"We've been climbing a mountain for the last few months and it finally feels like we are getting to see the beautiful views at the top."

A kindred spirit!  This girls name is Maddie:)

We were invited this week to go and sing at an international music competition! However... it was stake conference that night so we got to be the warm up act :) haha we sang Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and then Angels We have Heard on High. It was also pretty funny because no one expected us to speak Chinese and so they got us a translator! hahaha

P-day trip to the Taipei Zoo!!!

Zoo-ligans:)

Dear Family & Friends,

Here are a few of the happenings with me this week:

1. This week I think I've really felt like we are on the downhill side of things (in a good way). I feel like we've been climbing a mountain for the past few months and we're finally getting to see the beautiful views at the top. We've gotten more investigators, we've gotten better relationships with our members, we've really been working very hard. I think we've also gotten to learn a lot of good lessons in being positive. The Lord is helping us to be humble. He is helping us remember that it is ONLY through Him that we do this work. There literally is no other name by which we can be saved. 

2. Mom asked me how much we are teaching each week. We're teaching anywhere from 20-30 lessons a week. We do a lot of teaching on the street. Which is good and it gives us a lot of faith-building experiences but very rarely are the people we meet on the street from our area. We're the queens of sending referrals. We also have to call the APs any time we send a referral so... they might be sick of us by now haha but it's fun to talk with them once a day! 

3. I've been thinking about some of the things I like about being in Taipei. Here are a few.Secrets! Something I love about all areas is finding new parts of it. There's always something new to be discovered. A new street to go down a new address to try a new person to contact. It's just so much fun! I love finding new things. I also love seeing Taipei 101 all the time. It's such a beautiful building and they light it up with different colors every night.

A view of Taipei 101 in the background 

4. So my cold got significantly worse this week and, having been in Taiwan for so long I decided it was time for me to give the surgical mask thing a try. What I learned,

a. These surgical masks actually enhance your sense of smell. Especially rancid smells. Don't ask me how it works.

b. There are two choices, adult size, which covers your whole head, or child size, which makes you look like a small duck.

c. Biking while wearing a surgical mask is a completely different sport than biking without one.

I don't think I'll be wearing surgical masks again soon :) Sorry Taiwanese culture! haha

Me and my surgical mask
5. One of our new investigators is Chen Jiemei. We met her after a pretty discouraging night of finding. We decided (after eating a little bit of ice cream) that we needed to increase our faith. So we went out and kept contacting. And once again faced rejection after rejection after rejection. We got on our bikes and were starting to ride away from where we were when I saw this girl walking in the middle of the street. So I stopped where I was and asked her if we could pray for her. She said sure. So we pulled over and had an awesome lesson with her. We've met with her once since then and she really wants to know what the truth is. She's so awesome :) 

Thank you again for all the love and support!  I continue to be stretched, but I'm so grateful to be on a mission:)

Love you all,
Gu Jiemei

Sister Fenlaw wrote my name in the peanut butter. She's the best!!!

An amazing meal!!! So much food:)

So this week we had to travel to a place that was pretty far from our house on the map and so we decided to take the MRT like the big city slickers we have become. So... we took the MRT down there only to discover that it's actually probably faster and a lot cheaper to ride bikes. Learning! #tinyarea #zhongtaipei

My companions request for breakfast:)

P-day hike!

An awesome investigator and a cool sign behind us:)