Sister Winters - October 29, 2012 Farewell to Paradise (does that mean it's "Paradise Lost"?)

[Editor's note: Rebecca had her one-year mark on October 26th!  Hard to believe that she has been out an entire year.  Thank you for following her emails and keeping her in your prayers!  This email is sure to be a favorite...]

Dear family,

 

Zao an! I'm here in Cyberdome for what will probably the last time - that's right, I'm moving! Not positive where yet, but I do know that I'm training a second-transfer missionary. And apparently there's only one sister going home who's training this transfer, so all guesses are that I'm going to her area... in a place called Tianmu, located right in the heart of Taipei. Crazy! It sounds like it'll be the complete opposite of Taidong - really upper-class area, a ton of white people, tons of cars (please pray that I won't die), really western, etc. I think I'm still in denial that I'm going, but if I were to acknowlege it, I'd say that I am so sad to leave Taidong... But I am also excited to be in a completely new place for the last six months of my mission. I was especially excited to hear that I'll probably be there for Christmas - Christmas apparently is not celebrated very much at all in Taiwan in general, but since I'll be moving to such a western place, apparently I'll be able to have a much more Christmasy Christmas. Just another witness that God knows us and knows our needs. :) I am also excited to be able to participate in a lot more mission-wide things: they have all sorts of firesides that frequently go on here that I've never been able to attend before that I can now go to (ex: Sister Mary Cook and the 2nd counselor in the general RS presidency I forgot her name are coming to Taiwan! And for the first time ever, the "Sorry Hualian zone, but you can't come" statement doesn't apply to me).

 

This week we did have Arwen's baptism. It was great - I was so grateful that I was able to see the whole process of finding, teaching, and then baptizing. Well, not the whole process, I guess - she still needs to be retained! But she will. She's so great. :) But anyway, that was such a rewarding way to finish off the week and finish off my time here in Taidong in general. I was pretty disappointed that Tian Jiemei wasn't able to be baptized this past week (she had multiple family members in the hospital and wasn't able to leave them), but you know what? I know that I've helped them to the pathway to eternal life, and that's what matters. Plus Sister Marler's going to help her get baptized next transfer (along with a ton of others) and I trained Sister Marler, so it's practically the same thing, right?

 

We had some other miracles this week, too. Sister Marler and I tried a new contacting method that I'm definitely going to use in the future - it's called "dinner contacting." A lot of people aren't too willing to talk about the Gospel with you right off the bat, so sometimes it's good to use a different topic at the beginning to ease into the Gospel. In dinner contacting, the "different topic" is what the other person's favorite restaurant is. And then after you're done contacting, you go to the restaurant that gets the most votes. :) The place that ended up getting the most votes is one of my own favorite places, Hsuan Hsuan ("shoe-in shoe-in"), a fried rice place. Mmmmm. Anyway, while we were there, one of the workers there came up to us and said that she had met with missionaries before (apparently the reason she stopped was because she couldn't understand what the missionaries were saying! SAD!), and that she would be interested in meeting again. So we set up a time. Well, she became our new investigator! Talk about success, right? A great dinner, AND a great new investigator! I love my life. We also saw a nice tender mercy last night - we have a goal to meet with five active families each week (mission invite), something that's sometimes a little hard for us to do. Anyway, we had tried to set up with a Sister Liu last night, but she told us at church that she wouldn't be at home that time and we couldn't come by. Well, last night we were riding to a potential's house, and on the train tracks we ran into none other than the same Sister Liu that said she wouldn't be home and we couldn't visit her. She was out to "sanbu," or "go on a stroll." We kept riding, and I was a little miffed as I explained to Sister Marler that that member we just saw was the same one who wouldn't set up with us... and all because she was "busy" walking! Then Sister Marler very sensibly asked, "Well, can we just try and meet with her now?" We had already met our goal for new investigators. Members, on the other hand... not yet. So we raced back to Sister Liu and her family and asked to meet with them. They were a little hesitant at first, but then agreed. It was just a great little sign from Heavenly Father that He knew we were trying our hardest to make that goal, so He helped us out.

