Sister Winters - January 28, 2013 Misbehaved Missionaries

Dear family,

 

Good morning! I will first send out a disclaimer and say that I'm really tired this morning, so please don't hold me responsible for my actions if I write something really bizarre.

 

This week has been wonderful - a lot of improvement in different areas. But for some reason, I think there are fewer stories to share than I did last week. At least that's what it's seeming like to me now - I'll probably end up writing as long an email as I normally do.

 

So first things first, last P-day was great. We went to Yangmingshan (look it up), a mountain in my area here. My companion was very patient with me as I mixed up what bus we needed to take there (we ended up getting out a little late), but we still were able to take some nice pictures and just relax as we left the city.  No, I am not going to pick up a tent and permanently live in the woods when I get home, but yes, I know that sometimes the city life gets a little old here. Thankfully the city here is still beautiful and so interesting. Anyway, I found this cool nature reserve park close by so we might hit that up today.... if we have time. Why wouldn't we have time, you ask? Well, this sister missionary is passing off her last mission language test - phase 3. I have to have a meeting with the mission president - he opens up a Chinese copy of the Book of Mormon and then says, "Read." And then I have to read everything. I've been reading in characters for a while now, but I've been a little terrified to do it in front of my mission president. Thankfully our mission president is about as terrifying as a small kitten, so I think I'll live. Your prayers would still be welcomed and appreciated, though. :)

 

Some of you might be wondering how my "rescue" plans went last week. Still no news on Cindy (her mom said that she'd probably come to church, but still nothing) - please keep her in your prayers! There is another girl, though, who we're hoping to bring back into full activity. Rosie. She's been inactive for years now - which means it's extra-hard for her to come back. But we met with her a couple of times last week and she seemed to really appreciate it. When we asked if there was anything we could do to help her, she said, "I just want to spend more time with the two of you!" She said she's very willing to peike (help teach lessons), so hopefully we'll see some progress soon.

 

There has also been a lot of "no progress" with some of our investigators. I think the best example we had was when I asked one of them if she could come to church on Sunday. She said, "Well, you know, if I have time."

Me: "Well, do you have anything going on on Sunday?"

Her: "...No, not yet. But, you know, something could happen."

Me: "So what you're basically saying is that we're your lowest priority."

Her: "Yeah, you could say that."

 

Kind of sad. But also pretty funny as far as stories go. Don't worry - I'll do my best to help her examine her priorities. Wish me luck!

 

I also had a very funny/very terrifying experience yesterday at church. A senior missionary and his wife were in our sacrament meeting - the senior missionary spoke Chinese, but his wife didn't. This means that I got to do double duty with translating - translating into Chinese for her talk, and translating into English for when everyone else was speaking. Anyway, when her husband was speaking and talking about his experience as a young missionary in Taiwan, I thought that he made a joke and said: "Since we were such naughty/misbehaved young men, we didn't get any senior companions to help us when we got to Taiwan." I actually didn't understand the word he said to describe what kind of missionaries they were - I only understood half of it: "pi," which means "naughty," or "misbehaved" or "loves play and not to work." Chinese normally has two Chinese syllables with pretty much the same meaning to form a word, so I thought I could rightly assume that the unknown word he said meant "misbehaved." So I said it in my translation to his wife. Let's just say that his wife (and rightly so) was not very happy that I had said that her husband was a misbehaved missionary when he was young - she was quite the contrary, in fact. She told me very forcefully that I must have heard wrong and that I should not say anything like that in the future. I learned my lesson well: next time someone asks me to translate for them, politely refuse.

 

Just kidding.

