Sister Winters - February 25, 2013 Buddhist Rituals

Dear family,

 

Goooooooood morning from Taipei, Taiwan! It's been a great week. Here's the scoop.

 

It was wonderful having things get back into groove a little more after Guonian. I know that some people say that missionary work is boring because it's the same thing every day for a year and a half, but honestly, I find it nice to get back into more of a routine. As you know from previous emails, my life still ends up with having plenty of variety and spice, even with the same schedule day after day. :)

 

So first things first, let's talk about the mission conference. It was very short (only a couple of hours long), but very powerful. It's funny how in the MTC you're just filled to the brim with devotionals and addresses and stuff like that but here you're always hungry to hear them. Anyway, Elder Evans and Elder Watson did a great job. One thing that was frequently mentioned at the conference was faith. Elder Evans quoted President Packer and said that faith is as real a power as electricity - that really struck me. I know that I have faith, but the idea of "using" it like one "uses" electricity was something I hadn't pondered much before. I'm working on trying to make that idea a reality. Another thing that I personally got from the conference was more of a resolve to continue studying Chinese after my mission. I know all of you are probably thinking, "Well, duh," but it honestly isn't something that I thought I'd give a ton of time after my mission. Since I'm so close to graduating and already have my plate full (more like overflowing) of classes I need to take, I just assumed I wouldn't be able to give much time to Chinese. But I think that I want to at least take a couple more classes to get me more on my feet in Chinese - although I would say that I have a fairly good grasp on the language, I am still completely aware that I've only scratched the surface as far as a study of this complex language and its characters goes.

 

Speaking of which, I forgot to mention that I have a goal to finish reading the BofM in Chinese before my final interview with President Day. I'm in Mosiah right now (reading the teachings of Abinadi), and if I want to finish by my last week I'm going to have to read 10 pages a day. Whew! Wish me luck. Even though it's a little frustrating how long it takes me at times (my speed-reading capabilities are completely non-existent in Chinese), I really have loved studying The Book of Mormon in Chinese. The knowledge of the meanings behind characters adds a new life and perspective to the words in it. For example, instead of "mansions of my father," it says "My Father's home." I love that feeling of home, rather than a mansion. Or in Enos 1:12 where Enos says that he "prayed and labored with all diligence," in Chinese it says that he "exhausted himself with the most diligence I could muster." It adds even more feeling. So fun!

 

In other news, I went on exchanges to Danshui this week. It was great, especially since I didn't throw up this time. That morning we met a very interesting investigator who worked at this health shake shop. We went to go meet with her but the first thing she said was, "Here, drink! Oh, and take off your tights! We need to do a body scan!" So of course, not wanting to be rude, we drank a little bit of a protein shake and took off our tights so we could do a body scan. I'm not sure it was completely reliable, since she was able to extrapolate a whole bunch of statistics merely from my giving her my height, age, and from standing on a scale. But in case it is real, I should tell all of you that I'm quite skinny, that my bone mass is pretty good, that my "body age" is 19, and that I should get more muscle because "if someone hit you, it would hurt because you don't have enough meat on your bones." So that's that. The lesson wasn't that great - she seemed pretty interested but then got up in the middle of the lesson to show us some Jehovah's Witnesses pamphlets and was kind of hard to talk to after that. Plus my companion that day apparently had a body age of 44, so we both left the place a little less happy than we were when we went in, haha.

 

By this point you all are probably wondering (or have completely forgotten) what my subject to this email is all about. Well, in our morning exercise routine, Sister O'Brien run alongside the river to this "adult playground" where they have all of these exercise machine things that really probably don't improve your fitness but sure are fun to play on. Anyway, Sister O'Brien is a huge yoga fan and normally takes a few minutes of this time to go by the riverside and meditate and be one with nature and all that jazz. This past week, we had an exercise buddy - an old man who just happened to want to play on the same exercise machines at the same time we did. This means that when Sister O'Brien went to go do her yoga a few feet away, I was left with this old man (there were other people around too and Sister O'Brien really was super-close, so don't worry). Anyway, my exercise buddy asked what Sister O'Brien was doing over there by the riverside - I told him that I forgot how to say "yoga" in Chinese. He identified the word and said, "is that right?" I said that I wasn't sure, since I really didn't know the word, but he was probably right. He said, "Yeah, that's a Buddhist ritual. The whole sitting position with the hands out like that... Oh yeah, and the whole sitting-by-the-riverside thing.... Yep, total Buddhist ritual." It was hard to keep a straight face as I told my trainee that she would have to stop doing Buddhist rituals in public places so that she would do a better job representing the Church. :)

