Miracles upon miracles

Hi Everyone!

Ok wow it's been an awesome week! First off- the most exciting news: Zhou Jiemei has a baptismal goal! Zhou Jiemei is the woman who came to our Plan of Salvation activity last week and then to church. We met with her twice this week. The first time we met, she had a lot of questions about things she'd heard at church. One of the things she asked about was temples. We explained to her that temples are our most sacred buildings. In them, we can be sealed to our families for this life and for eternity. We also do ordinances such as baptism in behalf of our deceased ancestors so they can have the same blessings that we have. She was very interested in learning more. I love seeing how much her family really is the center of her lives. The second time we met with her, we taught her about how we got the Book of Mormon, then asked her if she would be willing to follow the example Jesus Christ gave us and get baptized. She agreed without hesitation. When we asked if we could set a date for her to work towards, she not only set a date, she set a time! Then she started asking all sorts of questions about when her daughter could get baptized, and if her husband could baptize her, and more about the temple. It's really cool to see how she understands that baptism is just the start of our eternal journey back to Heavenly Father.

This week we also started service at a local Senior Community Center. It was really fun! We helped pour tea and serve rice and noodles for the old people. We also joined them in a form of exercise where we do interpretive dancing to Chinese songs. Since I can't really understand anything the songs are saying, I had to do a lot of guessing on the different dance moves. The oldest member of our ward, Huang Beibei, was there. He's the coolest old guy I've ever seen. He's 92, and has a full head of white hair. He often wears aviator sunglasses. When he was young, he played basketball in China. He said hi when we were there, and told us to eat more noodles.

We had a rather traumatic incident on Friday. It was late, we'd just visited a park, and we were biking back to our apartment, when we saw a woman who had parked her scooter in the middle of the road. We stopped to see what was going on, and found a cat that had just been hit by a car, lying dead in the middle of the road. We weren't sure what to do, but we knew we didn't want to leave it there, so with the combined genius of three confused young people, we decided the best course of action would be to bury the cat in the nearby park. We put the cat in a bag, and rode back to the park, where we proceeded to find a bit of dirt and start digging. The dirt was ridiculously hard, and all we had were a couple of rocks to scrape with, so it was very slow going. Neither Sister Wu and I nor the woman we had met five minutes before stopped to question the absurdity of digging a hole in a public park in the dark with a stranger in order to bury a dead cat. After about a half hour of futile rock pounding, we realized we weren't getting anywhere, and called a member nearby to ask if she had a shovel. She did, and brought it over. At first she started to help us, but then her common sense prevailed, and she explained that burying a cat in a public park was probably not the best course of action, as it would stink and get dug up by dogs and make a mess. She offered to take the cat and dispose of it. We agreed, though we were rather reluctant seeing as we'd spent a very long time digging the hole. 

After the member left, we spent a bit of time talking to the woman we'd been digging a hole with. She had just gotten married, and gave us some marriage advice that basically boiled down to don't get married because when you're dating it's just about you and your boyfriend, but when you get married it's about two families coming together and then you have to deal with in-laws. We thanked her for the advice, and parted as unlikely friends.

That's about it for today! Hope everyone has a wonderful week!
Love, 

Sister Hull

Pics:

1-2: For P-day the Daya and Tanzi missionaries celebrated thanksgiving with a ridiculous amount of amazing Indian food at this hole in the wall restaurant in Fengjia. It was just about the best day of my life. There was so. much. naan. We tried to get a picture outside the restaurant, but this is the best one we got.

3: Sister Wu dancing with the old people at the community center.

4: Our amazing relief society president, Huang Jiemei, took us and the elders out for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. Our ward takes such good care of us!

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Hey Everyone!

Hi Everyone!

Miracles are happening in Daya, and it's fun to see them start forming. This week's highlight was our ward's Plan of Salvation activity. The goal of the activity was to help the ward members invite their friends to come and learn about the church. We started with a potluck dinner. After dinner, we had everyone go down to a room set up to look like the inside of an airplane. We showed a video of the airplane taking off, then crashing. Then two guys dressed in white came in and explained that they were angels and everyone had died in the crash. They then proceeded to give them a tour of what happens to us after death. 

