Taking it to Taiwan: November is the Month of Miracles

So it was halloween this week in case you were wondering. And so that's awesome. But doesn't really effect me much. My companion on the other hand is one of those plan for months, full on make-up/hair, stay up all night and celebrate kind of halloween hosts. So as representatives of Jesus Christ we very honorably put together this lovely number.

Can you tell who we are?

(The answer is not Hogwarts students)

We are ELDERS bum bu bum bum bum bum bum. (When you read this think of the "We are Farmers" jingle from a while back)

There's no Halloween in Taiwan so there's no trick-or-treating, but we did participate in another great Taiwanese tradition which involves traveling to the nearest Family Mart and buying Haagen Dasz ice cream. Woo hoo!

Dear Family & Friends,

A couple of awesome miracles from this week:

1- So about a week ago we were contacting outside of an MRT station and we met the cutest old toupee wearing man. He didn't have time to pray with us and honestly I was pretty sure he ting bu donged everything we said. But he set up to meet with us another time. He said he wanted to buy us some drinks but he somehow already knew that we don't drink coffee. So that was cool! Anyways, we set up, but he said he couldn't give us his address or phone number and wouldn't let us write down the appointment on a card insisting that he would remember.

So this week we had our appointment with him! We set up for a lady in our ward to come and help us out. We met her at the MRT station and started explaining the situation as we approached the 7/11 we had set up to meet with this guy at. And as we were approaching we saw this man in a completely white Navy Uniform. We then realized it was our investigator! He was perfectly on time at the exact place we had set up with him! So we started walking over to where we could sit down and drink some mango smoothie and got to know each other. He was pretty hard of hearing and I wasn't sure he understood what we were saying. So I was kind of preparing myself for one of those "teach them how to pray and how to feel God's love" kind of lessons.

He then proceeded to tell us about his long time Christian friend and about all the bible stories he had told him. He talked about Adam and Noah and Moses and so I figured lets give him a shot. So I started with "Thank you for talking with us today. Today we want to share a story with you about another very important prophet named Joseph Smith." He became very quiet. Which was very surprising because he was a little bit rambly. So we started to share about the apostasy and the first vision and he didn't say a word.

At one point he stopped us and said, pointing to the picture of Joseph Smith, "Now, this man is a prophet of God. He was 14 years old when he wanted to know what church was true. He knew that God would answer his prayer. So he prayed. And God and Jesus Christ appeared to him. Is that about right?"

We were stunned. He then proceeded to do that with every gospel point we had taught him. We were SOOO excited. It was such a huge miracle and built my faith so much that God is preparing people for the gospel. He heard about the bible from a Christian missionary when he was 19 years old and the impact that woman had on him has carried throughout his entire life up until right now where he is prepared to hear the full truth.

God loves his kids.

2- ANOTHER BIG MIRACLE THIS WEEK.

So Sister Fenlaw and I were preparing to go finding for an hour on Sunday and were about to set some goals. We discussed how many new Investigators we would have and I felt 3. That's a very high number for that hour of the day. haha. But I was feeling very full of faith. We then prayed that we would be able to find some humble seekers of truth and started on our way.

OH HOW THE PRAYER WAS ANSWERED.

So we recently learned that we can chuan the jiao inside of college campuses. So we decided we would go inside of the Taipei University of Education. As we walked in, I saw a young man sitting on the fence playing with his phone. I almost walked past him, but went back and talked to him. We shared with him that we were representatives of Jesus Christ and we watched the Because He Lives video. He told us he was catholic and believed in Jesus Christ and such. We then asked him if there was anything we could pray for him for and he said this, "I'm just really looking for direction for my future." Can you say golden answer?? Yes. yes you can. And yes you should. We then talked to him about baptism. He said he had been baptized before but he literally said these words (but in Chinese), "Would I have to be baptized again?" We said yes. "Well, I was really little when I was baptized so I don't even remember it. I would be totally ok with being baptized again. I would feel better if it was my decision." For you returned missionaries, CAN YOU SAY THE DISTRICT?? (Totally a quote from Jackie)

Sister Fenlaw then had the brilliant idea that we should invite him to the YSA FHE happening that night in a few hours. So we showed him the address and he looked it up right there. We actually didn't know how to get to the FHE either so we might have also needed to look at the map... he then realized that we didn't know where it was or have the technology to conveniently find it on our own and volunteered to borrow a bike from one of his friends and ride there with us. We told him we had some more missionary work to do, but we would see him there at 6:30. We then parted ways.

About half an hour later we got a text in broken english telling us exact directions on how to get to the FHE and what we would see there and such from our new friend.

He then showed up at the FHE. He's the one sitting next to me in the blue sweatshirt. It was my favorite FHE ever :)

YSA FHE with our investigator in the royal blue:)

3- We got to go to the Taipei Temple this week:

IT WAS SO AMAZING. I just love the temple so much. This time I actually got to do initiatories in Chinese. That was very interesting to see how far my Chinese has come :) So I went through and did two names of initiatories in Chinese. Then I got to do some in English. As soon as the words came out of the workers mouth I started to cry. I just love the cleansed feeling you get during the initiatory. The Spirit really does speak to us best in our native tongue. It made me understand better why we learn Chinese. We learn it so that they can feel the comfort I felt when I heard the english initiatory. We also got to go to a session. It was the best!!!

Today in my studies the theme that the spirit kept pushing me towards was Trust in the Lord. Which is kind of exciting, but kind of terrifying. Something Sister Fenlaw and I are always saying is that The Lord is preparing us for THE THING. We don't know what THE THING is, but we are pretty sure that it's pretty good and has something to do with our eternal Salvation. I feel like being in Xinan has been very refining for me. But I'm so thrilled to be coming out of these 2 transfers a better missionary and a better person. I know that God really is preparing us for something. I know that trusting in the Lord is the key. Even though I forget that all the time... I know it's true.

Thanks so much for all the love and support!!!

Love,

Gu Jiemei