 

Last story: we have a new investigator who is AWESOME. And even better, her name is Oprah. As in Oprah Winfrey. It makes me smile every time we say her name. The elders found her and gave us her information. Anyway, I called her up and told her that we'd wait for her at the entrance of the church at our appointment with her. She said, "Really? I'm so touched that you would do something like that for me! Thank you so much!" Yeah. So nice. Anyway, she was really willing to work toward baptism and try to understand for herself if these things are true. And then yesterday she came to church and loved it! She said that she felt like everyone was a big, happy family, and that although normally she doesn't open herself up to people, she felt very accepted and welcomed at church. Then she said that she really likes prayer - I asked her if she'd prayed since we'd met the time before, and she said that she'd prayed that night, the next morning, and then right before she went out. During her lesson the night before I'd asked how her mom would feel if she (Oprah) didn't talk to her ever. Oprah said she'd be really sad, confused, and probably a little mad. I said, "Well, Heavenly Father loves us even more than your mom loves you, and He desperately wants you to talk to Him." She said the next day that that really made sense and she's been trying to talk to God more through prayer... and feels like He's answering. She also loves the Book of Mormon and already has some favorite scriptures picked out. I feel like God is blessing this area and that these seeds that I feel like I've been planting for forever are finally starting to blossom. It's a good feeling! I know miracles are happening and will continue to come.

 

Alright family, that is it for the week! Please keep praying for our investigators - You Jiemei, Vicky, and Oprah! You can pray for Becky, too. I love the work here and I love you. Have a wonderful week!

 

Love,

Sister Winters

Sister Winters - February 18, 2013 Jellyfish… jelly…fish

Good morning, America! It's been a full week. Full of miracles, funny experiences, and most of all, full of food. I'm still full from last week! Guonian was insane - imagine eating eight or nine Thanksgiving dinners in a row. Now you know how I feel. Sarah, to answer your questions, yes, Taiwanese kids have the whole week off (their winter break doesn't start until the end of January, so it still covers Chinese New Year). I wouldn't say it's the most important Chinese holiday, but it's definitely the longest. The purpose before was to scare away the "year" monster, but now I think it's just to spend time with family. People here say it's like Christmas in the States since people spend their time with their families at home, but of course Guonian doesn't have anything to do with Jesus Christ, while Christmas definitely does. This year's probably most exciting dish that I had was jellyfish... twice! It was actually kind of crunchy and good... weird, right? Seriously, though, we were really blessed this week - guonian sometimes is a nightmare for missionaries (everyone's gone and nobody wants to talk to the missionaries because they're busy relaxing for once), but there was no significant dip in our numbers. We actually exceeded our mission's "golden standards" in some areas.

 