I realize that this sounds extremely morbid. In reality, the crash video was cheesy, and two of the goofiest guys in our ward- the Ward Mission Leader and the Young Men's President- were the angels, so it was pretty lighthearted. There were also masses of screaming children with very short attention spans.  On the tour, the angels took the audience through different rooms  representing the spirit world, resurrection and judgement, and the three kingdoms of glory. In each room we had one or two ward members pretending to be an inhabitant of that area. They introduced what each place was like, and why they were there. We ended the tour in the Chapel, which was supposed to represent the Celestial Kingdom. A member of the ward bore his testimony of the Plan of Salvation, and we sang 'I Am a Child of God' and 'Families can be Together Forever'. It was a really cool way to end the night. 

I was a little unsure of how the activity went over with the ward, mainly because of the screaming children, but on Sunday I got my answer. They liked it so much that they want to do it again as a part of our Christmas celebration with the Tanzi wards. Which means we get to do this all again.... yayyy... The activity was a lot of fun, but it was also a crazy amount of work to get it all together. 

We had a cool little miracle come out of the activity. A few days before, we were contacting at the park, and I had a thought to invite a lady sitting near the playground to come to the activity. We chatted for a few minutes, gave her a flier, and left. Miracle number one: she showed up, and brought her 3 year old daughter! One of our amazing members sat next to her the whole time, chatted with her, and made her feel welcome. She said she really has interest in finding a place for her daughter to make good friends and stuff, so we invited her to church the next day. Miracle number two: She showed up to church, and stayed the whole three hours. I think she really enjoyed it, despite a rather interesting Sunday School lesson in which our teacher went on for an hour about how food was scarce in Taiwan during World War 2, and also gave us incorrect information about the health benefits of fasting. At the end of church, we had miracle number 3: She set up to meet with us on Wednesday! She seems super interested in the church, so we're really excited to share all the amazing blessings of the gospel with her. It's amazing to see how Heavenly Father led us to her. 

Hope you all have an amazing week! 

Love, 

Sister Hull

Pics: 

1. Us preparing for the activity. We made signs for each room, and the Elders printed out scriptures to go with the signs. It turns out that Sister Wu is amazing and can write in block characters.

2. We celebrated Sister Wu's first week in Daya with ice cream. It's only been a week and a half, but I can already tell we're gonna be a wonderful companionship! Sister Wu's awesome! Funny and lighthearted and dedicated to the work.

3. I hit an important milestone this week: I tried stinky tofu. After all the things I've heard about it, I was more than a little nervous, but it's actually not too bad. I ate four of the five pieces happily, though by the fifth one the flavor was a little overbearing. 

4. Unfortunately, I took no pictures of the actual Plan of Salvation activity. Here are pictures of the flier we handed out, as well as the plan ticket everyone got as they entered the plane. The QR code links to the church's website, and on the back is a picture of the Plan of Salvation, complete with scriptures. Both flier and ticket were designed by our extremely talented members.

Meet Sister Wu!

Hi Everyone!

This week has been a crazy one full of different emotions. On Monday, I dropped Sister Smith off at the Mission Home. She moved down to Zhang Hua, which is right below Taizhong.

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We also said goodbye to Elder Moh, who has finished his mission and was going home. It was weird and a little sad to say goodbye to half our area. Sister Smith was a great trainer. She made sure I had everything I needed to survive in Taiwan. Her jokes and sarcastic comments kept me from getting too down when things got difficult. Elder Moh, as Sister Smith said, is 'sunshine and all good things personified'. He was always laughing, which made us all laugh too. It's sad that the Taiwan Taizhong mission no longer has him as a missionary.

For the next few days, I stayed with the Sister Training Leaders in Tanzi while I waited for the new trainees to arrive. It was a weird few days. I was in a sort of limbo- no area, no companion, lots of stress to come but nothing to really stress about in the moment. The Trainees arrived at the mission home Tuesday night, had instruction and stuff Wednesday, and then we picked them up on Thursday. On Wednesday they ask some of the closer Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders to come take the missionaries out for an hour to go contacting for the very first time. Since I was with the Sister Training Leaders, I got to tag along. I ended up being paired with the two Taiwanese sisters in the group. We had a good time walking around and talking to everyone.