 

Okay, back to moving, sorry - yesterday was a really interesting experience. Everyone was really sad to see me go (there was one point at church where I had two grandmas sitting on either side of me holding my hands and crying because they didn't want me to leave), and the person playing piano in one of the branches' sacrament meetings played "God Be With You Till We Meet Again" as the postlude. Then we sang it again after we had dinner with the Wang family, one of my favorite families in the area. I don't know, I kept thinking back to almost exactly one year ago when I was having the same sad feelings of leaving... with my own home ward. These people really have become like my family (I call Taidong my "second hometown"), and it does break my heart to be leaving them. Except unlike my home ward when we sang "Till We Meet," I don't know when I'm going to meet these people again - it might really be "at Jesus' feet," just like the song says. That makes me doubly grateful for the chance I've had to be here in the first place, and, in some cases, help them have a chance to receive eternal life "at Jesus' feet." It's been a little embarrassing for me to think of my attitude one year ago and compare it to now - when I left home, I thought I was some kind of noble hero, making a huge sacrifice because God wanted to try my faith and see how I would respond. Now, I'm humbled and profoundly grateful that He was willing to give me such enormous blessings. This work has given me a kind of happiness that I've never felt before, has helped me learn things that I've never learned before, and has helped me meet people that I want to keep in touch with through the eternities. I also thought about how much I've grown just in the eight months since I've been here in Taidong. As I gave my "farewell talk" yesterday, I thought about how it seems like it was only yesterday when I struggled to say my "introduction talk" in what was probably broken Chinese after I first got to Taidong, and yet as I said goodbye to the people, I was able to read (albeit slowly) the Chinese characters for the scriptures I shared. God really does bless His missionaries so much.

 

Well, that is it for this week! I'm going to Sanxiantai today (the place with the bumpy bridge that leads to the cool island), and then will make the most of my three days here in paradise until I go up to Hualian for a quick companion exchange early on Thursday morning, go to the TEMPLE in Taipei on Thursday night, and then go meet my new companion and new area the next day. It's going to be a whirlwind - pray for me! I'll do the same for you as well. I love you all so much! Have a wonderful week.

 

Love,

Sister Winters

 

Sister Winters - October 22, 2012 "Oh, you mean the guy with the moles on his face?"

Dear family,

 

Weird title, I know. I'll explain later. :) Hello! How was this week for all of you? Well, I ask that, but I actually already know the answer - thank you for all of your wonderful emails and for telling me about your lives!

 

I'm doing great. I think I may have confused some of you with when I'm transferring and when the baptismal services will be. I'll find out this week whether or not I'll be transferred (probably will - President hinted something to that effect, unless he was just trying to play some sort of joke on me), and I'll also be helping two people get baptized this week: Arwen and Sister Tian. Please pray for them! You can also keep on praying for Becky - not quite sure what's up with her right now... And Sister Wan, that she'll keep the Word of Wisdom so that she can get baptized before I go (that's what we're aiming for). Arwen and Tian Jiemei will be baptized on my one-year mark on a mission. Can't think of a better way to celebrate!

 

A lot of great things happened this week! Some awesome spiritual and funny experiences. I hope to share most, if not all, of them with you!

 

First, English class. It's been a while since I've talked about English! Probably because I've had mixed feelings about it lately - Sister Marler and I have taught the little kids' class for the past two transfers, and sometimes it is out of control crazy. Lately it's been a little bit better. Anyway, here are some updates:

 

1. There was a kid with hair just like Justin Bieber's who didn't have an English name when he first came in. Of course, I had to name him "Bieber!" Sister Marler and I loved it, but the elders who started teaching Bieber didn't exactly feel the same way... Apparently whenever Bieber meets with the missionaries, he brings in questions about lyrics from Justin Bieber songs, such as: "What's 'Never Say Never' Mean?", etc. Unfortunately for the elders, I have no sympathy for them whatsoever and just view the entire thing as hilarious.

2. Did you know that Dora the Explorer here teaches English to Chinese-speakers, and not Spanish to English-speakers? I kind of want to get permission from President to watch it...