 

Last but not least - I really do love the members here. We had the privilege to meet with a lot of members this past week, and they're awesome. Willing to help (and feed us!), and they're very sweet. Yesterday I was touched as a member shared his experience with another girl in the ward, "Candy." Candy is six years old and has been struggling with cancer since before I got here. This man shared some experiences of Candy as she was getting near the end. He told us that she had never complained, that she was just grateful that she had loved ones near her. There was a side effect of one of the medecines that she took that took away her eyesight, but she wasn't upset. She was grateful that she could still taste and smell and hear. In this last week of her life, she asked her family to take her to Yangmingshan. The flowers were in bloom, so her parents would hold up a flower close to her face and let her smell it. Candy also expressed a desire to go to the temple. Although she couldn't see it, she could hear the fountain close by and knew by that sound and by the feelings she had that she was near. She told her parents that she wanted to go back to live with Heavenly Father - they said, "alright, Candy. Save us a spot and we'll be there soon." Apparently yesterday was going to be one of her last. She told her parents, "I'm going back! Give me five, and then I'll be off! 3-2-1... launch!" And then she went to sleep. Hearing about Candy and what she wanted to do and what she talked about as she was close to death made me think about what I hold dear. One of the many blessings of being a missionary is that I've been able to see what's really important in life. My mom told me that one of the biggest changes her mission brought was that before her mission, she wondered how she could fit the Gospel in her life. After her mission, she instead asked herself: "How can I fit my life inside the Gospel?" I know that that change has happened in me as I've served, too.

 

Alright, everyone! I love you. I'm so grateful for each of you. Have a wonderful week!

 

Love,

Sister Winters

Sister Winters - January 21, 2013 To the Rescue!

Dearest family,

 

Good morning! It has been a CRAZY week this week: two companionship exchanges, my trainee getting lost for about 45 minutes, a specialized training meeting, my first time ever being sick enough to agree to staying at home for a little bit, and of course all other normal missionary craziness, to name a few. But life goes on! And I'm still "adding the oil," as the Taiwanese would say.  So let's hear some stories!

 

A lot of the good stories this week came from exchanges. I went to Jilong ("Keelung" if you use the English spelling) and a new place called Danshui ("Tamsui" in English, apparently) this week and a lot of great things happened. So my companion in Jilong was my very good friend Sister Mao. We had the same trainer, so that makes us "sisters" on the mission. We also have the added bond of having been in the same zone for most of my mission, so of course it was delightful to be companions with her. We got to Jilong and it was warm and sunny and we said, "Let's contact!" and then got to work. We went to Jilong's harbor and talked with the people sitting there and enjoying the sunshine. The first few people weren't very interested, but then I felt like we should go back to a certain spot and talk with a certain girl. Her name was Miss Simple (no, I am not making fun of her), and she said she was already Christian. Anyway, we started chatting with her and ended up saying a prayer with her. When I invited her to start praying every day, she was extremely reluctant and didn't answer. I was honestly pretty surprised - it's prayer, after all! And she's Christian, for crying out loud! She could at least say that she'd try or something... but no. She just faltered under my steady look and said, "Sorry."  Well, I found out afterwards why she was that way. Apparently she'd met with missionaries before. And they really scared her when they invited her to baptism - I guess they didn't explain it well and also asked her to be baptized only a few weeks after they'd met her. Anyway, because of that, she'd had a prejudice in her mind against the church and missionaries. It was awesome to see Sister Mao apologize that the missionaries had scared her before but still defend baptism and why missionaries invite people to be baptized. Miss Simple didn't end up giving us her phone number, but I know that God knew that she still had a bitter taste in her mouth about the Church and that we needed to help her. When we left she seemed a lot more friendly and warm towards the Church - she'll accept it someday! There was another great moment at the harbor where somebody contacted ME. And he wasn't crazy! Not too crazy, at any rate. Anyway, this guy came up and touched me on the arm and said (in English): "How are you?" When he found out that I spoke Chinese, he was so impressed and had me meet his parents. Apparently this boy (well, I guess he's my age) has an older brother who's a music superstar or something like that? Anyway, he loves Christianity and was so eager to meet with the missionaries. The mom was pretty excited, too. The dad, on the other hand, was not. It was pretty hilarious, actually - the son and wife would say something like, "We should invite them to dinner! Let's invite them to dinner!" or "Let's do a tour of their church!" or "Let's meet with them and learn more about their church!" and the dad would have this pained expression on his face and mumble something like "Let's go home" or "Aren't all of those Jehovah's Witnesses enough?" or "Don't make me." It kind of reminded me of that hilarious son-in-law who has the over-enthusiastic mother-in-law and wife in Sense & Sensibility... you know who I'm talking about. Anyway, we didn't meet with them but we got their information and Sister Mao called me two days ago to say that they're going to church! I'm glad my "golden hair" could help her out - YES. Last fun story from Jilong - we went to visit this investigator grandma. She's super-tired all of the time from watching her grandkids every day. When we got there, she was just putting the baby down for a nap. But of course the baby woke up in the middle of the lesson. She (the baby) was pretty inconsolable for a while, so I suggested that we sing a hymn. We sang "Teach Me To Walk in the Light," and as soon as we sang the first note, the baby stopped. It was pretty powerful. By the time we left they had already gotten on the church website so they could download the hymns onto the phone to help the baby get to sleep in the future!

