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

Work Progressing in Zhongli: Missionary Email

Wednesday, September 9, 2009 1:48 AM

Okay, I just wrote an entire email in an hour, then the website got all messed up, so this won't be nearly as long or detailed...and I had to spend another 25 kuai to type this. Sigh. We went and got lunch and now have to spend another hour in the internet cafe so I can write...But what can you do?

This week was really good. I had the best lesson of my life last night. Or at least it felt really good. Sister Hill will be excited to read about it if she reads by blog. We were at Huang jiemei's house, with Jasmin, Leilani, and Petrea, the Ge girls. Well, Jasmin has been getting really comfortable with the Young Woman's and attending the Friday activity, and Wu Mujun has been our pei ke and really being their friend, in fact, we went over last night, and Leilani was like, "mu jun jie jie zai nali? " Or, where is Mujun? We felt bad because we hadn't asked her to come that time, because we have been meeting with them twice a week these days, so we just wanted her to take time out of her busy schedule once a week, not every time, but now they are accustomed to her, so they were like, where is she? So yeah! When we meet with them on Friday, we will definitely see if she can come. But yeah! All three girls were there for the lesson, and it was just an amazing lesson. I was very STRAIGHT with them. At the beginning when nobody wanted to be the one to pray, I was like "Why are you guys so unwilling to pray?" and then eventually Jasmin repeated a prayer S. Chen said, then I taught them again how to pray, but I feel like they really listened this time. Then mom brought up a concern about them believing in God, so I had us read Mosiah 4:9-10 and I was like, "I don't want an I don't know answer from you..Do you believe in God?" and we went aroudn the room. Leilani and Petrea said yes, and Jasmin said she honestly was unsure. I said that was fair, and asked Leilani why she believed. Last week she was also testing it out. But we asked about her prayers and she said she prayed and prayed and prayed, to get a feeling to her prayers once or twice. And we talked about how you have to have a desire to prayer lots of times so you can get a feeling once or twice sometimes, and then you will know by that once or twice that God is listening. Leilani really progressed since last week, in a week since she committed to read the Book of Mormon, she read to the Book of Jacob. That's amazing for an investigator at all, but ESPECIALLY for a 12 year old girl. She's incredible. She was a great help in the lesson this week, because last week she went to unsure, but willing to commit to baptism because we told her it was really good for her, to this week, praying every day, so many times, and reading her scriptures. She still has a concern about Joseph Smith seeing God, but that will be easy to follow up on this week, because we told her about how the Book of Mormon connects to Joseph Smith, and she already believes in the Book of Mormon. She thinks it's "hai bucuo" which is really a compliment for her.

But yeah, so in the lesson we shared in Mosiah, then with Jasmin's concerns, I took us to Alma 32, and passed off to S. Chen who shared about faith is believing in something you can't see and how you just have to have a desire at first. Jasmin said she had a desire and was willing to start praying multiple times a day to find out if God was really there, but then talking about Leilani's concern about Joseph Smith really seeing God, Jasmin runs and gets out the children's book of Mormon and tells us that she read it all, and she believes it. She was showing us Joseph Smith's story in it. She said she believes he saw God and Jesus. So I think she believes in God, she just doubts whether or not he will seriously answer HER individual prayers. But she sounded very willing to find out now. It was just an amazing lesson! She committed to prepare to be baptized with her sisters also. So yeah! Now we just have created some very interesting lesson plans for this next week because they all attended different lessons, only Petrea has finished the missionary lessons, so now we just have to teach Jasmin part of a 3rd and Leilani part of a 1st, and a commandment here and there...but it's totally possible and I think they will be prepared for their baptism interviews in the coming week as long as we make sure to address all concerns on Friday and they keep their commitments like they said. So yeah! That's all I have time to talk about. I'm excited so excited for the Huang girls. I was really sad about Jasmin last week, and now I'm just so happy all three girls have this desire together. I felt like they were part of the reason I was still here in Zhongli, so I'm just really happy, like I mentioned like 10 times. :) They are doing really great! I remember when I first met them, they would hid behind mom, and not even say anything to me, or my companion. Now I can just act like I've known them forever and ask ridiculously bold questions, or if I hear one of them moving around during the prayer, I can just lean over and hit their knee to remind them to be more respectful...and when us missionaries come over, if they don't come straight out, I can just go in their room and be like, "We're here! Now we prepared a lesson and you guys will come listen" haha. I love it. People who respond well to my nice silly, bold personality.

Chen yiting is doing great too. She's on track for September 26th. She also is good for my attitude. She's sassy with me sometimes, because I'll be ridiculous and happy back. She went with my district last week on our P-day activity and had a lot of fun.

Gu Junru...I don't know about her, she has her goal for the 25th and we are excited, but I don't know what will happen there because mom says no way dad will agree if she has to ask, so it's up to the bishop. If the bishop says it's okay to baptize her without dad's permission, we will, our rules just say we need a guardians signature, so we left it up to bishop. Mom says it won't change their relationship, it's just if dad knows he has an option it will be no. Or something like that. So yeah, Zhang jiemei needs to talk to the bishop, and we'll see what happens, but if no, she can just get baptized at 18. She wouldn't be the first to have to do that.

My district is also doing good. This week I was concerned about set-ups. This Elder in my district gets like 4 a day, whereas my companion and I got 4 last week. It is what we need to improve, so the Elders really helped us, we did role plays in contacting people on the street in 30 seconds and stuff. So I don't see us getting 4 set ups a day or anything, but maybe this week we can get 5 or 6 set ups, instead of 4, and go from there. We don't want too ridiculous amounts, because then we lose focus on the investigators we do have because there is no time to meet with them, but we do want around 7 a week, so we can be filtering through and find progressing people, and have options instead of nothing to do for 2 hours on this day, and 2 hours on this day. Next week is going to be crazy though, we have 2 days we will be in Taipei, presidents interviews, regular district mtg and WPS...and a baptism to prepare for, so next week is going to be insane, we are trying to do as much this week to prepare for the craziness of next week. I'm excited! I love crazy weeks :)

Okay, until next time!