There was something really exciting that happened this week - something that I never imagined would happen on my mission. So I was in our kitchen leaning against the wall while drinking a glass of milk (I know, living the good life, right), when I saw a black splotch scurry from underneath the stove into the laundry room directly across from me. I was not too close to it, so it could have been a cockroach, but I was pretty sure it was a rat. I walked back into the main room with a sort of dazed expression on my face and Sister O'Brien asked what was wrong. I said, "We might have a rat in our laundry room. And there might be more." So what else could we do, except go into the laundry room and check? There were some blue fabric things on the ground, so I started trying to dig through them and see. When I picked one of them up, there was a RAT that fell on my skirt and then scurried away. I'll have to be honest - normally I am the one in my companionships who is the strong, yes-I-will-kill-that-bug-for-you kind of person. But when the rat fell out I yelled, "It IS a rat! And then ran away and slammed the door to the laundry room... with Sister O'Brien in it. Just kidding. :) Sister O'Brien was right on my tail (get it?), but everything else was true. So I called the operations assistant and told him what was going on. He said, "That's bad. Like really, that's very very bad." There were a million responses that I could've given to that slightly-obvious comment, but I decided to just stick to agreeing with him. He encouraged me to call President Day to see if the zone leaders could come over and help us get the rat. So I called President Day and told him our situation. To my surprise, his first question was: "Are you sure it was a rat? Was there hair on its tail?" I was pretty sure that it was a rat, but I asked Sister O'Brien just to be sure. She looked back at me resentfully and said, "I wasn't looking at its TAIL, surprisingly enough. Shouldn't the fact that there is some RODENT in our house be enough?" (Side note: just because Sister O'Brien looked at me resentfully doesn't mean that she's a resentful person. She's quite lovely and a wonderful companion. Ok, that's all.) Anyway, we eventually got permission and the elders came over... with no results. Apparently there's a hole in our screen door to the great outdoors in our laundry room - our new pet probably used that to get in and out. The elders played the part of looking disappointed that there wasn't a rat after all, but I'm pretty sure they were actually relieved they didn't have to add "rat-killers" to their long list of responsibilities... I would be, anyway. We had interviews with President this past week and I found out that there was an apartment of elders who also had some rat issues. But whereas the sisters tried to use a broom (or elders) to try and get rid of the problem, the elders ended up using the freezer. Yes, you read correctly: there is an apartment in the Taiwan Taipei mission with seven or so frozen rats hanging out in their freezer. Anyway, we've tried to plug up the hole in the screen door and so far have not seen any more black splotches scurrying across the floor... I'll keep you posted, though!

 

A few of you asked about how our investigators are doing, especially the new ones who set baptismal dates. Because of guonian and everyone and their dog going to a different place in Taiwan, it's kind of hard to judge, but it seems like most if not all are doing pretty well. We had a really great "breakthrough" moment with one of our investigators this past week. Her name is Sister You (pronounced "Yo", like Yo Yo Ma), and she's the one that has been meeting with the missionaries for five years. One of my fellow BYU violin studio members was actually her missionary for a while - she loved him, so once she found out that we were classmates it really was a miracle to her. We've helped her come to the chapel once (her only time since meeting with the missionaries), because she's normally busy with her work. So yes, you can pray for her to come to church. :) Anyway, she has two kids and they're pretty "pi," or misbehaved. One of them is a sullen-looking 10-year-old named Anthony. He ran in while we were teaching his mom this past week and she made him stay in for a little bit while we taught them about faith. Now, Anthony clearly did not want to be there - he was pouting and trying to get free from his mother's grasp, etc.. We were talking about faith, and suddenly an idea came to my mind. I secretly grabbed a $10 coin from my wallet and held out my fist and said, "Anthony, I have $10 in my hand. Do you believe me?" He shook his head, still frowning. I said, "Really? Why not?" He said, "I can't see it." I said, "Well here, give me your hand. Don't look!" and I slipped the $10 piece into his hand instead. His face was so funny - it lit up like a lightbulb with a look of surprised delight, and he and his mom started laughing just from the look of sheer incredulity that he had. I said, "Now do you believe that I was holding a $10 piece in my hand." He said, "Yes, now I know you were." I said, "Why? You can't see it!" And he said, "Yeah, but I can feel it." I told him that was like faith - we can't see God, but we can feel that He's there and that He loves us. The Spirit came into the room and I think everyone left that lesson uplifted and with greater faith. I've never used that analogy before, but it was perfect for that situation - I love how God really does guide us in even the most minute details of our lives.

 

Last fun story from the week - yesterday at church we had a senior missionary couple from Hualian speak. It was so good to see them - last year when I was there, they had just gotten their mission call to serve in the Taipei temple. Anyway, it seemed from yesterday's talks that they're doing great. It was like coming home to hear them speak and share experiences - I think that a part of my heart will always be in the East Coast of Taiwan. Elder Jiang saw me in the front row when he was speaking and said, "I have a special story to tell Sister Wei" (me). He then proceeded to go on, "As you all know, Sister Wei does an excellent job of playing the violin. Well recently, my own granddaughter started playing the violin. I thought it was strange, since in Hualian, not very many people play. As I asked her mother why they chose the violin of all instruments, I found out that it was from watching Sister Wei play the violin. She did such a beautiful job of playing that my daughter-in-law wanted her own daughter to be able to have that same gift." When I heard that story, I almost cried. I was only in Hualian for six weeks - and it was at the beginning of my mission, when my Chinese was at its worst. And yet through God's help and the gifts He's given me, I was still able to make a difference and beautify my first area. I know that Elder Jiang's story was an answer from God that He's pleased with the work and effort I've given. Now I just need to keep sprinting to the finish!

