Taiwan Taipei Mission: Baptism and the power of the Holy Ghost

This week was full of miracles!!! It was amazing and although our numbers do not show it there were some amazing things that happened! First off we got a baptism!! She is literally one of the coolest RC's. She has already brought her sister to meet with us and yesterday she brought her friend to church!! It was one of the weirdest baptisms though, we had changed the time so many times and then we set a final time for 8:30 at night. We had an activity in our ward so we asked if a RM in her ward could help her get changed at 8 and then we would come down at 8:15, it turns out at 8:15 she wasn't even there yet! She had biked from Danfeng station to our church and her sister was walking trying to find our church at the same time!! She didn't end up arriving until 8:30!! After that it went well though and everything worked out and she is doing awesome!

The activity that our ward did was to end the 40 day fast for missionary work, we invited so many people and we actually got four investigators to go! It really helped them get to know the ward and the ward was super pumped to see new people! One of the miracles was this investigator who is a little girl and her mom is a less active in our ward. She never really liked going to church and she didn't have any friends, but after the activity she ended up going to all three hours of church! It truly was a miracle to see her make more friends at church and to start being comfortable with the members (and the members are just so excited to see her family make progress towards the church!)

Two weeks ago I got this feeling to keep trying to get a hold of this former named Sofie, at first it didn't seem like anything could come out of it. The people that put her in formers said that her desire wasn't there and that she just stopped answering her phone. I kept calling and then she ended up answering and meeting with us. We have met with her two times and she has told us that she's met with missionaries before but she would always tell them that she was busy, but when we called she had an impression to answer the phone and to set up. She said that she truly recognizes us as servants of the Lord and that we have something important to share. During the first lesson she shared one of her biggest concerns (which she told us that she had no plan on doing but felt like she had to) and then how she wanted to change her life. She actually started the repentance process before we even had the chance to really teach it to her, the role of the Holy Ghost really amazes me each time. The Holy Ghost was starting to teach her how to repent by helping her recognize her mistake and start fixing it!

We also had the amazing opportunity to meet with this LA! We had the impression to keep trying to meet with this guy and so we didn't give up on trying to contact him. His wife and him had just had a baby a couple of months ago so they were really busy, but this past weekend we had the awesome opportunity to meet them! The wife is not opposed at all to the gospel and was really open to hearing about families. The dad was telling us how he was having a hard time providing for the three children but after we met and shared "Earthly Father, Heavenly Father" he was more than willing to let us come back and to teach his family!

Amazing things are happening here!!

Nonspiritual thoughts:

So yesterday we kind of felt like hobos because since we live so far from our area we have to bring dinner with us and eat in our area. It was raining yesterday so we decided to eat at a 7/11, but the thing is this is how dinner went down...So we have lunch at our apartment and decide to boil some dumplings for dinner tonight. To make them cool faster, sister Hickenlooper put them in the freezer (she only planned on leaving it in there for 2 minutes) We start packing up and putting our shoes on to head out the door when all of a sudden I'm like... DINNER. Sister Hickenlooper just goes "oh no..." our dumplings were still in the freezer! So we throw them into the microwave and then straight into a bag with some soy sauce and head on our way to our area. Back to the 7/11, we sit down and start eating out of bags with chopsticks when Sister Hickenlooper notices this man sitting next to me. He had a tuna pasta salad and some chicken in a bag, she starts going "I feel bad for that man, he's eating alone at a 7 and to make it worse it's chicken out of a bag. Where's his family?" Next thing I know she is crying over this man who is just enjoying his food at a 7. LOL.