 

There was also an awesome miracle in Danshui. There probably would've been more, but I was throwing up and in bed for the other half of the exchange (Funny/slightly gross side note: right before I lost my breakfast I read 3 Nephi 7:8. Look it up.). Anyway, our great miracle had to do with a less-active member that lives there. Sister Ruan, my companion, had been trying to set up members with very little success. So she just decided to flip through the ward roster and randomly call people to set them up if a name popped out. This is how she'd set up the Sister Lin whom we met with that night. As soon as Sister Lin came out to meet us, Sister Ruan said, "Oh! She's less-active." We politely asked Sister Lin how she was doing, and she promptly replied, "Very bad." Not necessarily an orthodox reply, but we found out why when we sat down in her home. Sister Lin had gotten a divorce. Not because she didn't love her husband, but because her mother's family had a rather large debt, and her mother-in-law didn't want her family to be "tainted" by the association. So she told her son to divorce his wife and he agreed (don't even get me started on evil Taiwanese parents-in-law). Sister Lin, of course, was absolutely heartbroken - she'd lost her husband and her three children (aged 8, 5, and 3) in only a manner of a few days. She told us that soon after her divorce had happened, she had gotten in touch with the elder who'd baptized her. He told her that she needed to get back in contact with the church, whether it was through the bishop or the missionaries or what. Well, not too long after that, Sister Ruan had called to set up to meet. The Spirit was so powerful - it was so clear that we were God's servants and were there to help His daughter when she needed Him. Thankfully I had just watched a movie on mormon.org about why bad things happen (we're now allowed to get on mormon.org for one hour during each week) and it ended up being perfect for the situation. I still haven't followed up to see if she was able to make it to church on Sunday, but I know she's back on the path!

 

Can I just say that I love being on the Lord's rescue squad? It's the best. Lately Cindy (Daniel's recent convert) hasn't been coming to church... and hasn't been answering my calls. We randomly visited her a couple of weeks ago and she promised to come to church, but still nothing. So after reporting it to the ward mission leader, the Relief Society President got in contact with me last night to see what we could do. Then I got in touch with a girl Cindy's age... who got in touch with another girl. They've been trying to see what's been going on. No success on that front, but we're going with her to Cindy's house this week to go "to the rescue" - please pray for us! There's another girl named Rosie that I've been trying to get back to church for a while. She made it to church yesterday but then left early because she had to go to work. Before she went, she left me a note that talked about how she remembered a time where I'd told her, "I want to tell you that we haven't forgotten about you." She said that she was sorry that she was so weak but asked me not to give up on her. When I read that note I was once again blown away by how much God trusts His missionaries. Being a missionary has helped me understand more than ever that "the worth of souls is great in the sight of God."

