This week I had an experience that I've never had before as a missionary: Sister Wu and I crashed a wedding! The bride and groom live in Beitun, a nearby town, and we'd met the groom for about 5 minutes a few weeks ago when he and his family came to check out our chapel and see if they could hold the wedding there. Then, the night before we got a text from the Beitun missionaries saying they couldn't go, and their bishop wanted to know if we could attend instead. After some discussion, Sister Wu and I made the decision that no, we would not be able to attend a wedding of two people we'd never met. We called to tell the bishop our decision, but the picture he painted was incredibly tempting. He said that the bride and groom were recent converts, so there would be very few members and a ton of nonmembers who'd never heard of the gospel before, and had nowhere to run from us because they were expected to attend the wedding. After more discussion and messaging the bride to make sure she was cool with two missionaries she'd never met crashing her wedding to share the gospel, Sister Wu and I decided to attend.
We arrived at the church all fired up to fulfill our missionary purpose and share the gospel with everyone there. When we got there however, we discovered that there was assigned seating. After some deliberation, the ushers put us at a table with a big group of church members from Japan. Who all had lovely English. So instead of sharing the gospel we just straight up attended the wedding and chatted with the Japanese members for an hour and a half.
In the end though, it turned out that our special missionary services were needed, because we were the only ones at the church with keys, so we got to stay until everyone left so we could lock up. Thankfully it was a pretty lowkey reception, so we made it home by 10 pm. The bride stopped to take a picture with us on the way out the door:
Since we attended the entire wedding, we got to learn a lot about the Bride and Groom's story, which is adorable. They'd been dating for a while when they both met the missionaries. They took the lessons and got baptized together. Now, a year later, they were able to be sealed in the Taibei temple for time and all eternity. One of the sisters who taught them came back for the wedding. It was so cool to see the fruits of the work we're doing. Missionary work isn't just about baptisms. It's about helping people enjoy the wonderful blessings of eternity that Heavenly Father offers us.
And now it's the new year! Last night Sister Wu and I went to bed at 10:30 as usual, but we woke up again at 11:50 to celebrate the new year. We went up to the roof of our apartment building to look at the city lights, and were surprised with about 20 different firework shows going off at 12 am. Our apartment building's the tallest thing in our area, so we had a wonderful view.
This morning when we woke up we went back to the roof to watch the first sunrise of the year. The sun had technically already risen, but there was a large, low hanging bank of clouds in the way, so we were able to watch it as it actually became visible. It was a gorgeous way to start the new year!
I hope you all have a wonderful week this week! Happy New Year!
Lots of Love,
Sister Hull
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