 

That's all for new and exciting news this week! There's a mission conference tomorrow - I'll tell you all about it and the other adventures I encounter in next week's novellette.

 

I love you! Have a wonderful week!

 

Sister Winters

 

Sister Winters - February 11, 2013 The Wei Dynasty Continues!

Dear family,

 

Woooo it's like Christmas! I've been so excited all week to see where Jacob's going on his mission. And I finally know! I'm so so so happy for you - Richmond, Mandarin-speaking! Way to go! And I hadn't even considered the slight possibility of being your MTC teacher - how cool would that be? You just gave me 100% more motivation to study Mandarin harder. You xinxin you banfa (when there's faith there's a way)!

 

This week was such a miracle week. As you all know, we had a very white investigator whiteboard last time I wrote all of you. Well this week there are eight names of people with baptismal dates on there! Eight names! Incredible. That's more than we had when we erased all of the names in the first place! Heavenly Father blessed us so much. And, what's even better is that these eight weren't just "okay" people. These people wereprepared to accept the commitment to baptism. Here are a collection of some of the responses we had this week when we invited people to follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized:

 

"Yes. I really want a remission of my sins - I feel so bad when I remember my past mistakes, and I just wish those feelings could be swept away."

"Yes, I'll be baptized. I just have a question - is it alright if I meet with you every week until then?"

"Yes, I'm willing to work for this goal. I've met with the missionaries for five years and have never set a baptismal date before, but I think that my time has come for me to give it a try."

"I've been praying for some time now that God will prepare a way for me to be baptized."

 

...Talk about amazing, right? I know that these people are heaven-sent. I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father is letting us teach them.

 

There have been other miracles this week as well - although not too many people have wanted to meet during Guonian (think of how you'd feel if the missionaries knocked on your door during Thanksgiving dinner), prepared people have been put in our path and I have high hopes for them. One of them is a girl named Geoffery (yes, you read that correctly. Her mom had given her a girly name that she didn't really like so she changed it. Oh, and speaking of names, we're having lunch with a member who's name is "Dragon Star" today. Gotta love China). Another experience was one with a family! We have an enormous stack of formers in our apartment (Sister O'Brien is amazing at organizing things and organized all of the formers according to coordinates on our map we have of the area), so we've been praying about whom we should go and find again. Anyway, we were going to visit one of them and she was out of town. We had about 10 minutes before we wanted to go and make calls. I felt like we should knock the doors of the neighborhood before we left. We started at the front of the street, but then I had an inexplicable (well, I guess it's explicable - it was the Spirit) feeling that we should go to the end of the street instead. We knocked on a house's door - but it looked like nobody was home. No, I did not have anyone yell, "Nobody's home!" like they did to Daniel (although yes, that has happened before). Instead, someone came to the front. I said, "Hi, we're the missionaries," and she said, "Thanks be to the Lord!" It was very surprising. Turns out she's a Christian, but had never bothered to find a new church since she moved to Shilin 10 years ago. She said, "Wow, it's good that you came, I was actually planning on going out but I happened to still be here when you knocked." I told her that I felt like God was behind it, and she agreed with me. She and her daughter said they'd be totally willing to have us talk to her again after Guonian. All of that because we said a prayer to know where to go! Wow.

Guonian's been pretty good - nobody has forced us to eat all of their food yet, so we've left houses pleasantly full rather than feeling like we're going to explode any minute. We have high goals for this week, so please pray for us to find people to teach. We want to find four families! I guess we sort of already found one. But still, four more would be awesome. Today to celebrate I think we're going to go to the Children's Science Museum. :) Pretty much all of the museum's are closed on Mondays... except when it's a holiday! I'm actually really excited - I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun. We're going with a few members, too, so that will be wonderful.