3. Last week I had an amazing idea for the spiritual thought in English class. We put together a Bingo board of phrases from The Book of Mormon (ex: Jerusalem, 'I, Nephi,' "And it came to pass...", brass plates, behold, etc.). So they were supposed to listen as we read out loud from the Book of Mormon and then raise their hands when we said one of the Bingo phrases. It was so great. The kids got so excited and started yelling "And it came to pass! AND IT CAME TO PASS!" over and over again. Even though I was a little deaf by the end of it all, Sister Marler and I were definitely laughing. Hopefully we'll keep those types of games coming.

 

One super-random story: the other day we were outside of 7-11 and we saw this scary-looking man come out with tatoos all over his body. He was carrying a pack of cigarettes with him, which he promptly put in his scooter. The only thing that set this man apart from your ordinary, scary-looking guy was that he had this pink fleece shoulder bag with a little white dog on the inside. And whereas this man was kind of dirty-looking, the dog and his bag were spotless and in pristine condition. It was all I could do to say, "That dog is really cute. And I like your bag." and not laugh my head off.

 

Okay, last funny story. This past week I went up to Hualian for companion exchanges. My companion was a Taiwanese missionary who's in her first transfer. It was a great experience. Now, just to remind some of you, my own trainer was Taiwanese. I remember her telling me one day that I was the "most American" companion she had ever had. I was a little confused and hurt at the time, but I now see what she meant - I hadn't really had any sort of Taiwanese influence at all before that point, so I was the most "un-Taiwanese" companion she'd ever had. Well, this past week I had the "most Taiwanese" companion I've ever had. My companion hadn't really been around Americans up close that much before, and she was always amazed that I could like eating rice and other Taiwanese foods here. Finally I had to tell her that I had been here for nine months already and of course I had gotten used to the food. I think she still might be a little bit in shock that I like it, though. But by far the best and most Taiwanese part of the exchange was when I was explaining an area general authority. I told her his name, what he had spoken on in the past, where he had served a mission, etc. - all of these things to try and help her remember who this general authority was- but she still couldn't place a face to the name. She thought for a moment and said, "Oh! You mean the guy with the moles on his face?" Now it was my turn to stare. I looked at her with wide eyes and said, "Well, I don't know. I'd never noticed." And then she thought for a moment, nodded, and then said, "Yeah, it's the guy with the moles on his face." Such a Taiwanese thing to say! So funny. I loved it. And I LOVE the Taiwanese people. But yeah, I guess you can take this as a hint not to be offended if I say anything that might be construed as offensive in my first few weeks back home.

 

Okay, now onto the spiritual part! You might remember that we were hoping for four baptisms this month. Well, this past week, like all of them had their problems and part of me felt, "Well, I guess we tried, and they used their agency to choose not to get baptized. There's nothing we can do about it." On the day where I started having those thoughts, I just didn't have the Spirit with me as much. I wasn't sure what was wrong, but when I said my prayers that night and spent a lot of time pleading with Heavenly Father to let me know what I was doing wrong so that I could have the Spirit with me more again, I realized that my attitude was wrong. So that next day I told Sister Marler in daily planning, "Sister Marler, we're changing all of our plans!" I told her that before we had felt a spiritual witness that the goals we set were what Jesus Christ wanted us to do. And, conveniently, we had decided that our "theme scripture" for this transfer was going to be Moroni 7:33 - if we have faith, we can do whatsoever thing is expedient in Christ. Well, I knew that it was expedient in Christ for us to hit those goals. So, by golly, we were going to do everything in our power to hit those goals! So we spent that morning biking to Zhiben, a place about 40 minutes away, to meet with Sister Wan. She's had some difficult family situations lately that have made it hard for her to meet with us. Well, anyway, the bike ride was long and tiring (but also gorgeous), and Wan Jiemei was late, so we only had a few minutes. BUT: the Spirit was so strong. I know that she was touched that we had followed the example of the Savior and left the 90 and 9 in Taidong to go after the one in Zhiben. I knew that Heavenly Father was so proud of us and of our decision. And I'm so happy that He was able to use His words in the scriptures and in prayer to get some sense into me, His unworthy and still unprofitable servant. One other cool thing - I was reviewing old talks from the MTC and came across one from Elder Christofferson. He talked about how we'll work really hard on our missions but then look back and realize that the Lord is the one who's done most of the work. That is so true! I'm working hard and trying to focus on the most important things, but still. The Lord is doing practically all of it. It's very humbling, but very reassuring at the same time.