 

Last miracle and then I'm gone - we've been praying for an investigator, Annie, to be able to come to church. She'd agreed two weeks ago, but then stood us up. Last week I put my bold face on and said, "Annie, I'm a representative of Jesus Christ. I'm like the doctor, and going to church is the medecine that I'm prescribing. Will you come to church?" She agreed. And yesterday, she came! And she loved it! I was so relieved - she's been having some hard times lately and I was praying so hard that the speakers at church would answer her prayers. As I talked to her about it afterwards she said that she felt like there were so many things that spoke to her. God knows us! He answers our prayers!

 

Speaking of prayers, please pray for our Sister Liu. She's preparing to be baptized, but is also scared about some things. She needs our prayers!

 

Well, I love being a missionary, and I love you. Thank you for your prayers! Keep them coming.

 

Love,

Sister Winters

Sister Winters - January 14, 2012 One year and still going!

Dear family and friends,

 

Dajia hao! It's been a great week, full of some wonderfully spiritual and hilarious moments. Care if I share?

 

This past week I celebrated my one-year anniversary in Taiwan. Wow! I feel so lucky to have been on this wonderful island for over a year. Time's flown by! Sister O'Brien was very good to me and we had a wonderful week-long celebration. Highlights included Coldstone Creamery ice cream (the only place on this island with real ice cream), receiving my last Christmas package (which I loved - the sweater is so bright and happy and the calendar brings me indescribable joy!), and eating Thai food for dinner (my all-time favorite). An added bonus for the Thai food: there were members eating at the same restaurant and they bought a delicious coconut milk-based dessert for us. YES. Thinking back on the occasion, my reaction to eating the Thai food must have been funny to see - I wouldn't call my feelings "trunky," but I would definitely identify them as a sudden realization that yes, there is extremely delicious food in the USA that won't be too bad coming back to. Of course, I guess I could just eat that food here as well, but it's quite a bit more expensive than the normal greasy-but-delicious Taiwanese food we buy here (although the Thai food is still a lot cheaper than it would be in the US - about $5. Go figure.).

 

On a completely different note, I had two big confidence boosts about my looks this week. One of them took place in the form in a miracle! Sister O'Brien and I were "on the rescue" and were looking for a former investigator family (we've been doing that more lately - it's given me more perspective as to how the Savior feels about us and how I should be even after I get back from my mission). Anyway, no luck. Or at least no luck as far as meeting with that family goes. So we contacted around the area for a little bit - no success. I kept feeling like we should leave, but yet we weren't really leaving. Just as we were turning around to go, I found out why. A tall girl with bleach blonde hair, braces, and sunglasses on (it was cloudy outside, by the way) yelled "WAIT!!!" and ran up to us. She was wearing high heels so by the time she reached us she was a little out of breath, haha. But anyway, she breathlessly explained that she was a college student doing fashion design ("I have a passion for fashion" were her exact words) and she needed two American models and we would be perfect. A brief image of me in a long, beautiful dress on a runway with a nametag on flashed through my mind for a brief second before I told her that we probably couldn't model for her, but that I could probably get her in touch with some more Americans who probably could (English ward). She was so grateful and said, "I've needed to find models so bad! I've been praying and praying to God for Him to help me out. I believe in Jesus, too!" She said that after her fashion show is done she would love to worship with us and maybe even go out and proselyte with us! Haha her name is Vivian and she is very cute. I hope that things work out with her. Oh! The other ego-building moment - yesterday we were meeting with one of our investigators and she raised her hand and said: "Are your eyelashes really long and curly like that? Or are they fake?" I laughingly (is that a word) explained that I wear mascara, but yes, they're real. She was so impressed/jealous/in awe. It was hilarious.

