Dear family,
Good morning and welcome to another week of my life! It's been great, as usual. Let me tell you about it:
So first and foremost, lately for service I've been teaching a few music lessons. Half-price if members bring a friend! Just kidding, they're free. :) It's been a good way for me to show my love for the members and help them. I think it will also bring in some awesome missionary opportunities. There's a member who's sister has been TERRIFIED of meeting the missionaries. But she went to a baptismal service the other day, met us, and then decided that we weren't scary when I taught her how to play my violin a little bit. She said she wants to learn piano and I offered to teach her a little bit. Well apparently since that time she's been asking her sister non-stop when she can see the missionaries again and learn piano. I'm hoping that as she becomes more familiar with the Church and what we do (maybe starting and ending our piano lessons with a prayer?), she'll be more prepared to accept the Gospel. Woohoo for service!
Oh, speaking of Zoya (that member I was just talking about), she served me this past week by teaching me a little Taiyu. "Taiyu" is "Taiwanese," or the mother tongue of the Taiwanese people. Unfortunately, it doesn't really have a written form - it just is passed down from generation to generation. It's based off of Mandarin so if you're really familiar with Taiyu you can kind of guess the Mandarin words you don't know based off of syllables.... but I haven't gotten there yet. Anyway, I was on the subway with Zoya and she was very patiently teaching me useful phrases like "I'm a missionary!", "How are you today?", "Have you eaten yet?" (the traditional greeting here in Taiwan - love it), etc. It was really fun. And really hard to remember (further proof that my Chinese abilities are all God's help). Anyway, I got to use them this week! I was calling a number that the elders gave us and the lady wasn't understanding anything. Finally I started using my very basic Taiyu to talk to her. I asked her if she understood Chinese and she said, "Tiabo, tiabo" ("I don't understand, I don't understand"). So I hung up, turned to my companion who was looking at me with a dazed expression and said, "She doesn't understand Chinese." Then I heard a laugh next to me and realized that the high school student sitting next to me had just heard (and understood) everything that was going on. I asked her if she spoke Taiyu and started chatting with her. Before we left I asked if she had interest in English class - she said that she didn't. I said hopefully, "Well, what about the Gospel of Jesus Christ?" She looked at me for a second and said, "Yeah, alright." So she set up! And all because of a wrong number of someone who tiabo'd!
We also had a lot of miracles when we did temple tours this past Friday. One of them was seriously one of the coolest miracles I've seen on my mission. I was on exchanges with Sister Ochoa (our new temple sister), and we had some time to find. So we went to say a prayer to start our finding. Sister Ochoa asked what we wanted to achieve in the hour that we had to find people to teach. I told her that we hadn't found any new investigators all week, so I hoped that we could find someone who lived in Tianmu or Shilin. Keep in mind that Tianmu and Shilin are about a half an hour away, so the chances of finding someone by the temple who lives in Shilin are very slim. But we said "the prayer of faith," and left the chapel full of fire to find. So... we talked to everyone. And met some people who were interested... and a lot of people who weren't as interested. :) And then we had about fifteen minutes left and I felt like we should cross the street to talk to this lady on the other side who was coming down the sidewalk. When talking to her she first said, "I'm not interested!" But then stopped to listen to us. After about thirty seconds she said, "Actually, I've been to your church before." Apparently her aunt is a member and she still remembers going to church with her, even though it was probably 40 or so years ago. We kept talking to her and she agreed to let us say a prayer - right afterwards she asked, "So why is your church different from other churches?" We asked her how much time she had - if she had 10 minutes, we could give her a tour of the chapel right next to the temple. She said, "Oh no, I really am busy." And then talked to us for another ten minutes or so. :) And then she said her own prayer at the end! It was great. After our lesson, we tried to set her up for another time to do a tour, and she said, "Oh, I live far away... it wouldn't be convenient." I asked (with bated breath) where she lived and she said, "I live in Shilin." It was like Sister Ochoa and I had had an electric shock. I got her phone number and she agreed that I could call her to set up a time and then bore my testimony that I knew that God wanted us to meet her and help her accept the Gospel. Then she went on her merry way and Sister Ochoa and I walked away with shocked expressions still etched on our faces. God had answered our prayers! Even with such a small thing, He was still willing to listen and help us.
Another much smaller but still great miracle happened later that night when the elders brought in a Swiss woman and her Taiwanese friend to take a tour. We taught them about the Restoration (neither of them had much of a religious background) - in English, which was hard for both of us. We were getting to the First Vision and I started praying, "Please, Heavenly Father - I need to be able to recite the First Vision in English, which I'm definitely not accustomed to. And I need to do it smoothly so that these people can feel the Spirit. Please help me." Well, it worked! Everything came to my mind perfectly and the tour went very well. I think they both left edified and interested to learn more. Mission accomplished.
As far as other miracles go, we've had some great ones with our own investigators in Shilin and Tianmu. Probably the biggest ones this week were with Oprah. As you all know, we met her a couple of weeks ago and she's shown a great interest in the Gospel. Originally we had set her date for April 27 (the normal 8-week period between meeting the missionaries and the baptism), but after we did that we felt like it was way too long. Plus we'd set a goal for having baptisms in March. And we needed to achieve it! So we decided to act on our goal and invite Oprah to move up her date to March 30. She was willing! She loves church and the feelings she has when she's there, when she prays, and when she reads the scriptures. Yesterday she shared an experience about how she was on her scooter, going to the church when she realized she was out of gas. But she didn't want to be late for church, and she couldn't see any gas stations close by. So she said, "I was praying so hard in my heart, saying, 'Heavenly Father, I want to go to church and I don't want to run out of gas. I want to be there on time. Please help me.'" And she had enough gas! She knows that God answered her prayers. I love Oprah!
I also love Rena (pronounced "Layna" - apparently it's Japanese?), another one of our investigators. Yesterday was her first time at church - I was worried it was going to be her only time at church, since her acceptance of our invite to go to church was "I guess I can give it a try this once." Of course with an enthusiastic response like that, I started praying that Rena would like church and would feel the Spirit. Well, she came, and in her words, "when the speakers started after the sacrament, I just couldn't stop crying - I was so touched. I don't know why." I know why - Heavenly Father answered my prayers. She wants to come to church every week now.
I think the fact that these two investigators like church is even more of a miracle when I think about how weird Sunday School was for both wards. One of them was a super-deep discussion about exaltation and whether or not we thought it was super-hard to become like God, and the other one had to do with prophets. Actually the one on prophets was really good - there were just a few weird parts. We opened up Gospel Principles to the page with all 16 modern-day prophets and then the teacher started asking, "Which one is the youngest?" "Which one is the oldest?" "Which one has the longest beard?" "Which one is the skinniest?" And then... "Which one is the fattest?"
ONLY IN TAIWAN.
Truth: I'm scared to death that I'm going to come home, see someone I knew before my mission, and then say something like, "Wow, you've gotten fatter since I last saw you." Can you see why? Anyway, after the fat question and then commenting on how Joseph Smith was the most handsome of all of the prophets, we moved on to spiritual things and everything was good again.
Dajia, life is GOOD! I love being a missionary. I love all of you. Have a wonderful week!
Love,
Sister Winters
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