 

Okay, I am way out of time. I love you all! Have an awesome week.

 

Love,

Sister Winters

 

PS: The song "Baby, baby" by Justin Bieber just came on. YES!

Sister Winters - October 15, 2012 Happy birthday, Joseph!

Dear family,

 

First of all, Happy Birthday, Joseph! I'll be celebrating it today in Taiwan and tomorrow for you in America. :) I hope you keep having an awesome time in Utah! I loved the pictures so far - especially of Puppy Skywalker.

 

This week was a good one. We had a few scares with some of our goals this week but Heavenly Father really helped us pull through on a lot of them yesterday; it really was a huge miracle. I think it's so amazing that He is so mindful of even the most seemingly inconsequential things. I'm so grateful for His help in this, His work.

 

So, general conference! Wow, it was so amazing. I totally agree with my brother Daniel, who said it best: "General conference to missionaries is like Twilight to teenage girls." For those of you wondering which language we watched it in, we were with everyone else who were watching it in Chinese, but we had a little table with headphones attached that let us listen to it in English. We totally ate it all up - especially the parts about "ask the missionaries!" and changing the mission age (we were all making peace signs in the back when they said things like that - I know, I'm turning Asian). We invited all of our investigators, recent converts, less-actives, and anyone else we met with in the week before conference to think of a question. I did the same - I wanted to know what things I could do, both now and especially after my mission, to keep spiritually progressing and to become a better disciple of Jesus Christ. Well, I definitely got my answers. It seemed like half of the talks emphasized the importance of praying to see who you can help, listening to the Spirit, and then acting right away to help those in need. I'm glad I can practice doing that now so I can get in the habit of doing that before I get back. I also want to be better about doing my own family history - thankfully I have a grandma on a mission in the Family History Research Center who will be close by when I get home who can help me out. :) I'm so happy that Heavenly Father answered my prayers of what I can do to be better, and I also take comfort from the assurance that there's "no pavilion" between us when we do what's right.

 

One cool moment I had with Becky afterwards: you might not have noticed this, but there was a speaker who said that if you're not exercising faith, repenting, and not baptized yet, do it NOW! Becky's thinking about changing her baptismal date to December, because "it just seems like a good time to make a change." I said: "Becky. If Peter, James, or John came up to you and said for you to get baptized now, would you do it?" She just stared at me and finally stammered, "I don't know, I've never thought of that before." I said, "Well, I'm asking you to think about it now! If one of Jesus Christ's apostles came up to you and told you to get baptized right then, would you do it? This is the exact same thing! These men are called as Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ! They are His spokesmen! These men are just like the apostles talked about in the Bible! It's exactly the same thing!"

 

....Well, you all know the truth now - I sometimes get a little intense as a missionary. As Sister Marler said to me last night (and this had nothing to do with anything I said to her, by the way): "When you feel strongly about something, you aren't afraid to let other people know." Another missionary in my district calls it my "righteous indignation." I'm not sure how I feel about that one.... Anyway, these words didn't necessarily produce an instant change in Becky with the exclamation, "YES! I want to get baptized NOW!!!!!!!!!!", but they did cause her to think about it a little bit. And I hope she's still thinking about it.

