Missionary Email: Crazies

Sunday, May 24, 2009 10:51 PM

PRENOTE...I don't know what's wrong with the computer, but dad said this email didn't get to him last week, so i'm resending it. But this is what I wrote last Wednesday! I didn't skip a week. I would at least say Hi and I have no time if I wasn't going to send a long email!

Sister Bruno
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Hey dad,

Can you please take my email off the website you are posting on? I have received emails from various people asking for help in their young woman's and some other things, although I would love to help and will think about if my ward could possibly do what that lady asked and appreciated hearing from other people, it is against the rules of the white handbook to receive letters from non family members, and to reply to them. So I can't reply...their emails would have to be filtered through you guys. If people want to write me, it has to be forwarded through you or handwritten. So thanks to everyone who wrote me, but please realize I am just trying to be in compliance with my mission rules when I ask not to receive letters from others directly to my mission email! Thanks.

In other news, thanks for all the letters this week. It's fun to hear from everyone. I liked seeing the pictures of Gen and Stuart and Gigi. I wanted to see Gen's pregnant belly but it was covered in all the pictures! Boo. But I did notice she was wearing my sweater! Haha. So yeah, I'm guessing she's probably starting to fit into my bigger sized clothing as she grows.

This week was interesting. I really need to start bring my diary to the computer cafe place though, because weeks start to meld together and I have no idea what happened when. This week was Xie DaiDai's confirmation. She was so excited about it. She got a really amazing blessing and she was just so happy. She's been really excited about having the gift of the Holy Ghost for awhile...it was so nice to see how happy she was about it. She even wore a skirt, which is a big deal for her, she really isn't the type to wear skirts, but we told her she needed to start wearing a skirt to church, so she went out and bought one. I'm so proud of her! She is one of the most happy people. I really love her a lot.

We met with Wang Zixia yesterday. She won't be able to keep her baptism date. Her husband opposes her being Christian, so it might take a little while to get his signature. She is terrified to even ask him for it, so the next step is going to be getting her to let us meet him, or getting her to have enough faith to at least even ask. I think meeting Wei Yan would be really good for her. It's really sad about that culture problem. She's willing to keep all the commandments, and was even excited about it. She prayed about Joseph Smith and everything...But we've ran into the problem of people from Mainland, like Wei Yan and Wang Zixia marry Taiwanese men who went to China to find a wife. The men very controlling of their wives. They don't respect them a lot, and need to always know where they are at. Wei Yan has been coming to church every week for a long time, and really wants to be baptized, but first she needs to be able to overcome the Sabbath Day problem, because even though she comes to church, her husband and her work together and he won't let her have Sunday's off. After she can find a way to keep the Sabbath, she can start trying again to get her husband and husband's mother to let her get married.

And those aren't our only 2 investigators with an opposition problem. We also are meeting with a 10 year old girl whose mother is a member and really wants her daughter to get baptized, yet because of the husband's opposition, she's also scared to let us come over when her husband is home. It was really sad when we met with them last time, she told us about how her husband had threatened to kill himself if she didn't marry him, so she did because she felt bad for him. And we had to just listen to her story, because we can't give people marriage advice.

It seems to be the never-ending story. I have at least 5 or 6 other people I could talk about that are amazing individuals, but their life is really hard because their husbands "fan dui" (oppose). :/

Another one of our great investigators either a. was possessed yesterday, or b. is bipolar or some sort of crazy. We rode the train all the way out to Yangmei yesterday, which is in our area, but we hardly ever go because it is so far away. And this really nice lady we've been meeting with was acting crazy and saying weird things. When we would ask her to read a scripture aloud, she'd read it out of word order, or put her own words into it. It was really really strange. I felt really uncomfortable and didn't say anything. I just wanted to get out of that place. Some lady approached us in the middle of the lesson and asked about how our church was different, and Zhu di had just had the same question about how she was confused because she didn't have time to go to different churches on Sunday, so I told her about Joseph Smith and when I was reciting his vision...this crazy man came up and like got REALLY close to us. And even though I ignored him and kept talking, he kept interrupting and asking for our surname. He scared the lady who was normal away. And then my companion, who is really nice told him her name...but I was thinking about how the bishop had just told us that Sunday that if men who are sick come up to us, not to feel bad about being honest and telling them to go away...so I told my companion not to talk to him and tell him to go away. So she told him we were in a lesson and he had to leave. And he did. So that was good. There are a lot of crazy men in Taiwan. Men who come up to me on their scooters and try to get me to come over to them. One did this week and I gave him a tract and said I was busy and he could wait, because my companion was setting up with a nice lady named Rita. So I just pretended to be really intent on what they were saying, but he was freaking me out. I locked my bike and put my backpack on my bike and everything. And when he saw I wouldn't go near him until my companion was done, he gave me back the tract, I told him he could keep it, but he wasn't interested in the tract and rode away. I was glad. Men like that are just no good. They eat this drug plant here that makes their mouth all red, and then they are always calling out to us and stuff. I just pretend I don't understand them when I get people like that talking to me. But yeah, Zhu di didn't even see how he was weird, she just was saying we were popular. Then when we asked her to read something, she said she wouldn't because we commanded her? And we told her she had her agency...but we were not feeling comfortable in Yangmei anymore and prayed to end the lesson and left. I hope she was just in a weird mood because I really like her. She was such a sweet nice lady until that encounter where she went weird?