 

Speaking of members, someone I went on exchanges with this week said that it seemed like I have a great relationship with the members here. That made me really happy, since I know that relationships with the church members are essential to missionary work... and I feel like I've been working hard at establishing relationships with little results. :) But when my exchange companion pointed out some specific examples, it made me realize that there has been progress here in the past three months... which is very good. And yesterday I had the privilege of seeing a less-active member whom we've been helping and her mom come to church. Last week we met with this LA (Rosie) and set up a plan for her to be worthy enough to go to the temple before I go home. She seems excited and ready to do it. Anyway, her mom is active in the church but doesn't live here so she isn't able to help her daughter come to church as much as she'd like to - she was so happy and so grateful when she talked to us yesterday. She said, "Who cares about her finishing school? Just get her worthy to go on a mission, and that's enough for me!" It was very sweet.

 

Unfortunately, though, there are still some members that need a lot more help - just a few weeks ago we met with an eight-year-old boy who isn't baptized yet and apparently doesn't want to be baptized. I thought that it was that he was scared of water. But no, it's because he wants to worship another god instead of Heavenly Father. Apparently when his mom was pregnant with him, she went to a Buddhist temple and prayed to a god ("Mazhu," I actually think that that water goddess that Katara pretends to be in Avatar is based off of Mazhu's story) to protect him. Well, the mom had the baby, and then I guess he probably grew up hearing stories how Mazhu was his "protector" of sorts. And now he doesn't want to get baptized because he already has Mazhu, so why would he want someone else?

 

...Welcome to Taiwan, everybody.

 

I was reading in Acts about some of the stuff that Paul comes across - a lot of it was really similar to the things that I deal with here. This week I laughed at a story where a poisonous serpent bites Paul's hand - at first, the men who see it happen assume that if Paul had a snake bite him, then he (Paul) must be very wicked and deserve punishment from the gods and that was it. But then it says that Paul was fine, and when the men saw that his hand didn't swell up and he didn't "fall down dead suddenly, they changed their minds and said that he was a god." There are a lot of people with similar superstitious beliefs here - it's kind of mind-boggling to think about. I guess I can't give the Taiwanese people a hard time, though - I'm sure that there are probably too many similarities between the story of Paul putting a man (Eutychus) to sleep by talking too long and the reactions I get from the people I teach...

 

 Alright, everyone. It's probably time for me to wrap this up. Thank you for being the best family in the world. I'm so proud of all of you I could burst! You all are wonderful and I love you. Have a great week.

 

Love,

Sister Winters

 

Sister Winters - February 4, 2013 Witchcraft

Dear family,

 

Gooooooood morning! Thank you for all of your lovely emails - they really do make me so happy. This past week I finally got to watch some movies that Daniel made for me and sent and I seriously almost cried with sheer happiness of seeing him and hearing how he's doing. He's amazing, as you all know! But really, going on a mission and seeing your support every week has made me know even more how 100% blessed and lucky I am to have you. Thank you!

 

Speaking of Daniel, I'm thrilled that you were able to see the picture that Peggy posted. She's such an answer to prayer! We've been pleading with Heavenly Father to find a way to help Cindy come back to church, and I'm sure Peggy is it. She seems so strong and so loving - I know that she really is an angel sent to help our family. IT IS SO CRAZY to see the connections that Daniel and I have... and on opposite sides of the world! Heavenly Father knows us and loves us, that's all I can say.

 

Alright, I have a lot of different subjects that I want to write about today and I'm pretty sure my brain doesn't have the power right now to make sensible connections between all of them. So if anything I'm writing seems a little random, then just roll with it.

 

I passed Phase III! I was a little scared though when President Day opened up to Alma 60. I am not looking forward to reading all of the war chapters in Chinese...