 

Now, Mom, you asked about baptisms. Well, our goal for this month was four. We'll see about Becky, so we're hoping now for at least three. That would be so awesome. Anyway, let me tell you about one of the people who's getting baptized this month. Her name's Arwen (so great, right?), or Hou Jiemei. Anyway, I met with Arwen yesterday to go over baptismal questions and make sure everything was good to go. She is so prepared. She gave these awesome answers, such as, "I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior, because I haven't been happier at any time of my life than when I've been trying to follow His example," or "I loved that talk that President Monson gave about helping other people. I know that he is a prophet of God," or, "Yes, I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet, because I know that the Book of Mormon is true. It answers my questions and makes me feel good inside." Wow! Was I really the one lucky enough to teach this girl? In reality, the answers to these questions were totally not taught by me. They were all dependent on her faith and her resolve to act and to go and do what God wanted her to do. I've felt blessed by going and doing what God's wanted me to do as well - both as far as my general testimony is concerned, and also with regards to Arwen specifically: Arwen told me, "I know that God loves me, because when I was at my lowest, and I didn't know what to do, you pulled up next to me on your bike and invited me to church. That is one of the greatest demonstrations of His love for me." Moments like that are ones that you'll remember a whole lifetime. Arwen will be the first person that I found from the beginning, taught, and then baptized. I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father is willing to let me see her spiritual progression to baptism before I go. We also have another sister named Tian Jiemei who's super-amazing that I'll talk more about later. And another person named Wan Jiemei.

 

Time is going by so fast - it's incredible to think that a year ago, I was so stressed and worried about the decision to serve a mission. And now I'm speaking Chinese (sort of), I'm in Taiwan (paradise), and I'm loving the people and experiences here. We're now entering week 4 of the transfer. I'll know at the end of next week whether or not I'm being transferred. Still no feelings on whether or not I'll be moving - it just probably makes sense logically that after 8 months I'll be going somewhere else... Sister Marler is predicting Zhubei (on the northwest coast), so that I'll avoid Taipei my whole mission. We'll see! I love you all so very much. Have an amazing week!

 

Love,

Sister Winters

Sister Winters - October 1, 2012 Moon cakes and pond juice

Editor's note - Rebecca's email from last week was lost in cyberspace.  Just think of this as a bonus week!

Dear everyone,

 

Thank you for all of the lovely birthday wishes! I feel very loved, and very happy, thank you. I also feel a little tired, haha! I'll include a picture that I had Sister Marler took this morning before we went to email with some of the birthday love I received - I have a confession, though: we had to take the picture about three times before I actually opened my eyes big enough that it looked normal. :) I love mission life! One of my friends wrote that today I'm "one year older, and wiser, too - especially wiser." That's so true. Obviously I'm here on a mission to help other people, but I also secretly love that this experience is helping me be better and wiser as well.

 

It was a good week! Really good. Things are going well with our investigators - we're hoping for four baptisms this month. It's going to happen! Pray for it! They probably won't happen until the last two weeks of October, though, so we'll probably have some people get baptized on the same day. Wouldn't that be fun? I'm already excited about it.

 

Dad, you asked about what kind of Chinese holiday was going on this week. Well, just in time, I was already planning on talking a little bit about the Mid-Autumn festival, or the Moon Festival, in Taiwan. It's scheduled according to the lunar calendar so its time changes every year. I wish I could tell you all a great long story of the Chinese tradition that started the Moon Festival, but honestly, I don't really know. I do, however, remember that there's a Sagua episode about it. Sagua was this PBS animation with Chinese cats in it and you can learn Chinese from it, I guess (no, I did not learn any Chinese fromSagua except maybe "Xie xie," or "thank you"). I only remember two things from Sagua: 1) Sagua's dad cat had the voice of Mr. Ratburn, and 2) there was an epsisode about the moon festival with moon cakes in it and I was really fascinated and wanted to try some. Well, imagine my delight when you fast-forward 15 years or so and I got to eat real-life (well, they're not living) moon cakes! So exciting. I want to say that there's some tradition with the moon cakes that there used to be messages in them or something like that to save someone. But apparently the elder sitting a couple computers down from me says that the moon festival celebrates nine sons who were shot down to save some girl. Hmm. My best bet would be to look it up on Wikipedia. It's a little pathetic that someone actually living in Taiwan still doesn't really know the story behind the festival. Oh, well. But, I do know what the Taiwanese do to celebrate! Three words: BBQ. Everyone's out grilling stuff and eating it and moon cakes and other things. My kind of festival, right? We had a branch activity to celebrate last Saturday but they wanted it to be something other than a BBQ. So we turned it into a cook-off. I'm not sure how I lucked out, but the missionaries got to be the judges of the food. We all had our plates piled up as we went first in line. It was pretty awesome. Yesterday we finished off the festival by watching fireworks in the sky as we biked to our next appointment - life is great. So, happy moon festival, everyone.

