Earthquake

The earthquake’s center was offshore from Hualien on the east side of the island.  It is across a major mountain range from our mission boundary.  It belongs to the Taipei Mission.  As of this morning, we are not aware of any major damage reported within our mission.  We are happy to tell you that all of our missionaries are safe and accounted for.

Thank You,

President Teh

I'm alive part 2!

Hi family!

After last night's earthquake, President Teh asked us all to let our families know that we're OK. I'm guessing we're not close to the epicenter here in Zhanghua though, because I slept through the whole thing. All that really happened here is that Sister Hubner's deodorant fell off its shelf. So we're just fine. Would you mind sending us more info on the quake though so we can know who to pray for? Because it sounds like it was pretty big elsewhere. 

I love you guys so much! 

Sofi

I'm Alive!

Ok so good news, I'm alive! And this might be a long email, since it's been like a month since my last email. 

On January 11th, we said goodbye to Sister Wu and sent her off to the MTC! She went to the MTC with one other sister from our area, so I was companions with the other orphaned sister, and things worked out nicely. In the picture are Sister Lin, Sister Wu, Sister Liang (my companion for 3 weeks, and me).
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The night after we dropped off Sisters Wu and Lin, Sister Liang and I both got sick. I only had food poisoning, so I got better after like two days, but Sister Liang stayed sick for entire three weeks we were together, so I passed the time pretty much like this:

Being unable to leave the house for three weeks does interesting things to a person's mind. I am extremely thankful for the Gospel Library app. After a while though, it got to the point that I took up embroidery. I'm not joking.

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So that's pretty much how January went. UNTIL, Sunday morning we got transfer calls, aaand... I got moved to Zhanghua! ​Moving was nervewracking because both Sister Liang and I were moving and we had about 24 hours to completely pack and make all the arrangements to get us and our suitcases to our various destinations. It all worked out though, and this first week in Zhanghua has been so much fun! My new companion is Sister Hubner (there are dots over the u, but this computer refuses to do them). Here we are on our first day together:

Sister Hubner is amazing! She's super dedicated to sharing the gospel, and we've seen some serious miracles! We found five new investigators this week! Here are some other highlights: 

We were out exploring a smaller village in our area, and we stopped in a 7-11 to do some studies. A mom with two small children approached us. Without saying a word to us, she pulled up a chair to our table and sat her three year old daughter on it. She pulled her 2 year old son up next to her daughter, then left to wander the store and take care of some stuff. The poor little boy looked incredibly terrified. He flung his arm out and grasped my hand in a death grip. He managed to make it a few more minutes before the fear engulfed him and he melted onto the floor in tears. 

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The mom came and scooped him up, but left the daughter with us. The daughter was not afraid to talk to us, and told us in confidence that she sometimes sneaks sips of her mom's milk tea. That was the only thing she said that we could understand. A few minutes later the mom wandered back over with three cups of pudding for us and her daughter. She gave them to us and left again, so we had a pudding party with a three year old. It was the best day ever. 

Our district in this area is a little unusual. We have six sisters and two elders. The elders have started calling us the Relief Society. This week during exercise time we all got together and played ultimate frisbee. It was freezing cold, but a ton of fun! Here we are with two other sisters from our district, Sister Young and Sister Dower:
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We were contacting at a park the other day, and saw this dad teaching his son Taichi. We immediately ran over and asked if we could do it with them. The dad was very gracious, and taught us a basic taichi sequence, then even photographed us doing the sequence along with his son. It was incredibly relaxing, and we were able to share a video about Jesus with them afterward! They were pretty much the coolest family ever. Unfortunately, my email has gotten too big, so I can't put on another picture. I should probably wrap up anyway. 

It has been such an incredible week. Sister Hubner and I have been having an amazing time making plans and figuring out ways to improve in our work. We've been finding miracles, and having such a fun time doing it! I truly have a testimony that this is Heavenly Father's work, and that as long as we continually try our best miracles will happen. 

Hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Sister Hull

Frolicking through fields of wildflowers

Hi Everyone! 

A couple of weeks ago when we were serving at the adorable old folks' community center, a group of people came to do a presentation. They're from an organization called '爱的力量' , or 'The Power of Love'. They started a farm here in Daya as a sort of a rehab place for disabled people. We went and asked if they needed any help, and they responded with an enthusiastic yes! We set up to visit them this Friday. When the Tanzi elders heard we were gonna go farming, they got really excited and asked if they could come too. So, on Friday morning, all six of us rolled in to help farm. 

We didn't end up doing much farming. Instead, we did introductions, and learned more about the vision of the farm. It's a really cool place. All the plants are in planter boxes raised about 3 feet from the ground so that they're easily accessible from a wheelchair. There's a huge variety of produce, mostly of the lettuce and cabbage persuasion. I only recognized arugula and basil. After introductions and a tour, the son of the guy who runs the farm took us to a nearby field they own to pick collard greens (we think that's what they are). Since we were taking home all the leaves we picked, we only picked a little bit, and then spent the rest of the time taking pictures in the midst of the gorgeous field. It turns out that flowers are the yummiest part of collard greens (if that's what they are), and the flowers were abundant. It was delightful! We will now be going back every Tuesday. 

We're still adjusting to the new technology that just came to our mission. One of the best parts of having smartphones is the ability to have lessons over video chat. One of our investigators is currently going to school in Taibei, so we've been using video chat abundantly to keep in touch and answer his questions about the Book of Mormon. We had a lesson scheduled on Saturday, and just before we ran into our Young Men's president, Pan Dixiong. We asked if he would like to accompany us and help with the lesson. He agreed, but then we ran into a roadblock. As two sisters, we weren't allowed to lock ourselves away in a classroom with him to have this lesson. So we had the lesson in the foyer of the church. Sister Wu has a small tripod that we set up, then we crowded onto the couch. It turned out that that was the night our ward was cleaning the church, so there were people sweeping and mopping the whole time. We had to lift the tripod several times so someone could mop underneath it. The lesson went pretty well though, and the church got cleaned, so I think it was all right. We're still figuring out how to best make this tech thing happen.

One more miracle for the week, this week Linda came to church! Linda's been an on again, off again investigator since before I got here. As long as I've known her, she's never come to church. We've tried everything we could think of to help her want to come, and she'd say that she wanted to come, say that she was coming, but she'd never show up. I think a big part of it was just that she was nervous to come to this unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people. She doesn't like crowds. Lately though, she's had some big challenges in her life. Last week we visited her, and I asked if she could come to church this week. She said yes, so I told her, ok, we'd be outside her house a half hour before church started, and we would go together. That way, she would have someone to go with and she wouldn't be alone. It was raining on Sunday, and when we got to her house her brother in law said she'd taken her daughters to lunch. We waited in the rain for 20 minutes, and then she finally came back. She was happy to see us, and we waited for her and her two daughters to get ready, then went to church! She only stayed for Sacrament meeting, but we could tell that she was really touched by the music and testimonies. As she left, she said she felt like she'd been given much more strength to help her deal with the challenges she'll face this week. I'm so, so glad that she was finally able to come and to feel the wonderful spirit that comes from attending church and partaking of the sacrament.

Hope you all have a wonderful week! Love you!
Sister Hull

Pics: 

1-2: Our wildflower farming adventure. In the second picture, the photographer is the man who owns the farm's son, Tim. Going right from Tim is Elder Geary, Sister Wu, me, Elder Peterson, Elder Andersen, and Elder Li. 

3: Pan Dixiong and us following our church foyer video chat lesson. For some reason it's upside down right now as I'm sending this. Hopefully it'll fix itself when I send this.

 

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