Angels not even remotely in disguise

Hi Everyone!

Ok so, not much happened this week because I spent all of it languishing in bed with a diagnosis of acute colitis (inflammation of the colon). I could dump a lot of really disgusting medical information on you right now, but in consideration of your gag reflexes, instead I'll write about all the amazing people who helped me through this week. 

1. My Comp, Sister Taylor.

I've decided recently that when a missionary gets sick, the person who has it the worst is their companion, who is completely fine but then also confined to house arrest until the invalid recovers. Sister Taylor has been an absolute saint this week, patient and kind even after hours and hours of language study and watching every available video on the LDS media library. She was especially kind on the two days where I literally could not leave my bed without puking, but she made sure I had medicine and water and whatever other random things I needed but couldn't get myself.

2. Sister Card, the mission President's wife. 

Who texted and called me every day and kept up a good stream of communication between me, the mission medical advisor, and my parents. She also googled all of my random medical questions about which medicines I could take together, and the fiber content of various fruits.

3. Susan.

Holy cow, Susan is amazing! I wish I could send a picture of her, but she hates pictures. She won't come to church if she thinks you're going to try to take her picture there. Susan got baptized the week before I moved to Tainan. She is also a nurse practitioner. The minute I told her I wasn't feeling good, she offered to take me to the hospital. She then accompanied me through visits to one clinic and two hospitals, following the doctors around and bossing them to make sure they did things right. Which is a good thing, because at one point they mistook my intestines for my ovaries on the CT scan and told me I may never have kids again. It was hard to get to worried through all of this  though because of Susan's under the breath comments and eye rolls. She has been my lifeline.

4. The Stokers.

Their daughter, whom I only know as Sister Stoker, was Sister Taylor's trainer. They came back to visit Taiwan, and took us out to lunch at the end of the week. It was the first human contact not counting Elders that Sister Taylor and I had had in about 4 days, and it was very welcome. They were even kind enough to take a picture at the end of lunch and send it to our parents, a thing I know every missionary mom (and dad) really appreciates.

5. Our Ward Mission Leader, Mingyou

Mingyou is leaving tomorrow to go live in Australia for two years! He has been an awesome Ward Mission Leader, bringing drinks and good advice to our correlation meetings. He's helped us plan several activities and a couple of baptisms, and just generally made sure we're taken care of and in good health. We're going to miss him and his obsession with the Little Mermaid very much in the coming months. We went out with the Young Single Adults in the ward to celebrate him one last time on Saturday night at an American restaurant called Smokey Joe's. Does anyone know if that's an American based chain? We couldn't remember for sure. 

Bonus picture: we made a card for Mingyou, and after signing the envelope we decided it looked a little plain, so we decorated it, each person adding to what the last person drew. We were pretty proud of the result.

That's all I've got for this week! Being sick on a mission is no fun, but I've been well taken care of, and I'm on the mend. Hopefully next week I'll have lots of new stories and miracles to share!

Love you all!

Sister Hull

We had an exchange, zone conference, and English class in 36 hours

Hi Everyone! 

Happy Monday! This week was one of those weeks where you get to the end of it and you honestly can't remember a single thing that happened before Saturday. And Saturday was a bit of a blur too. Thankfully, with the help of photos and some extensive pondering, I was able to remember most of it. 

(Translation: Good morning. Have you ever read the sixth Chronicles of Narnia book, The Silver Chair? This reminds me a bit of the cliff they start out on.)

This week we had exchanges with Sister Bateman and Sister Jackson! 

Sister Bateman is my missionary granddaughter (my trainee trained her), and Sister Jackson is one of my best friends from the MTC, so we were all super excited to be back together! Some highlights of the exchange:1) I rode an elder's bike the whole time and it ate my skirt. 2) We were a little lost on our way to drop off a note to a member's house, when we randomly ran into another member who was visiting her sister who lived nearby, and she insisted on taking us there. 3) Sister Bateman and I both love reading, so we got to get caught up on all the good books we forgot existed. 4) We got fresh made avocado milk (think avocado milkshake) at a member's house. It was an awesome exchange!

Directly after our exchange, we all headed over to zone conference, our first one with President Card (wait, you might say, haven't you already had a lot of meetings with President Card? Yes, but they weren't zone conference. I'm losing track of how many first meetings we've had at this point). It was a really great conference, and the Cards brought their kids, which made it extra fun. They're such a cute family! Sister Taylor and I did a training, and it turned out pretty well! I'm so grateful for Sister Taylor. She's super enthusiastic and on the ball. 