 

Speaking of our investigators, though, you asked about the people we're teaching and how they're progressing. To tell you the truth, we're kind of in a stagnant-but-trying-not-to-be-stagnant phase right now. We have people progressing towards baptism, but it's all pretty slow. But, we do have a miracle in the form of baptisms this month! The sisters in Neihu (north of us) are teaching a sister that actually lives here but goes there every now and then to take care of her mom. So she'll be baptized later this month on the 26th. We're so excited! Her name is Sister Liu and from the one time that I've seen her it seems like she's really great. As far as other investigators go, a lot of them have family opposition problems. Some of these people are 19 or 11 where they still need their parents' permission, but a lot of the time its when they don't needpermission (eg: they're over the age of 20 or when it's a family member like a grandma where they don't technically need their permission to be baptized). The people we're hoping for the most are a Sister Cao - she's a former who didn't show up for her baptism interview but seems happy to be contacting the church again. She's 31 and thinks that her father-in-law will oppose; Sister Xu - a cute student that we taught for the second time yesterday (she's the one who asked me about my eyelashes); and then the miracle Sister Wu, whom we haven't been able to meet with in a while because of finals but we'll be meeting with her tomorrow. I would say that the biggest problem that we've been having with our investigators is church - it's been by far the lowest it's ever been on my entire mission. Yes, people in Taipei are in general busier than people in Taidong, but still - I'm going to be trying my best to "boldly declare repentance" in that area this week since not much else has been working. Please pray for me! Oh, and please pray for Vicky, one of our investigators. She loves the Gospel but has a hard life and hasn't been doing too well lately so she needs all of the help she can get.

 

Last thing: this past week we got to go and see a fireside featuring Elder Kitchen, one of the elders in the first batch sent here to Taiwan more than 50 years ago. He's a temple worker missionary right now and it was so amazing to hear about his experiences. No chapels, no investigators, no copies of the Book of Mormon... and I think getting people to church is hard! It made me very grateful for the resources we have now. And it also made me grateful for the people that I get to be in contact with. Elder Kitchen said that he was happy to be back in Taiwan - "Ever since I left, I've often missed you." It's interesting because the word for "miss" and the word for "think of" is one and the same. So when he said "I've often missed you," he was also saying, "I've often thought of you." Honestly, it was hard for me not to cry at that point. I know that when I leave here, I'll leave part of my heart here in Taiwan - it'll be my turn to often miss and think of the people whom I left here, and I won't be complete until I see them again. I'm so grateful that my Father in Heaven knows me and loves me well enough to send me here and meet His precious sons and daughters in Taiwan.

 

I love my life! Thank you for letting me share it with you. Have a wonderful week!

 

Love,

Sister Winters

 

PS - Enjoy the pictures! A couple ones of the Taipei temple I took on Christmas Eve and then a few of me from Christmas day.

Sister Winters - January 7, 2012 One Size Fits All?

Dear best family in the world,

 

Good morning! It's great to hear that things are wonderful in Georgia. I'm also very happy here and I'm excited to share about some miracles that happened this week.

 

So what with moving this week and a two-day leadership meeting that I'll talk about in a second, you can probably guess that this week was pretty crazy. And numbers were a definite all-time low. But "crazy" weeks like that just make the really good ones even better, right? So I'm excited for a really amazing week this week. And something that someone wrote me this past week had me thinking - he said that by following the promptings of the Spirit, I was sure to be blessed. Well, we've been trying harder than ever to follow the Spirit - it's becoming more natural. And I mean yeah, that makes me happy to follow the Spirit because it means that I'm doing what God wants me to do, but honestly, I'd kind of forgotten that when we follow the Spirit it brings a lot of blessings. Well, I knew that, I just wasn't focusing on it.

 

Does that make sense?

 

Point of the story is that I'm excited to see the blessings that will come from listening to the Spirit. Actually, we've seen some amazing ones already. Let me tell you all about it!