The next day we went back to the mission home to pick up my new companion. There's a Chinese tradition of putting money and small gifts in a red envelope for the New Year and for special occasions like weddings. The Tehs had a red envelope for each trainee, and they had them come up one by one to open the envelope and find out who their trainer would be. I think that was the most stressful five minutes of my life. After a long time of waiting, my new companion is.... Sister Wu! Here's a picture:


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Sister Wu is from Tao Yuan, which is just below Taipei. She's already an amazing missionary- fearless and enthusiastic. I've only known her for four days, but I can tell we're going to be a great companionship. I'll keep you all updated on the adventures and miracles to come!

Love you all!

Sister Hull

The Good, the Bad, and the Absolutely Insane

Important note: If you're pressed for time, skip to the absolutely insane bit. It's important.

If you're not pressed for time, buckle up because it's been an absolutely insane week.

First, The Good: Halloween! Halloween was completely amazing. Sister Smith and I planned really lowkey costumes that we'd be able to wear all day. Here's a picture, see if you can guess who we are:

​Actually it turns out I don't have any full pictures of us. Just this one. Give up? I'm Alice in Wonderland and Sister Smith is Kiki from Kiki's delivery service. We didn't look much different than usual, but on the inside we knew.

The Tanzi missionaries threw a Halloween party for their wards, and invited our ward too. Other than Sister Smith and I, only one member of our ward came. It was super fun though! There was bobbing for apples and pumpkin bowling, and cookies, and even pumpkin pie!

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One of the Tanzi elders, Elder Petersen, taught the members how to play the game Ninja. We had a wonderful time playing it for most of the party. It turns out Sister Smith is really good at it!

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All in all, it was an amazing first Halloween in Taiwan! Which is impressive seeing as Taiwan doesn't really celebrate Halloween.

Next up, The Bad. We have a less active member, Lin Jiemei that we meet with every now and then to read scriptures with. We were scheduled to meet this weekend, but a few days before she called and asked if we could meet the next morning instead. We agreed, naively thinking she was rescheduling our original appointment. When we got to the church, there was another member there that she'd also invited to the appointment. Then Lin Jiemei rolled up on a scooter piled high with camera equipment. She's a professional photographer, so we figured that she just had a job after this. It wasn't until she started unloading, and told us to go find a whiteboard, that we realized we'd been tricked into helping with a photoshoot.

At first it wasn't too bad. The other member, Xiu Ru, was the model, and Sister Smith and I just held flashes and reflectors at weird angles while Lin Jiemei tried to get the effect she wanted. It was quite the production: There were christmas lights and everything. We figured we were getting in some good service hours, and building member relations. Then, Lin Jiemei told me to go stand in the picture with Xiu Ru. To get the right effect, Xiu Ru and I had to stand very close. By the time Lin Jiemei was satisfied, Xiu Ru and I had our arms around each other, and were staring at each other's eyes. Sister Smith was dying of laughter. Karma hit though, and Xiu Ru had to leave, so Sister Smith got to take her place. Lin Jiemei also added a parasol. And that's how we got tricked into a gay photoshoot. I don't think that was Lin Jiemei's intention, she just needed us close to get the right flash effect, and we needed to be looking at each other to get the flash on our eyelashes. Nevertheless, it was extremely awkward. We kinda lost it towards the end.

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...Not our proudest moment.

Ok now, finally, The Absolutely Insane (bom bom bom). Transfers are today, and I'm finally done with training! (that's not the insane bit). On Saturday, we got out of a lesson, and saw that we'd missed a call from President Teh. That's always a scary thing, so we rushed to the nearest 7-11 to return the call. The line was busy. We sat at a table in the 7, nervously staring at the phone. We figured the call was probably for Sister Smith, and she'd be asked to be a Sister Training Leader for her last transfer. President called back, and Sister Smith answered. She talked to him for a bit, then passed the phone to me. Long story short, I'm training. I'm trying really hard to be honored and excited for this opportunity, but at the moment I mainly feel panic. Hopefully by the time I meet my trainee, I'll be mainly excited. These next few weeks will be an adventure. I'm still pretty new, but I know how to buy zhuabings and baozis, and I can say 'do you want to fight?' in Taiwanese, so we'll probably survive. Stay tuned, next week I'll know who my companion is!

Have an amazing week!

Love,

Sister Hull