 

I also need to write about another meal I had this week that was not as good. There's this crazy restaurant next close to the church that all of the missionaries call "Ama's" ("Grandma's") - that is not the name of the restaurant, but there's an ama who looks like she's been about 85 for the last 10 years who owns the restaurant. Hence the name, "Ama's." Anyway, elders since the beginning of having elders in Taidong have loved going to Ama's, because it has tons of food for very cheap. Sisters, on the other hand, have mostly avoided going to Ama's, because of the sketchy atmosphere and the strange almost fake quality of the food that's served there. But there have still been a few times that I've gone. This week was one of those times. A member decided to treat us to lunch there, but then after she paid for our food she took off to go help her son with something. This is where the pond juice comes in. Most of the drinks at Ama's have tea or alcohol in them, except for this green bean juice. I've had some really good green bean juice, actually, but this stuff is very big and green and chunky. So we've affectionately named it "pond juice." Sister Zhang, the one who treated us, decided to buy us two tall glasses of pond juice to top off the weird food we were going to eat - Sister Marler and I exchanged panicked glances, but I don't think she noticed. Anyway, Ama pulled out the pond juice and we got drinking. And I got about a third of the way down when I noticed a mosquito swimming around. Gross. I tried to ask the ama for help, but then I saw what she was doing - using her bare hands to scoop up stuff and put it in drinks, using sketchy-looking dishes that looked like they hadn't been washed in forever, etc. I realized that she might not be my best choice for a sanitation ally. So later when her son came by and asked us if everything was alright, I gratefully explained that I had a mosquito in my drink, so I didn't really want to drink it. Thanks. He said, "Oh, I understand. Well if you can't finish it here, I think you should get it to go, just to make sure you finish it in the end. After all, you don't want to waste it." Wait, what? 'Like mother, like son,' I guess - the fact that there was a parasite who had sucked the blood of who knows how many other specimens floating around in my drink didn't seem to phase him at all. So I sighed and asked to get it to go (he nodded encouragingly)... and we dumped it out when we got to the church.

 

In other news, I'm finally onto learning Chinese characters. The mission has this program where we first learn how to teach all of the missionary lessons, then we learn 2,000+ regular words, then we learn the 2000+ characters that are in the Book of Mormon, then we can do whatever we want. I started the characters thing a few weeks ago and, as I do with all learning programs, am having a love-hate relationship with it. Mostly love. It's super-cool being able to finally read these things and see them on the pages of the things I read and on the signs where I go. The only downside is that in some ways, ignorance really was bliss. Now whenever I see characters (everywhere I go) I automatically try and see how many I know - a little distracting sometimes. But then I snap out of it and keep working. :) One of my investigators asked me how many characters I knew and I said (trying to sound casual and not too proud of myself): "Oh, you know, only like 300 or so." "Oh," she said, sounding disappointed and not-very-impressed. Then I was a little more honest: "It's totally not fair! I only had to learn 26 letters for English! And now there are tens of thousands of characters!" She said that she thought that English is hard, and Chinese was easy. I guess she has a point. Anyway, the point is, I'm still learning and trying to be patient with myself.

 

Miracles this week: there were a lot of great things that happened, and miraculous things too, but nothing that really fits well into story form. Let's just say that Heavenly Father helped us out a lot with meeting our goals and pulled a lot of strings to help investigators come to church, help us get new investigators (three of them were from member referrals!), etc. He loves us and knows us individually.

 

Well everyone, that is it for today. Thank you again for your birthday wishes - I'll try and make today the best 22nd birthday ever and celebrate it by eating lots of great food, going to the Taidong forest park, and eating some more great food. Have an amazing week! I love you!

 

-Sister Winters