Jasmine's Baptism

Sunday, December 27, 2009 11:32 PM

This week has been fine, not a whole lot to update on. This week has not exactly been the most productive and we have the lowest numbers of my whole mission, but when I got here my companion was SUPER sick. She felt really bad about being so sick, but the thing about a missionary, is if you go out in the wet and cold when you can't even talk in the first place day after day, it never gets better. Which, is what she'd been doing for 2 weeks and kept getting worse. We went and saw a doctor who put her on a lot of drugs and stuff, and now, a week later, she's a lot better, so next week should be a lot more busy, at least I hope so...I'm not sure what it is, but a lot of times I move to areas that aren't exactly dead, but they are in transitions, so I get there and it's a rare investigator or 2 that are coming to church or progressing.

Transfer 7 Week 1: Moving to Danshui (near Taipei)

Monday, December 21, 2009 2:53 AM

Okay, not a lot of time to write this week, especially because I'm MOVING IN................Yeah. So I have quite the news to tell you all this week. That is, my area is being whitewashed! Okay, well half way, because both my companion and I moved.Sister Chen Shuting stayed in the area to take care of it. Sister Olsen is her new companion. They are going to do great, My area was not REALLY white washed, Chen Jiemei was in half the area, but she is a little stressed because she wasn't teaching a lot of our investigators, but she has met them, so it's a little better than white wash, and they are doing great! President Grimley is the best and he gave me permission to go up to my area this Saturday for Jasmine's baptism, especially since Sister Kunzler went to Xinzhu's Jubei, so she's too far away to come back.

Thanksgiving Report from Jilong

Gigi, thanks for giving me Nena's address, I actually finally got her letter yesterday with the address on it.  haha.  But the thing is I wrote her like 3 transfers ago, and keep seeing the letter sitting there every week, so I kept asking.  Yeah, I realize there are a couple people I'd like to write I don't have addresses for every now and then...but my opinion on writing letters has changed completely from when I first started a mission.  I used to want to write people I was used to communicating with often...Not sure why, probably because I wanted to still feel an attachment to the outside world or something...Now as my time is more pressed (the older you get on a mission, the more responsibilities you have to take on) I focus on taking the time to write those I know are wondering how I am, so I put the letters I get in a pile, and slowly work on responding.  It is nice to hear that a large majority of my friends keep up on my blog from time to time.

Buddish Baibai Allowed if Praying to God

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 11:32 PM

Um, why is it that nobody writes me consistently?  You guys need to be better about that, especially since I write you EVERY week, even twice sometimes when my email decides to get lost.  Nobody answered my question last week about the name, and nobody has told me Nena's address even though I asked a lot of times, I can't find out myself, someone needs to find out for me.

Baptisms in Zhongli

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 2:27 AM

Hello from Zhongli, although it may be my last week here (or maybe I have a long time left here, speculations and bets have begun to be made).  haha.  I think people always guessing transfers is amusing, and I'm definitely not "too good" to participate in making guesses of who is going where and who is training, etc etc.  It's usually all in good Preparation day fun as districts hang out.  I personally hope I leave, just based on the fact that I have been in Zhongli for 6 months now, my entire mission...but if I don't leave, I won't be too upset because I really love this area and there are a lot of people here to teach.  So we'll find out what happens on Friday night, and I'll be back here online emailing on Monday, so don't forget to write me before then! 

In other news, this last Friday's baptism went pretty well.  Jasmine and Petrea Ge were baptized, but Leilani wasn't.  She had a few hang-ups that were understandable.  We'd like to see her baptized this week, she will call us tonight and tell us after she talks to her classmates when she thinks a good time would be...but even if in the end it's not this week, I know she will get baptized sooner or later.  So I'm not too worried about that. Petrea was really cute at the baptism.  She was like "I'm Ge Boya, and I think getting baptized is really AWESOME."  Then she sat down.  haha.  Kids.  Jasmine is also doing really well, she likes to hang out with our awesome Wu Mujun, who tuesday night just showed up to our lesson, we hadn't even told her about it, because she wasn't at church Sunday, but she must have heard from Jasmine we were coming over, and she came too.  That's dedication.  Jasmine also just really likes the missionaries, so that's good.  She came early to church Sunday because she said her house is boring, so she just sat around well Sister Chen and I ate, and she talked to us and stuff.  She also has started attending the Advanced English class on Wednesday, and thinks the teachers are hilarious.  I think that is due to the fact that her High School English class is too easy, since she lived in Australia growing up and is half Australian, and even though rarely uses her English these days, shes really still quite good at it. 

As for Chen Yiting, she's set-up for Saturday night and she's so super excited.  She's such a funny 19 year old girl, so I'm excited for her.  She's been like, I'M SO EXCITED FOR SATURDAY...whenever we see her.  Haha.  Really cute.

Besides that though, not a lot has been happening, we teach an okay amount of lessons and just try to invite everyone to learn about the church.   This last week we must have had a really good increase in key indicators, because the Assistants called us and told us that they and President were very happy with the work we were doing in Zhongli, and they encouraged us to keep working hard, and that they could see our hard work is really paying off.  That through our work and efforts many people were coming to know their Savior.  That's the 3rd time we've received a call like that from the Assistants on my mission.  I'm not sure how often they do it, but it's nice to hear from them, albeit a little stressing in that it's just a little pressuring that twice that it has happened, our numbers were inevitably going to drop that next week in some ways. But it's not necessarily a bad drop.  So yeah, our mission has very good Assistants that follow-up.  I seriously have never seen people so good at following up as the Assistants.  If we tell them anything, they remember and ask how that is going the next time they see us.  Their memories are almost uncanny.  Gotta respect crazy good memories like that.

