Humidity or breathing in water?

 

 This week was really good, we really learned how to find in different ways and still be effective!

The humidity and heat this week were UNREAL. Like literally it felt like we were breathing water one night. Sometimes I feel like I am being lit on fire while sitting in a sauna . I love summer, only three more months of it.

We have really been trying to do one minute power lessons and they have been working really well. We have been really struggling getting people to talk to us, but through the one minute lessons of really teaching a powerful doctrinal point we have been able to find success. We did a lot of 7/Family Mart hopping and it was so fun! We just would contact the people around us asking them random things like what flavor of ice cream they were eating or complimenting something they were wearing and then straight into a lesson and it was so effective! We got some really good contacts out of it. I really hope to be with Sister McKim for one more transfer, I don't think we've finished what we've started here in Siyuan!! We are super pumped about the upcoming baptisms (fingers crossed that they are able to be baptized next month). The members are really starting to do even more missionary work and we are pumped for the activities set up for our ward in the upcoming month. This Saturday we are doing our own little RC Fireside (the idea was Elder Kaufusi's) and we are all performing stuff and having members/RC's bear their testimonies with a focus on a certain doctrinal point from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Sister McKim has pretty bad asthma and the heat+humidity are not helping so we are thinking of different ways of traveling and contacting, we are doing more 7/Family Mart hopping, shopping area contacting, etc. We take breaks in those areas on our way home and we figured out a  bus system that would take us to our area and back if needed (fun way to start a contact hahaha). 

Our ward is really wanting to grow and is planning on doing a huge father's day sacrament meeting and are excited to see how it turns out. We've really been excited for how pumped they are to grow the ward and try to help their friends. They have been scared about sharing the gospel saying that everyone would just come at their own time, but as they've seen our efforts and the other member's efforts they have been more willing to share.

I honestly think that ward relationships with our investigators are so important. One of our investigators - Li Jia Ling - who is one of our most progressing investigators hit a rut last week and wasn't answering her phone. She has depression and didn't want us to meet or talk with her, we thought we had lost her and were praying and fasting to know how to help her. We ended up just deciding to push off the idea of trying to find a time to meet with her and just tried to show her how much we loved her so we just sent some encouraging texts. Then at our weekly board game activity we saw some huge success with investigators and at the end of the night Li Jia Ling came!! She met some people in our ward and they really cared about her and were really welcoming. She bikes all the way to our church (which is a 30 minute bike ride) and so two of the members offered to take her to church (which she came and previously she wasn't planning on it!) and that we could teach on the lower floor of her building!! 

Another one was when we had a new investigator family come to our board game activity. We thought more ward members and their children would be there, but there were no children and our investigator had brought her 11 year old son!! We were worried that they wouldn't have any fun and get to know our ward, but the ward members that were there were super welcoming and helped them have so much fun. I also helped them meet our WML who actually lives in the building across from them! We have been trying to get them to come to church, but the always buy food for their restaurant on Sunday mornings, so we have been trying to build their faith and help them buy it on a different day. This past week they had tried to buy it on Saturday, but they said there was nothing left to buy so they couldn't make it to church. We told them ahead of time the father's day activity and they said they would make time to specifically go to it!! We are so excited for their progress!!

I truly can't tell you how much a mission has changed me so far, I have learned more about Christ and our Heavenly Father than I have in my entire existence. There is nothing they truly can't change, I have learned more about who I can become and that the things I don't like can be changed. I have learned to love people more than what I am feeling or thinking and to try and serve them.  

Nonspiritual thoughts:

Sister McKim and I were fasting for our area and she had eaten some stuff at 4:30pm and then decided to start her fast. When 6 pm rolled around she was just leaning over this desk thing and was like..."Sister Chaooooo i am in so much pain. my stomach feels like it's eating itself. I have never been this hungry before!!!!" I then asked her how long she's been fasting and she is just like.... an hour and a half....it was a night of hunger. 

We also went to the beach with our district, we wanted to go near Tamsui but it was a lot of bus riding trying to figure out how to get to a certain beach. We spent a good three hours trying to figure out how to get there on multiple crowded buses. We eventually got there and it was super fun!! I had 張長老 (Elder Chang) tried and took a cute picture of my companion and I and in that exact moment when he took it.....the elder's threw a volleyball at me and it hit me. So my companion looks real cute and there I am terrified cause I got hit with a ball. 

Elder Kaufusi can fall asleep literally anywhere and so me being me...I took a pic with him.