Fu Jiemei.

Missionary Letter: What Typhoon?--The Innocence of Missionary Life

Tuesday, August 11, 2009 11:23 PM

Okay, okay...after all the emails I got this week about how you think I'm probably stuck inside and waterlogged and stuff, I better tell you that this week has actually been very good, and we were only put inside for 1 day. Sister Hill left Thursday morning, and I got my new companion, Sister Engela Chen I was only without a companion for maybe 60 seconds, after Sister Hill drove off, Sister Chen arrived...that day it started raining really hard. We started hearing back on Tuesday that a Typhoon was coming in Friday. After our morning studies, Sister Chen and and I went to go eat lunch at one of my favorite restaurants, and while there we got "the call" from our district leader saying he had an announcement...the announcement was that we needed to get enough food and water to last until Monday. So, after eating we had planned on going straight back home for WPS, but we ended up going to the store and buying cleaning supplies and other essentials, cleaning supplies because when a missionary dies, the apartment get trashed with all their goods they didn't want to take home. So we decided if we did have a typhoon day, we'd deep clean. After that we went and had WPS. I was able to tell my new companion about all our investigators and such...then we had an appointment at the church so we grabbed our raincoats, and headed out there..

When we got outside it was pouring pretty hard. My shoes and the bottom of my skirt was sopping wet after only a couple seconds. It took us a lot longer than usual to get to the church, and then once we got there, we were proceeded to get stood up by every appointment we had that night...probably because it was POURING rain, and later when we talked the the appointments they were like, WHY WERE YOU OUT IN THE RAIN? A typhoon was coming, do you think we are crazy? Haha something to that effect. So we spent that night inside the church making phone calls and waiting to see if this appointment or that appointment would show up. The Elders also all showed up at the church, they had appointments scheduled there too that all didn't come, but it's understandable. After only an hour at the church though, Elder Lords got a phone call saying they wanted us to go inside as soon as possible, but no later than 8. So we had an appointment at 7:30...so we waited for our appointment, but she didn't come, so we went back to the apartment at 7:45. We were also told we probably wouldn't leave the next day.

The next day was Typhoon day. We were told we couldn't leave the apartment, so to be honest, I'm not even sure how awful it was during the actual typhoon, the wind was really extremely loud, to the point of what I would call wailing... and the streets were deserted and it would pour really hard heavy rain on and off. We live on the 9th floor, so we just could hear the wind rushing through our patio in the back of the apartment. So yeah, we spent that day inside cleaning and talking. It wasn't too awful.

The rest of the week it's just been very rainy, but nothing so awful that we weren't allowed to go out in it. Not a lot of people showed up to church and we had to travel to other people's apartments to see investigators because everyone said we were crazy and weren't willing to go out themselves, but they let us come over.

As for the state of Zhongli, there was a little debris and I know the rain hit pretty hard for a couple days straight because the locks on our bikes are completely rusted and we probably need to go buy new ones because it's hard to lock and unlock them, and when we went out the next morning, bikes and the motor scooters everyone rides here were strewn across the ground. But there is nothing really to help anyone with. Everything was cleaned up in a couple hours because they have really good road service and stuff here. Someone, not sure who, even cleared up the fallen branches at the church. I've heard that it was really awful in the south, but that's not our mission, thus why our mission president really wouldn't have a reason to publish anything to our parents. None of us suffered through anything dangerous. Two of our investigators asked us why bad things happen to good people, like those in the south, so we knew the typhoon must have been worse in the south, but we don't watch the news or anything, so we aren't even aware of the extent to how bad it is. You'd have to ask Taizhong missionaries about how the service opportunities are down there. Up here in Zhongli, after Sunday night, people started showing back up to appointments and the rain is a lot lighter. So the only really affect was that we had really small numbers last week, but Rita got baptized!!!! It was last Wednesday night, so I probably mentioned it was happening. She got confirmed Sunday, and it was just really awesome. The Elders investigator Jenny got baptized Sunday too. Zhongli 1st ward has been seeing a lot of success. It makes me feel a little bad because we don't have much to show for our other ward, we are so busy with our investigators in the 1st and always finding more that live in Zhongli because every day we are riding our bikes here and that's who we contact, and we live in Zhongli...then we hardly ever get out to pingjhen and even further out there, so we don't meet people out there...but the Elders are doing a great job there and they should have a baptism soon here too, so I'm excited for Zhongli 2nd ward, but I hope to find some investigators out there so it doesn't seem so sad on our progress records for them every week. I'd like to get to know the 2nd ward better. I know a lot in the 1st because I always need peike's from that ward. So yeah, I think my companion and I are going to try diligently to get some time to get out to pingjhen at least once or twice a week.

In companion news, I really love my new companion a lot. She is really funny and we have a lot of good laughs so far. I'm excited to be with her, it is a little stressful at times because I have a LOT of responsibilities, being the one who has been in Zhongli 3 transfers, so I've been making a lot of phone calls, doing the progress records in Chinese characters, making plans for the day, etc, but I'm glad to have her because she can lead the lessons and teach me the words I don't know that she uses. She's been a lot of help and she's amazing at getting to know names, especially of people who I don't know their names but it would look bad to ask since i've been here so long...so I'm getting to know a lot more names since she's been here! This week has been good! I'm safe! Pray for the people in the south...

1 minute left, I have a lot more I could have written about, but I'm out of time, maybe one day you can read my diary entries. Haha...

Bye!

Fu jiemei