Dear family,
Dajia hao! It's been a great week in Taipei, Taiwan. Let me tell you all about it!
Alright, so on preparation day this past week we got to play laser tag with a bunch of my MTC friends! So much fun. I heard that some of you had a good time looking at my photos from my laser tag trip in November - not sure how I feel about that..... That night I learned how to make zhuabing (a personal favorite Chinese snack) from scratch at a member's house. I think the most fun part was spreading lard on it - lard, real lard! I'd always read about it and thought it sounded so gross, so I think I was kind of secretly delighted when I saw it in real life and got to spread it all over my zhuabing before we cooked them. Oh, I guess we mashed them up before we cooked them and got to see all of the lard oozing out... yum. Anyway, best part of that whole adventure is that we ended up teaching the member's mother, who is currently not a member... But we hope she will be soon! Your prayers would be appreciated in that regard, as always.
Actually, there's a specific person who needs prayers, big-time. There's a girl that we're teaching named Rui Yu ("Ray" and a French-vowel "Ooo"). She's super-awesome: only eleven years old, but she loves reading The Book of Mormon and praying. We invited her a couple of visits ago to start repenting in her prayers - when I asked her last time how that was going, she said: "Well, it's good. But I don't repent in every prayer.... I normally say a couple of prayers every day, and I only repent in one of them every day. Is that okay?" So amazing. And then I shared Enos 1:26 with her last visit and asked how she would feel if Jesus Christ said those words to her. She said, "I would feel so happy and grateful if God would welcome me back and loved me like that." The Spirit was so strong as we testified to her that God does love her and does want her back. She has a baptismal goal for the end of this month, but she hasn't come to church at all. Although she's scared of water, she still has a desire to follow Jesus Christ and be baptized (she prayed at the end of one of our lessons on baptism that more people would be able to be baptized so that they could return to God's presence). So why hasn't she come to church? One word - grandma. The grandma hates Christianity and apparently gets really mad any time anything about any church is even mentioned. Now, Rui Yu doesn't need her grandma's permission to be baptized. But she does need her mom's, who is a less-active member who became less-active because her mother-in-law made such a huge fuss about the Church. Sister O'Brien (I'll talk about her in a second) and I have been praying to figure out a way to help her, but we're still kind of at a roadblock. Please pray for us, and please pray for Rui Yu!
Alright, next big point in my week: I got a new companion! Sister O'Brien, fresh from the MTC. She's 5'10", happy, energetic, and excited about serving the Lord. She seems amazing and I'm very very excited about training her. We've had a few crazy last couple of days (I'll talk about that in a second) so I haven't been able to talk to her as much as I would have liked, but I figure that we have three months of being together 24/7 so we'll probably get to know each other pretty well. :) She likes reading (especially the classics), hiking, and photography (get ready for good pictures of me!). And she was a law student at University of Washington who was studying microbiology before, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that she's probably got a pretty good brain, too - actually, I know she does, since I saw her taking notes of the words she didn't know during all six hours of church yesterday. Incredible. We found out later that when both of us saw each other at the training meeting that we felt like/hoped that we'd be companions. So I'm confident that God's behind us (as always), especially during these next two transfers! It's going to be incredible.
Speaking of the training meeting, we had a transfer meeting after that where we found out who would be with which companion, etc.. At that meeting, we also honored the missionaries who were going home. I knew a lot of them, and I was so close to crying as I realized that after a short 18 weeks (only a semester!), I'd be standing in their shoes. That was a bit of a shock. I also almost cried this past weekend during a few special performances that the missionary choir had. This past weekend the English ward did their own rendition of the Nativity story - it was awesome. The costumes were great, the story was great (read it straight out of the Bible)... they even had a live horse for Mary to ride on! It was a little raw on the emotions though to see it all done in English... Actually, wait. I take that back. I almost cried yesterday when I sang "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" in Chinese, so I guess it's just Christmas (and being a girl).
Okay, last miracle for this week: when I was at the transfer meeting, I saw an elder whom I'd served with in Taidong. He told me that a family that I had found while I was there that the elders ended up teaching was baptized! A family! That I found! It made me so so so so so so so incredibly happy. Even though I wasn't the one teaching them when it happened, it was all points for the same team. This is God's work, no doubt about it.
Well everyone, that is it for this week. The next time I'll be emailing you will be on Christmas Day, Taiwan time. Next Monday we'll be having an all-day zone meeting full of Christmas activities and fun. So you'll have to wait until next Tuesday until you can hear my "good tidings of great joy." I'm so glad that I don't have to wait for Christmas to share those tidings - that I'm able to spend every day of my life "making these sayings known abroad." I love you all! Until next week.
Love,
Sister Winters
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