, that's it for now. I love you all,
Sister Winters
No comments:
Post a Comment