Hi Everyone! Happy Mid Autumn Festival!
(Translation: Happy Mid Autumn Festival)
Today we are celebrating Taiwan and China's second biggest holiday, right after Chinese New Year. I'll get into a description of the festivities, but first I want to update you on the rest of our week.
First off, I'm sure you're all wildly curious about the results of last week's mission wide cleaning competition. Last Monday, we poured our heart and soul, a large quantity of sweat, and a couple of tears into scrubbing our apartment. Sister Bast is a saint and spent a couple of hours cleaning the two remaining refrigerators. We bought toothbrushes and more or less scrubbed the entire apartment with them, one surface at a time. By the end I was so tired I puked, but new life has been breathed into our apartment, and it is now a place that I am proud to call home. And our hard work was worth it! Along with herculean efforts from the other missionaries nearby, our zone won the contest! In a little bit we're taking a train up to Jiayi to meet with the rest of the zone and feast on Costco pizza.
Other than the excitement of cleaning, our week was pretty chill. We had a lot of cool tender mercies showing us that Heavenly Father is still directing the work. A couple of weeks ago we met a cool college kid named Lawrence. We've been chatting about the gospel on Line a bit, and the other day he asked about gay marriage. We told him our Chinese was not good enough to write out an answer, and asked if it would be ok if we video chatted the next day to talk about it. He agreed. When we called him, we focused really heavily on eternal families and God's plan for us. Somehow, we ended up teaching about gay marriage, the law of Chastity, not worshipping idols, and the importance of reading scriptures and coming to church. In case you're wondering, this is not what we normally share in a first met. Usually, we start by talking about who Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are, and what makes our church different, so when we get to things like commandments, they have context for where these are coming from and why we have them. Still, I guess this was what Lawrence needed to hear, because instead of running away quickly (which some people even do when we say 'God loves you'), he asked when he could come visit our church. It was really cool to feel the Holy Ghost there, teaching and testifying despite our broken Chinese.
Ok, on to the Mid Autumn Festival! ..Shoot I only have eight minutes left to write.. I'll make this fast. On Saturday, we got together with our ward to make pineapple cakes, a special delicacy in Taiwan. Pineapple cakes are filled with a mixture of pineapple boiled with sugar into a thick paste. We rolled the paste into balls and wrapped them in a layer of shortbread before pressing them into rectangular molds and baking them. Straight from the oven, they're amazing! Sweet and warm and fragrant and pineapple-y. Also very labor intensive. I'm not sure if I'd do it on my own, but it was fun to make with the ward, giggling and joking and trying not to get flour everywhere.
That evening, we reconvened to the church for a barbecue, the traditional Mid Autumn Festival activity. We were separated into groups around different barbecues, and before we got our food we had to do an activity sheet including get to know you questions, a scripture questionnaire, and minute to win it games. We ended up being at the barbecue for 3 hours playing, cooking food, and then finally eating. We got to know several more ward members, and learned a lot more about Taiwanese culture. A few people we're teaching also came, which was extra fun.
Taiwanese barbecue is why the Mid Autumn Festival may be my new favorite holiday. The barbecue is done over real coals in a tiny firepit. This picture below shows the barbecue a little better. Because the barbecue is tiny and the flame is small, Taiwanese barbecues can go on for hours. Everyone sits in a circle around the barbecue laughing and joking and slowly eating small slices of meat, roasted corn, peppers, and sausages as they're ready. After several hours, everyone is full to bursting. It's a really chill, informal way to spend lots of time together while you wait for the food to cook. Everyone has plenty to eat, and you can watch the fireworks going off nearby while you chat.
Sister Bast and I have been talking a lot about Grace, Mercy, Sin, and Weakness this week. We were kind of confused, because we were taught that we don't repent for weakness, only sin, but also that repentance is any change that brings us closer to Christ, and overcoming weakness definitely does that. After a lot of discussion, pondering, scriptures, and a really good liahona article (https://www.lds.org/ensign/2015/04/it-isnt-a-sin-to-be-weak?lang=eng), the conclusion we came to is that the difference between sin and weakness is all in our desires. With sin, our desires are bad, so we do bad things. With weakness, our desires are good, but because of mortal limitations our actions don't measure up. Thus, weakness pulls us toward Christ because we still desire to be good and realize that it is only with His help that we can realize our potential. This helped me a lot with my own self esteem as a missionary. I feel like this transfer I've really come face to face with a lot of the different weaknesses that I've dealt with before in different stages of my mission. Being able to recognize that my desires are still good has given me the patience I need to keep working diligently and seeking Christ's grace without becoming discouraged. I'm still working on it of course, but it's been really good!
Ok I officially have 30 seconds left, so I have to sign off. Have an amazing week everyone! Love you bunches!
Sofi
No comments:
Post a Comment