After district meeting we walked outside to go English boarding and outside our chapel there were these HUGE wasp things and they had built a nest right outside our door. So Elder Kaufusi just went in and told the District Leader and our District Leader came out and grabbed the hose and started just spraying it like crazy. Then he started hitting it to have it fall down. Did the wasps attack him? No they didn't. How is that possible? We were not sure, but it was a lot of spraying water everywhere.  They are literally so huge. This is what happens when you ask Elders to do things.

This past Saturday was also Elder Kaufusi's  birthday so we celebrated at our board game activity. Taiwan has these awesome stores where they literally sell everything you can imagine so we went crazy and bought a lot of stuff. Elder Fuller wanted us to buy party hats and so you know me...if I see something super ugly and funny...I am going to buy it. LO AND BEHOLD I BOUGHT THE UGLIEST PARTY HATS THAT HAVE FACES ON THEM WITH A HEART STICKING OUT OF THEIR HAIR.

Also, our A/C has started being weird and it's super fancy so we don't know how to fix it. But the A/C keeps having this stupid light on throughout the whole day and we have no idea how to turn it off. It was so bright in our room that my companion stuck tracks over it at night.

Also we are going to the temple today!! We have the afternoon session, so that's basically our whole pday!!

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趙姐妹

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Sister Tiffany Chao

Taiwan Taipei Mission

4/F, #24, Lane 183

Jin Hua Street

Da-an, Taipei 106

Taiwan

Happy Fourth of July!!

Quick thing, next week my pday won't be until next Wednesday (the 19th or I guess the 18th for people in America) because we are going to the temple!

​This past week was awesome!!!​ Full of hard work, but Heavenly Father truly does help the missionaries out (there's no way we could have done this week without it).

On Tuesday we had a really cool pass off lesson from the 林口 (Lim Kou area) Elders, her name is Lu Pei Shan. She's cool, she was baptized as a Catholic a little bit ago but she had a lot of questions about the Book of Mormon. 

On Wednesday we got to meet with a girl named Winnie after English class. She is the granddaughter of one of the stake high council members in the Danfeng ward. She has always wanted to be baptized, but her parents want her to wait till she's 18 to make that decision. We taught her the third lesson (the Gospel of Jesus Christ) and I asked her if she still wanted to be baptized and she said yes!! I told her to pray about it, talk to her grandpa, and then talk to her parents about it. And that if she really wanted to be baptized, Heavenly Father would see her desires and help her. She was able to set a date for the 16th of August, now it all depends on if her parents will allow her!!

We also got to meet with the really cool mom from last week and her daughter Candice. We shared the second lesson (the plan of salvation) and the Spirit that was there was awesome. They are truly amazing people and are so willing to listen to what we are teaching. 

On Saturday we got to meet with Li Jia Ling and we taught her the second lesson also. We were asking her questions about why we are here and how Christ can give us happiness. She truly testifies to me how Christ can change lives, she has severe depression but since she's met with us and learned more about her Savior she said that she has gotten a lot happier. We gave her a baptismal calendar to help her see her goal of baptism, and she said that she's excited for her baptism (on the 29th hopefully!!)

Sunday was really cool, we had a huge miracle of having four people at church!! Later that evening we met with a new investigator 黃先生 (Mr. Huang) and his wife 張小姐 (Ms. Chang), he had gone to a Catholic school for college and they had seen missionaries a lot. Their mom met with the missionaries in a different area and then they were referred over to us! At first we thought we were only meeting the wife, but the husband was like...we set up for 6 right? and we are like...YES. So we went over and the husband was going to leave the room but we were like...NOOOO COME BACK, so we shared about why were on missions and then he asked what are the differences in all the Christian churches. We went straight into the first lesson and then the Spirit was building up to Joseph Smith's first vision when 張小姐 is like the other missionaries asked me to read Alma 32, and I'm like that's great and next time we can talk about it (because in my head I'm like noooo the Spirit was building up to the first vision!!!) so I lead back into Joseph Smith and share the first vision. They are not kidding when they say there is a different feeling felt when you testify of Joseph Smith. The Spirit that was there was amazing...like I'm not kidding. It almost made my companion cry. They said that if they knew this message was true that they would be baptized.

​

Nonspiritual thoughts:

​For the Fourth of July we were taken out for lunch (and by we I mean the 思源 (Siyuan) Elders and us) by the Howard family in our ward. We had some good old burgers and we ate SO MUCH, like I'm not kidding...we ate so much. Then we all biked in the dead heat to our district meeting. It was one of the most painful bike rides I have ever had hahaha. Elder Kaufusi was like "I feel like my heart is going to explode." Either way we survived...barely. Practice teaching was us dying and trying to feel the A/C to the best that we could. ​

Elder Fuller is so salty hahaha because I jokingly kicked his bike...15 times during English boarding, lowered his seat, and won him in UNO at our ward's board game activity. It's basically a war between the 思源 (Siyuan) Elders and us. JK we are all still friends.