 

I think the coolest story was the other night when we were riding back from gathering up the last stuff from our apartment. We were riding back and I saw this lady taking a picture with a nice camera. I felt like we should go back and talk to her, since we'd at least have the connection of photography to get us started. The only problem was that Sister O'Brien was leading the way up ahead and sometimes she has a habit of losing me if she's not careful. :) So I quickly caught up with her, told her what was happening, and then we turned back. Well, we kept riding, and there was no sign at all of the woman whom I'd seen earlier. That was a little disappointing, but we decided we'd turn around and head home again. That's when I heard a voice say, "Hello! Sister missionaries!" I turned around and saw a member from Taizhong who had visited our ward a few weeks ago. We chatted for a bit and then she introduced us to her sister who lives in Shilin but is not a member of our church. She just had a baby (#5 in her family! That's unheard of here) and seemed very sweet. And then she agreed to give us her phone number! It was a miracle - I know that's why the Spirit prompted me to go back. Then at church yesterday I saw the member again and she told me how thrilled she was that we had asked for her sister's contact information and that she was willing to give it to us. This Taizhong sister said that she's prayed for her sister to get in contact with the church for a long long long long time and has put her name on the prayer roll and everything. It was really cool to see that Heavenly Father used us to answer this woman's prayers.

 

We also had some miracle people that have been given to us through other missionaries. The plan for this week's training meeting was for Sister O'Brien to be on exchanges with my friend Sister Daye while I was in the meeting. Well, during our weekly planning, I remembered that Sister Daye had served here in Tianmu during her first two transfers and had a distinct prompting to tell Sister O'Brien to ask Sister Daye for ideas of whom she taught earlier that she felt were ripe for the Gospel. Well, when Sister O'Brien came back from exchanges, she had a huge list of people with stories and background about them that we should contact. I've already gotten a hold of one of them and she's meeting dinner with us tonight. I'm really really excited to see what happens from it and from contacting the other names that were given to us. A few other miracles happened last night when two missionaries called us and said that their investigator lives in our area and they wanted us to start teaching them. This area is turning into the "promised land," just like the East Coast!

 

Actually, that was one thing I was thinking about yesterday. I've gotten used to serving in the city by now, but I've kind of subconsciously been thinking of this place as somewhere that just won't compare to Taidong. All of the missionaries talk about the East Coast (Taidong and Hualian) as the best areas ever, as places where miracles happen. Since I've kind of "grown up" mission-wise with that mindset, I think I've been viewing Taipei as a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah, if you will. Or Mordor. Either way, you get my point. Anyway, the point of this story is that yesterday during my personal study I realized that it shouldn't be that way. I should look at every area as the promised land, as a place of miracles. Because miracles will happen, no matter where you are! So that's my epiphany. I hope that I can keep that attitude burning bright for these next few months.

 

Alright, the training meeting. Last weekend we had our first semi-annual mission leadership training meeting. It was awesome - all of the district leaders, zone leaders, and coordinating sisters had a chance to participate. The meeting went for two days straight from 9 in the morning until 6 at night - it was intense. But somehow after it was all over I left feeling rejuvenated and more excited about the work than exhausted and drained from 30 hours of meetings. One of my favorite parts of the meeting was doing some training myself - with none other than my favorite MTC companion, Sister Christensen from Hualian. Together we trained the mission leaders on "Teach People, Not Lessons"... and it was great. A little "pat myself on the back" moment was to see an object lesson that I thought of work out perfectly. So for this last birthday, my grandparents bought me a cute pink blazer. I stood in front of everyone wearing my blazer and said, "This blazer represents the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I feel so warm and happy because I have this Gospel. So now since I'm a missionary, I want to share it with everyone! Elder Braithwaite, can you come up, please?" And this 6'7" tall red-headed elder came to the front. "Elder Braithwaite, I want to share the Gospel with you. Can you take of your suit coat?" So Elder Braithwaite took of his coat and started putting on the "Gospel." It was SO FUNNY. Everyone was cracking up, and of course Sister Christensen with her great fashion sense said, "You look great! Who said red and pink don't go well together?" Anyway, we had a great time, and I think (I hope) everyone learned something from it. I know I did.