Biking back from the train station after Zone conference, our District Leader, Elder Marsh, took this picture. Perks of everyone riding a scooter in Taiwan is that you have a captive audience at every stoplight!

Last night, it was the end of a long week, we had an hour left of contacting, and to be honest, all I wanted was to go home, eat some chocolate, and go to bed. But if there's one thing I've learned from my mission, it's that circumstances can change from blah to amazing in a heartbeat, so I decided not to emotionally check out just yet, and instead to pray and get to work. We went to this park, and while we were there I suddenly felt like I wanted to talk to this guy in a hat walking past.   

When we walked up to him, he turned and immediately asked, 'missionaries, right?' Usually, when someone asks this question, it's followed by a firm statement that they've already heard anything we could possibly say, they completely understand our religion, and they don't have interest. So Sister Taylor and I were a little wary as we said that yes, we were in fact missionaries. This man, however, didn't immediately shut us down, but instead started asking a bunch of rapid fire questions about whether or not Mormons believe in Christ. We opened the Book of Mormon and showed him that in fact, we 'talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophecy of Christ'.  We asked if he would be interested in meeting with us and learning more about what we teach. He asked if we had time right then, and luckily we still had about 20 minutes before we had to go home. So right there, standing in the middle of a park, we taught the entire message of the Restoration of the Gospel in 20 minutes. Our new friend (Whose English name is Carrey, as in Jim Carrey), was super interested. He's a Christian himself, and he especially liked that we emphasized that we all need to find an answer for ourselves through the Holy Ghost. In another five minutes, we had invited him to pray about what we shared, set another time to continue to meet with him, and parted ways as new best friends. It's amazing what can happen when the Spirit is present in missionary work. 

A few other highlights from the week:

- We helped a woman in our relief society clean out a hoarder's house.. maggots and all. 

- We met a Canadian guy who is biking and couch surfing around Taiwan for a month. He says he'd be interested in meeting with missionaries when he gets back to Canada.

- We celebrated Sister Taylor's year mark with pizza, and mine had ACTUAL BLUE CHEESE on it.

- We biked through several sudden torrential rainstorms without getting too wet, thanks to the giant plastic bags with sleeves that are sold at every 7-11

That's all for this week! Love you all!

Sister Hull

Transfers!

Hi Everyone! 

Sorry I didn't write last week. I'm sure you were all devastated to be missing your weekly update on missionary work in Tainan, Taiwan.

​(Translation: My good friend, good morning!)

Last week was transfers, and half of our district moved! We realized we had managed to go an entire transfer without taking a photo all together, so we remedied that the day before transfers. We had such a great district! Both Elder Miller (the tall one in the middle) and Elder Wilde (the tall one on the end) finished up their missions last week and headed home. I'm so grateful that I got to serve with them. They had amazing testimonies and a lot of experience and love for the work. I learned a lot from both of them. 

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Also, sad news, Sister Hancock moved up to be an STL in Taizhong with my MTC companion, Sister Fisher. I love Sister Hancock so much, so I'm really sad to see her go. We were together for two transfers, which is longer than I've been with any other companion since Sister Smith, my trainer. She's amazing. She loves music, missionary work, and mangoes. She's passionate and focused and taught me a ton about how to be a more effective missionary. Tainan doesn't feel the same without her. 

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On Monday, we dropped Sister Hancock off at the train station, and picked up my new companion, Sister Taylor! Sister Taylor and I served in the same district for two transfers back in Zhanghua, and she is so. cool. I'm so excited that I have this chance to serve with her now here in Tainan! Another sister in our zone, Sister Holiday, is training this transfer, so she stayed with us for the first few days until her trainee got to Taiwan.