Also, our phone stopped working yesterday...like no one could hear us whenever we tried to speak, so my trusty companion threw it at a door and then it worked!!

For District Meeting since it was on the Fourth of July, I put on a video of fireworks a member helped me download onto my flash drive and Elder Fuller played patriotic songs. 

We were not able to attend Peggie's baptism because she lives in Tucheng, not in our district and we had the ward activity to attend that day, but she was so cute and put our faces on straws like we were there.

My Gudetama (egg with a booty) broke because Sister McKim and I chest bumped with our backpacks on the front, so Elder Fuller super glued it back together, but then it fell off randomly again and I have no idea where it went. Miss it!

My Totoro sleepwear

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趙姐妹

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Sister Tiffany Chao

Taiwan Taipei Mission

4/F, #24, Lane 183

Jin Hua Street

Da-an, Taipei 106

Taiwan

God Provides

This week was literally so amazing. SO AMAZING. I love being a missionary, God provides so many miracles when you put all of your efforts into doing missionary work. Let's start!!

First off this week was full of meetings so my companion and I were worried that we wouldn't be able to spend some good proselyting time in our area since we live so far away. We had zone conference in Taoyuan which is a good hour and a half away from our area and that took up basically over half the day but we learned so much from it. We did this amazing role play where we taught a doctrinal point in under a minute. It really teaches you to simplify and to teach powerfully. It really changed how my companion and I want to do missionary work. This week we had district meeting and exchanges so we spent a good 5 hours in our area this week???? BUT IT IS OKAY BECAUSE GOD PROVIDES. In exchanges I learned a lot more about the one minute role plays and to teach concisely and then that evening (Saturday evening) we went to this board game activity that our ward holds almost every Saturday. There's this member 張姐妹 who comes almost every time, but this time SHE BROUGHT A STUDENT WITH HER. Not only her student but the sister and the mother came too!!! For the spiritual share, the Elders' did a four minute restoration lesson and we set up with their family for next week! It was SUCH A HUGE MIRACLE.

Also, we were finding a bit last week and it was super hot so we decided to go get some ice cream, on our way back to our bikes we stopped this girl named Judy. She was super confused at first on why were so happy and how we knew her, but we simply told her we are the missionaries and we say hi to everyone. It turns out she's an English teacher and that she's gone to church before when she was in the U.S studying for college. We set her up for this past week, but then when we went to confirm her she said that she had to cancel and I was like nooooooo. But then all of a sudden an idea popped in my head and I immediately was like...."WAIT. do you want to come to this awesome activity we have on Sunday? It's church and I think you'll really like it." then she was like, "Really?" and I'm like "YEAH COME WITH US TO CHURCH IT'S AMAZING." HERE'S THE BIGGEST MIRACLE PART OF IT......SHE CAME AND WE SET HER UP AGAIN FOR THIS THURSDAY.

Also, Peggy is getting baptized (Sister Lim's investigator) and she's in my English class. She's so amazing and I am so excited for her!!!

Nonspiritual thoughts:

Tomorrow is the fourth of July?!?!?!?!?! A family (The Howard's) in our ward is taking us out for lunch and I am pumped. 

Also, there's a huge cockroach in our kitchen and we have no idea where it is or how we are going to kill it?!?!?!?!?! So we bought some cockroach killer traps and I will tell you as soon as we find the king roach that is living in our cupboard. 

We met with this lady in our ward last week who brought her small girl to the meeting and Elder Fuller spent like 10 minutes trying to get a high five from her and then he just gave up and said just love me....she then proceeded to lick the table. LOL. 

On exchanges, Sister Armstrong and I went to this super fancy restaurant and in the water they had a piece of lime and a cherry tomato. What could be classier.

Also, in Taipei they have a POOP THEMED RESTAURANT. I DIED AND TOOK A PIC OF EVERYTHING. AND of course I didn't eat in there.

 

We also went to the recent convert fireside and we took a lot of pictures hahahhaa. 

Eating our yummy Greek food!

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趙姐妹

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Sister Tiffany Chao

Taiwan Taipei Mission

4/F, #24, Lane 183

Jin Hua Street

Da-an, Taipei 106

Taiwan