 

Another highlight from the meeting was going on exchanges on that Friday night. I was paired up with Sister Muhelstein and Sister Christensen, two sisters who were in the MTC with me. It was so much fun to go out with them and proselyte - I love training, but it was so refreshing to not have to worry about trying to have companionship unity or helping them understand what was going on. That night we went knocking on doors and I prayed to find a family. Then as we got out and knocked we talked about how none of us had ever had much success from knocking but knew that great people came because of it. So we knocked and tried to follow the Spirit to know where to go. In about 10 minutes or so, we rang the doorbell of this one house. And I rang it again after nobody answered. And then Sister Muhelsten knocked on the same door when nobody answered after that (we're turning Taiwanese, I know). And then this little grandma came out and said, "Oh! I thought you were my grandchildren. They should be getting home soon." Sure enough, as we looked down the street there were some kids with their mom and their grandpa. They saw us and were so excited to let us in and to feed us fruit - we had found a family! The funniest part was probably the grandpa - apparently his specialty is cutting people's silhouettes out of paper? So he made us stare straight ahead, stuck a flower in our hair, and started his scissors. I'll try and take a picture so I can show it to you next week - it doesn't really look like me much, but it's a great souvenir for a great memory. The family didn't end up setting up again, but I know where they live (in a non-creepy sort of way) and I still know that God gave us a miracle that night by teaching a family.

 

Okay, my time is up, but I love you all! Thank you for being so fantastic. You're in my prayers - have a wonderful week!

 

Love,

Sister Winters

 

Sister Winters - January 2, 2012 "My cabbages!"

Dear family,
 
Welcome to a grand new week of my life! First of all, let me try and fail to describe how absolutely wonderful it was to talk with all of you last week! So fantastic. I agree with Daniel - even better than Tangled. However, unlike Daniel, I will probably write a very long email, since the delay of this week's P-day has given me a lot more to talk about.

 

Just a review for those whom I didn't get to talk to last week, Christmas here was wonderful. Highlights were of course Christmas morning, doing our Christmas choir performance, eating with a great family, and finding a wonderful new investigator. Actually, it ended up being a great Christmas week with talking to my family on the 26th, a million and one Christmas cards coming on the 29th (THANK YOU to everyone who sent those!), and my brother's Christmas package coming yesterday. Woohoo!

 

It's funny because I've sort of felt like this week was kind of hard and exhausting but looking back on it there were so many miracles! So many. And funny experiences to boot! Let me tell you about them.

 

Funny story: the other day we were making calls in 7-11 and this lady came up to me and said (in English): "Hey, sorry to bother you, but do they have M&m's in here?" So random. Since 7-11 has pretty much become my second home, I was able to quickly bring her to the chocolate aisle and help her out. She thanked me and then said, "Sorry, but do you know if they have any bigger bags? Or where I could find bigger bags?" I tried not to laugh as I wrote out directions to Carrefour. Turns out she's an ABC (American-Born Chinese) who's here with her aunt for a couple of weeks, who doesn't speak very much Chinese, and who said that she needed to go out and buy some American snacks so she wouldn't starve so she went to the only store with a name she recognized: 7-11. She was very nice and I hope that she wants to learn more about the church in the future because of an unorthodox encounter with a missionary because of some M&m's.