​(Sister Holiday is in the middle, Sister Taylor is on the right)

A lot of other stuff happened this week, but I'm only going to share one more story. On Tuesday, Sister Holiday, Sister Taylor and I were contacting at this gorgeous park in our area, and we stopped and talked to an older man sitting on a bench. As soon as he recognized us as missionaries, he told us that he'd been having health problems lately, and needed us to pray for him right there. We gladly obliged, and said a prayer together, asking Heavenly Father to bless this man and help him recover. Then we stayed and talked to him for a little longer. He didn't have interest in learning more about our church, so we said goodbye and kept walking. I had a really good feeling as we left though. We are called as representatives of Jesus Christ, and we wear his name on our tags so that everyone else knows when they see us. It was so cool that this man recognized that, and knew that he could ask us for help, and we could help him say a prayer and come closer to God. It was a small little service, but to me it embodied everything we are called to do: to emulate Christ in serving those around us and pointing them toward God and eternal life.

Have an amazing week everyone! 

Lots of love,

Sister Hull

The Start of an Age

Hello Everyone!

I found an English good morning message for this week!

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I have a lot of news for this week! First, as you may remember from last week's email, we have a new mission president! This is President Card and his wife:

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Don't they look awesome? We had a Meet the President meeting on Tuesday, and got to learn all about them. They moved here from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. President Card served in the Taibei mission when he was young, so he still speaks some Chinese. Also, most exciting of all, is that they brought three of their four kids with them! They're  a super cute family, and it's going to be fun to have kids in the mission. One of the coolest parts of the meeting was hearing about the revelatory process that prepared the Cards to come here. It started two years ago when they got the feeling that President Card, who is only in his 40s, should retire. They had no idea why, and they weren't really sure what the next step was, but they started making preparations for him to retire. On the day that he left work for the final time, President Nelson (who was still an apostle at the time) called to do an exploratory interview and see if their family was in a place where they could serve as mission president and companion. From there, it has been a series of miracles for them, including being called to serve in President's beloved Taiwan, and their oldest son being called to serve a mission in California, also Mandarin speaking. I am really excited to work with them and get to know them better!

Here's another amazing thing that happened this week:

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Yup! Once again, I got to spend 24 hours doing missionary work with Sister Barber! And once again, it was literally the BEST THING EVER!! We went to Sister Barber's area this time, and it was fun to work with these people that she's grown to love so much. We worked hard and didn't get very much sleep because we were too busy talking about how much we love Taiwan. It's so amazing that we get to share this experience in Taiwan with each other. Serving in this country means so much to me, and I love that I get to share it with one of my best friends.

Contacting has been particularly fun this week. I attribute it to two things: school just ended, so everyone's more relaxed, and we just finished a solid week of rain, so everyone wants to be outside. People have just seemed happier, and we've had a lot of fun talking to everyone, and sharing the message of the Restored Gospel with them.

This week made friends with a 92 year old man named Jeff who has perfect English. Jeff is a horticulturist who used to work for the government, and in 1962 he spent a year touring and studying in the US. After that, he decided he didn't like working for the government, so he quit and instead made a living by hiking into the mountains and gathering wildflower seeds to export to other countries. After his wife passed away, he got sick of living in an apartment all the time, so he bought a house with some land so he could grow flowers again. His house is whitewashed, so he likes to joke that he lives in a 'Little White House' just like the President of the United States, who lives in a 'Big White House'. He met with the missionaries about 40 years ago, but he's forgotten all that they shared with him, so he invited us to come back and share again. We love him already, and are super excited to keep meeting with him!

Mango season is in full swing, and the mangos are getting bigger and sweeter by the day. Our angel members and investigators all know that missionaries love mangoes, so we've been gifted them by the bag every week. Life is good.

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Weather is unpredictable here in Taiwan. Yesterday,  clouds started rolling in on our clear, sunny afternoon. In the 15 minutes it took us to bike home for studies, the sky went from mainly clear to pouring rain in a massive thunderstorm. After dumping solid sheets of rain for about two hours, the weather cleared up again to reveal a gorgeous sunset.

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It's really cool to see just how much Heavenly Father guides our lives every day. For example, we have an investigator right now whose husband is a less active member of our church. He lived in America for a while and joined the church there, even serving a mission, but he hasn't attended since he's been back to Taiwan. Our investigator talks about him a lot, and we've really wanted to meet him, but we've never been able to find an opportunity. Then last night we were out contacting at a park, when we look over and see our investigator, Joanne, and her entire family! We introduced ourselves and were finally able to meet him. Joanne even invited him to come to church with her! They are such a cute family, and we are so happy to be teaching her. We really hope that they can all come back to church together so that they can have the blessings of an eternal family. 

Have an amazing week everyone! 

Love you all bunches,

Sister Hull