Hi Everyone!
Wow, this week has been absolutely insane. But like, a good kind of insane with lots of miracles and spiritual insights.
(good morning)
This week we saw a really cool miracle. We're friends with this recent convert to our church, Pan Jiemei. She has the cutest family ever, and we love going to visit her and reading scriptures with her. Her husband, Xu Dixiong, used to be taking the missionary lessons from the elders. When we switched the elders out though, he stopped meeting because he thought meeting with Sisters was awkward. We had almost given up, but we still felt like we needed to help him because we love Pan Jiemei and want to help her family. We were at our wits end though about how we could connect with him (the elders connected by playing basketball with him every week). It had gotten to the point where we were considering taking up basketball in the hopes that at the very least he'd be touched that we were willing to make the effort, but we weren't really sure if that would work. I was pretty stressed, and praying a lot for a way we could help Xu Dixiong.
Then, the other day we were at a ward activity. There was food, and Pan Jiemei had brought guacamole. I mentioned to her that when our family made Mexican food at home, it was always my job to make the guac. A few days later she came up to us all excited. She said she'd told her husband I knew how to make guac, and he wanted me to come and teach them how! So we had a Mexican food night, and Sister DeJarnatt and I taught their family how to make homemade tortillas and guacamole. It was exactly what we needed to be able to connect with him. We had a lot of fun cooking together, and it was so much better than our feeble attempts to play basketball would have been!
This week we had a mission tour, where a general leader in our church met with our entire mission in two big meetings. We were in the meeting with the bottom half of the mission- almost 100 missionaries. The visiting leader, Elder Homer, was awesome. He shared a ton of really great insights and helped us get super excited for missionary work.
At one point in his trainings, he shared the story of Nephi, a man in the Book of Mormon who is commanded by God to build a boat. Nephi has never built a boat in his life before. On top of that, he and his family have been living in the wilderness for a few years, so he doesn't even have any tools to build a boat with. And he's not just building a fishing boat, The Lord tells him to build a boat that will carry him and his entire family and all their stuff across an ocean. When Nephi's brothers hear that he wants to build a boat, they just laugh, because they know he can't do it. But Nephi's response is different. He thinks about it, then prays and tells God, "If I'm going to build a boat, I need tools. Where can I go to find metal to make tools?" After finding metal, he learns to make tools, and slowly, step by step, the Lord teaches him how to build a boat.
Elder Homer connected the story of Nephi building a boat to us doing missionary work. When we came on a mission, none of us knew how to do missionary work. On top of that, we were in a completely new country with a new culture and language. And we weren't just trying to get people to come to church, the Lord told us to help people completely change their lives and help them embark on a journey that will lead them back to their heavenly home. When people in Taiwan hear that we're trying to teach a bunch of Buddhists about Jesus, a lot of them laugh, because they know no one here will want to change their culture. But that's not the point. If we follow Nephi's example, it doesn't matter what we don't know. We just have to ask Heavenly Father for help and be willing to try. He will guide us, and step by step we will start to see miracles. The things that we do will not be what experts in advertising, psychology, or sales would recommend, because they're not the people we're looking to for help. The Lord will guide us and show us His way for sharing the gospel, and it might seem a little weird at first, but in the end we will find miracles.
The mission tour was in Gaoxiong, an hour or two trip by train and subway from where we live. We had to get to the meeting early, so we went down the night before and stayed with the sisters who lived in Gaoxiong. It was super fun to see them, and the mission tour was amazing, but by the time we made it home over 24 hours later, we were exhausted. Can you see it in our eyes?
The fun for the week didn't stop with the mission tour. We spent most of Sunday with our ward. After church, we went to a nursing home that one of our members stays in and sang Christmas carols. That evening we headed back to the church for a family home evening. The bishop gave a really good lesson on managing family finances. We were in charge of the games and treats. Our ward members are all really good sports, so we had a ton of fun with the games and couldn't stop laughing. We have such an amazing ward here. I think that's one of the things I love the most about our church as an organization, is that you can travel across the world to a new culture and new language, and you still feel like you have a family when you walk into church.
Have an amazing week everyone! Don't forget to #LightTheWorld!
Love,
Sofi
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