A Beautiful Christmas in Taiwan!

The shuanghe Sisters going out on our P-day! :) We love Miaos! :) haha

Christmas MRT tree.( at the train station)

Sister Meyers and I at the Christmas Mission Conference:)

Some of my favorite people. The McCombers:) I want to be just like them when I grow up!!

We have a plethera of Polynesians in our mission so naturally there was a Hakka during the talent show. The best part? When they invited President up to participate with them :) 

We all went to the dedication site for Taiwan and President read through the dedicatory prayer. Then he gave us each a moment to go and re-dedicate ourselves to this work. I think this was the  beginning of a very humbling last few months for Sister Maddie Giles. 

Dear Family & Friends,

I'm so thankful for Christmas and all of the miracles I saw this year.

On Christmas Eve we shanged ke, then we went to carol, then on our way home while riding the MRT we read aloud the Christmas story from Luke. It was actually very tender :) Christmas day we woke up, opened presents, then basically just went out and chuaned jiao until our 7 course dinner catered by Yo Luo :) 

My mom asked me what things will stand out to me about Christmas on my mission. I think just being able to say that I represent Jesus Christ every day this year has been a big miracle. The biggest culmination of that was just being able to do it on the literal day for remembering Christ. I also remember praying right after I skyped with my family and I prayed and prayed and prayed for a really long time. Then I apologized in my prayer for praying so long and then Heavenly Father said to not worry about it and that he loved me. I learned this Christmas how patient God is with me. HE's WAY more patient with me than I am with myself. I love that. I'm so thankful. 

The church is true.

Another small miracle/cool thing that happened. We've been reading those Christmas stories you sent to us and I was thinking about a quote from one of them,

"the scars suffered for others make one most beautiful in the eyes of God."

As I was thinking about this quote I thought about us as missionaries. We're scarred and bumped and bruised all day every day and it's all for others.

Then I thought of our Savior. I thought of His scars and His wounds. Then this quote took on a whole new meaning. 

Everything Jesus did was for you. And for me. For all of us. Let's not take that for granted this Christmas.

Much love!

Gu Jiemei

Our investigator Wu Dixiong who came to church on Sunday!!!He is so awesome:) and one of our awesome members Hong Jiemei.

On Christmas eve we got to go to Christmastown (AKA Banqiao) and carol at the train station. It was an absolute blast and so much fun to be there as a missionary. 

I definitely kept up the family tradition of eating Chinese food on Christmas Eve!!

After our Skype, our Bishop's wife made us hot cocoa and guava and little cracker things :) True Taiwanese love.

The baptism of Liao Dixiong

Sometimes you just want to build a snowman:)

On Christmas day we got to go visit the Chinese version of "The Office"! haha 

This is a sweet RC named Virginia. She's been baptized for about 4 months and she's a rockstar. She made sure that we missionaries had plenty of time to give everyone tracts at the party and to sing and share the gospel. She's the cutest. God is working miracles here :)