So yeah! Time is running out, but don't forget, write by next week on Monday, your Sunday night I think.  I'll tell you then what happened Saturday, and with move calls.  I'm excited to be moving into transfer 5.  It's almost a halfway point for sister's I think.  Time passes fast.  Also with almost being in Taiwan 6 months now, I'm noticing I'm understanding a LOT more than I used to and I'm able to pretty much teach every lesson 1-4 decently and clearly.  Cool!  :)   I can't say "It all sounds Chinese to me" anymore...how sad because I used that phrase a lot before my mission, but now Chinese makes sense...everything not Chinese sounds Korea, or Indonesian, or Vietnamese around here.  Now my ear hears the difference between Asain languages.

Until next Monday,

Fu jiemei
Sister Flora Bruno

Week 23 in Zhongli or Transfer 4 Week 5: 4 Baptisms Slated

Hmm...let's see, well, this is currently week 23 in Zhongli and not a lot has really happened that week that I have to talk about.  Most interesting though I guess, would be the situation with the Ge Girls, or the Huang girls, depending on your take.  Their mom is Huang but they are all xin'ed Ge.  It took me like 3 transfers of knowing them to figure that out though...I never knew their Chinese names until recently.  They wanted me to just call them by their English names like Mom did.  Well, this Sunday was their baptism interview with Elder Lords, since their baptism is this Friday.  In the morning, mom couldn't take them to church because she had something going on, so we went to their apartment and picked them up, but only 2 of them came and met us downstairs for their interview.  The 2nd child, Leilani, didn't come.  They said she'd come to church later with mom.

I was so sad, she was the most awesome about reading and everything...she was in Jacob in no time, but because of that responsible personality, she stressed herself out about the interview and didn't want to do it...So Jasmine and Petrea did it and passed fine.  I was excited but still really sad about Leilani.  I sat next to her at church, and she wouldn't talk to anyone, she just cried and slept the whole meeting.  I'm not sure what the situation was.  Then, in Sunday school, I saw her in there sitting alone, so I had Su DX go see why.  The kids here are all really shy and our awesome Young Woman's who comes with us to their lesson, Wu Mujun was sitting by her sister.  I really wanted her to have a good experience at church so maybe we could talk to her and she could interview later.  Well, Su DX figured everything out, and I don't know how Sunday School was, but I went in there during the last hour and her sister and Mujun and I all sat together and Young Woman's was really fun.  We ate prezels and cheeto puffs and talked about how to control our thoughts, and everyone was just being really silly, and Leilani was smiling a lot.  Then, mom and Leilani were together with a counselor in the bishopric after church when we were in our meeting we have every sunday after church, and towards the end of the meeting, Huang jiemei and Leilani come downstairs and Leilani says she wants to meet with Elder Lords.  So yeah!  Then after the meeting, he interviewed her.  It took about an hour, but she passed fine and Elder Lords says her testimony is really amazing and he was so happy after that interview, because he was really able to help her, and he said that's the best kind of interviews, the ones where you really see a change with them from the beginning to the end...so I'm glad for Elder Lords...he helped her a lot, and she looked SO happy after her interview, where as the rest of the day earlier she looked so happy and stressed out.  So I'm REALLY excited for Friday.  I've known these girls for almost my whole mission and now they are getting baptized...

Also coming up on Friday is Chen Yiting's baptism interview.  She's so awesome, she's always like, I'm so excited to be baptized!  I'm so excited to come to church on Sunday!  I'm so excited to get to be interviewed for my baptism!  So yeah.  She's excited for Friday.  Her date is that following Saturday.  Move calls are Friday the 25th for a heads up, so if I forget to tell you next week, Preparation day will change to Monday not next week, but the following one.  People have already started talking about them, maybe I'll be more wondering about them by next Wednesday, but for now I have a super busy week until Sunday with Temple day in Taipei today, then we are going to Taipei tomorrow to do the temple tours, and biking out to Shanziding on Saturday...which is about a 55 minute bike ride straight uphill we've been doing once or twice a week these days for some investigators.  But since it's such a long bike ride...it takes quite a bit of time.  Like yesterday, we went all the way out to Yangmei for an appointment.  It was a 3 hour affair.  Shanziding is like that, but luckily we keep meeting people out there, and now have 3 lessons for our hard bike ride, instead of just 1 like it originally was.  So yeah, I thought briefly about it, but not too in-depth.  I feel super busy, but next week is probably not going to be nearly as busy.  Week 6 doesn't have many activities that happen, so we have nothing but time to try to fill in.  We'll do our best!  That's pretty much it though...not too many out of the ordinary things happened this week, we are just preparing for Friday, and our main focus next week will be Saturday.  We are very blessed here in Zhongli.  I've seen a lot of success.  Not to say we don't have trials, we have a lot, sometimes we have days where everyone cancels the night before and we have like 4 hours to fill in, in really hot weather, but it all ends up okay, and time passes by pretty fast.  Time really isn't the same on a mission as it was before the mission.  It's hard to explain, but yeah...time, it's warped.