 

Miracle: Okay, so last week we were riding back home with not too much time and I saw this lady sitting on a bench and thought, "I should go talk to her." But of course we were whizzing by, which gave me time to think, "Well, maybe that thought was me and it wasn't the Spirit and maybe I'll wait to see if He prompts me again," etc. Thankfully I also thought, "If He prompted you once and you listened, He won't prompt you again!" and quickly turned back to talk to her. She was sitting on a bench reading. As we approached her I thought, "I have no clue what I'm going to say, but here goes nothing." I apologized for interrupting her but then talked about my love for reading and asked if I could share my favorite book with her. She looked very excited as I gave her my Chinese copy of The Book of Mormon and my companion and I explained what it is, etc.. Unfortunately my Chinese copy was a little worn and I asked if it was all right that I gave her that one instead of a shiny new one but she said, "No, I like this one! It looks like it has a lot of meaning to you." And she took it, we got her phone number, and that was that. I felt really happy that we could help her and I'll be thrilled if (when) she or her family member gets baptized, but honestly, I think one of the greatest feelings of happiness and gratitude came from how it helped my companion. Sister O'Brien was so excited after we did that - she said that she hadn't seen that woman at all but as soon as she saw her she felt like she was the right person for us to talk to. If nothing happens at all from that experience (which I doubt), I'm grateful that a new missionary was able to see that miracle and learn from it.

 

Funny story: We went to go visit an investigator who was not very interested in our message but did give us a free cabbage. I was very amused as I rode around that day with a huge Chinese cabbage in my bike basket. I kept wanting to say, "My cabbages!" but I don't think Sister O'Brien gets that reference...

 

Miracle: This past week when we were riding our bikes I had a feeling to stop and talk to someone - but it was the sketchy internet cafe worker girl, smoking a cigarette. I hesitated for a second and then thought, "well, a prompting's a prompting I guess!" and we talked to her. It turns out that she's Christian-ish (her boyfriend takes her to church sometimes) and that she is interested in hearing more about our message. So we set up a time and then met her again. It was a little weird since it was in the sketchy internet cafe place and that's the only time that she has time... But the Spirit was there. And Sister O'Brien did a great job of introducing the BofM and giving one to her, which she seemed very excited about. And she has school off this week so we don't have to meet at the sketchy internet place next time! Woo!

 

Funny story/miracle: So lately I've been thinking about having a part-time job of full-time missionary, part-time catnapper. The reason? There have been these cats outside of our apartment who do nothing but moan and groan and wail and sound like they're dying. It's awful. Sister O'Brien and I came up with all sorts of possibilities of putting bowls of milk outside of the doors of people in the neighborhood who have slammed their doors in our faces, but that's not the point. The point is that it was getting to be a problem. Then our office assistant missionary called us and said we needed to move apartments! Originally we were given about a week, but then yesterday we were told that we needed to pack our general things before the afternoon when he'd come... And then when he came he informed us that he wanted the entire apartmentempty that day. Man, I knew that this mission was supposed to prepare me for the future, but honestly, this was a little more than I expected! First the cats which really do sound like a crying baby, then having to move our entire apartment in a day. Insane. And not quite what I was expecting missionary work to be. But you know, you take it in stride I guess and just try to love life. I do love our new apartment - it's beautiful and closer to the church and in a place where they don't have construction going on 24/7 (unlike my old apartment)... The only downside are the grandmas. This morning I woke up at 4:something in the morning to a grandma selling vegetables in the park behind us saying: "You don't want my cabbage?! This is great cabbage! Buy my cabbage!" Again with the cabbages!

 

Last thing that I wanted to mention - I was reading in the Doctrine and Covenants this week and saw a scripture (I didn't write down the reference, sorry!) that I had never noticed before - it was the Lord giving out some missionary advice, and among it He said: "Be not cumbered." Reading my emails might have given you a hint that missionaries have a lot of responsibilities and things to worry about sometimes - and that if we're not careful, it's easy to be "cumbered" by the load of it all. But Christ knows that. And He can help. There's a reason He says that "[His] yoke is easy, and [His] burden is light." I know that through Him we really can do all things that are necessary of us. Please continue to pray for me that I can carry out His Father's will! I'll keep doing the same. Family and friends, I love you all. It was an incredible feeling to realize on New Year's that I had just spent all of 2012 being a missionary. This is a great work and I love it.

 

Love,

Sister Winters