 

We're starting a new plan for our areas - "Spring Cleaning." There are a lot of people who aren't progressing, so this week we cleaned them up! So now our white board of investigators is looking a lot more blank than we would like. But we've already seen some miracles, and we know that more are on the way. One of them was when we rode to Tianmu to go and visit an "eternal investigator." She wasn't at her shop (even though it was normal working hours), so we called and found out that she had some family issues that she needed to work out. So we prayed with her on the phone and then decided that it would still be nice to write her a note. Surprise, surprise... Writing notes in Chinese takes a little bit longer than writing them in English. :) But we still thought it would be a good idea to show her that we care. And we were right! In the time it took to write her a note (which probably wouldn't have been that long if we hadn't been interrupted), we met this lady who came up to us and said, "You are so wonderful for coming to Taiwan. Thank you for serving us. Here, take this fruit." and then gave us two guavas and two starfruits! Yeah! And then we also saw this lady with a stroller and ended up talking to her for about 20 minutes. She's a Christian and is very interested to know what we believe. We set up with her for this Tuesday and then she invited us to come to her church to share our beliefs as well. We'll see! Anyway, that was the day that we had decided to start spring cleaning, and I know those small miracles were evidence from Heavenly Father that He supports our actions. It's been a long time since these areas have had baptisms, but they're coming! Pray for us!

 

In other news, remember that model girl, Vivian? Well we finally met with her this past week... after an hour of waiting! Wow, I normally do not do that. But she actually was really great. A lot of people here say that they're Christian but actually don't have much of a relationship with or understanding of Jesus Christ. But it was really apparent that Vivian believes in Christ and wants to come to know Him more... and when we told her that the Book of Mormon was a way for her to do that, she was eager to start reading. Yes! This is how things are supposed to be.

 

This Saturday, the week-long celebration of Chinese New Year will begin. I know, it's been a year already. Crazy, right? I feel like I've already eaten pretty much everything crazy that there is to eat, so my descriptions of everything probably won't be as exciting as last year's - sorry! But this year I've got a little bit of a better grasp of the culture and can actually tell you how Chinese New Year came about:

 

A long time ago, there was a terrible monster named "Year." At the end of each year, he would come and would invade people's houses and eat their children. But then someone found out what Year was afraid of - fireworks, and the color red. So at the end of each year, the people would set off fireworks to scare Year away. But that wasn't enough - he still made his way into people's houses. So everyone would put up red on their doorposts to scare Year - and it worked. He would come to people's houses, and if the red was there on the doorpost, then he would pass by. If not, then watch out.

 

Sound familiar? If you guessed "the children of Israel and the last plague of Moses," then you're right! Stories like these (and there are a lot of them) make me believe that these people really did have the Gospel, a long long time ago. I love this culture, and I love these people.

 

Of course, another part of Guonian (Chinese New Year) is it brings in another year of a different star sign. Last year was the year of the dragon, and this year is the year of the snake. Funny story - yesterday we had a fireside for all of Taipei and one of the speakers decided at the close of his talk to quote a scripture about how we should be "wise as serpents" in order to bring in the celebration of Guonian (the year of the serpent, get it?). I thought it was a little weird, but then I talked to a member who was freaking out about it. She said, "Those star signs are witchcraft (and I'm not talking about Harry Potter, Rachel). We don't believe in those things! I mean, what are investigators going to think?" I guess I've turned Taiwanese, because I didn't think it was that big a deal. It is pretty funny to think about, in hindsight...

 

It was also fun at the fireside to see my old MM leader from Hualian. We actually Guonian eve dinner at his house, which was awesome. I used to be terrified of him (he was one of the few members I knew who had served a mission when he was young, so I felt like he was aware of every single mistake I was making), but then we had one time where I had like a fifteen minute conversation with him (without my companion's help!), and I wasn't scared anymore. It was sweet to see him and his wife yesterday and to think about how things have changed since a year ago.

 

Last but not least, here's this week's spiritual thought. Tomorrow I'll be training my zone on "the prayer of faith." I'm really excited about it. I was trying to think of some personal examples and then realized that there were so many - every miracle I've had has been because of a prayer of faith. I take a lot of comfort from Mormon 9 where we read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, which means that He is still a God of miracles. I know that that's true, and I hope you've been able to see that as I write about the miracles He gives us each week. If we pray, He will hear. And He will answer.

 

Alright fam, time is running out. I love you all. Happy New Year (D&C 111:11)!

 

Love,

Sister Winters

[This photo was taken of Chi Tan, a sister in Daniel's branch in California with Becca in church yesterday.  It is such a small world in the Church!  Such a testimony that Heavenly Father is mindful of us wherever we are.  Sweet tender mercy for me!]

Becca, Sis. O'Brien, and Anny, one of their investigators.