Today for P-day we are going to Li Yufeng's house to make dumplings. She is really great. At FHE this week she finally came out and said why she wasn't getting baptized yet, she doesn't feel ready to give up coffee. She talked about how her husband would make it and she would smell it and couldn't not drink it. So we need to just find time to meet with her super busy husband and commit him to live the Word of Wisdom, and that will help his wife out a lot! He's progressing a lot slower because he works a lot, and his job requires him to golf on Sunday to have a good word with the boss, so he hasn't been able to come every Sunday...But they are a great family. They are really special. Just progressing slowly along. They are really happy and love one another a lot. They are both always smiling. It's really great. It's rare to see someone smile as much as they do. They are completely sane. Although something hard for me is recently Li yu feng has read DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons, and her English is amazing, and my companion hasn't read them, so she's always asking me questions that aren't important to progress, but I guess she's interested. She wants to know what mormons believe about the book and all this other stuff I never researched. I just read the book as fiction. And that's all. I forget a lot too. She wants to know about when Christ was born and about how science works with the book and mormonism.

My computer is turning off in 1 minutes! So i'm going to go now! Have a great week, ttyl!

Fu jiemei

Missionary Letter: I Don't Like Emails

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 11:18 PM

So I came to the discovery really fast on my mission that sending weekly emails can be quite a task, so here's the deal, unless people actually start writing me letters every week, I will send a couple sentence email home saying that I am still alive to comply with my mission rules to be exactly obedient and weekly email home, then I will reply to Gigi, or another random email or two that happens to my mailbox every month from someone else. Especially from my parents. You guys are supposed to write me every week. That's a rule they tell you. I don't think it's a lot to ask for either. Because the way I figure it, I am putting effort into thinking and putting together a nice interesting email every week, and it's not fair for me to get online every week to nothing. I'm writing this stuff in my journal, so a lot of this is a repeat of things I've already written, and since I'm sending this email to my parents and my SEVEN siblings. That is 9 people..plus Stuart. So 10. So I expect to hear from you. I've gotten more emails now from Aunt Allison than a lot of you.

I know what a busy life is like, even before my mission I overloaded myself, and I still had time to write Gigi emails, even if I just told her nothing happened and included a random boring story. I should have 9-10 emails every week, since Gen and Stuart when they write usually write in the same email. And mom and dad, I feel as my parents you should be following up with your kids at home to make sure they write me. A word of advice, Gigi usually responds the day after my email arrives, or even the same day, since it is night when I send this there. That will probably help the rest of you respond if you start writing when you get my emails an email in response.

Now, this last week was okay. Today we are going to Taipei to Taipei 101, because my companions trainer wants us to, and she's in Taiwan right now, so that's what we are going to do. It's really interesting because her trainer and her husband are in Taiwan on vacation for a little while, and when we met her trainer last Sunday at stake conference, I found out her companion is married to a Jeff Cook, a boy that was in my ward at BYU-Idaho. He went to Taipei on a mission too, just not Taipei. He was writing to this Sister Brady (Cook) girl back when we were in the same ward together. What a small Mormon world, but I shouldn't be surprised because stuff like that happens all the time.

She's a nice girl though. My trainer is really excited about meeting up with them. And she was excited to see them Sunday too. This last Saturday, we had Xie Wenrui (Daidai)'s baptism. It was really cool. She was so nervous before the baptism, but it was really cool, because she talked after her baptism about how she felt, and she said she was so nervous before, but after she was actually baptized, she felt really comfortable and happy. Her friend and another of our investigators, Lin Yaqing was there, and we had a quick lesson after the baptism with them. We were really confused where to put the number though, because we weren't sure if DaiDai counted as a member yet or not since she hadn't received the Holy Ghost, but I figure not, since they raise their hand to welcome them into the church after they receive the Holy Ghost, or baptism by fire.

It was good though because we asked Yaqing she needed to set a goal for baptism, because originally they wanted to get baptized together, but then Ya3qing1 didn't have a testimony of Joseph Smith yet, and wasn't willing to commit to the Sabbath yet because of her job. And she said she just wasn't as fast as DaiDai, but she was willing to get baptized sometime next month. She's a really great investigator. She asks sincere questions and is really good about reading and praying. She is just progressing slowly though, and that's okay. I know that she's a very dedicated girl, so once she goes through with baptism, she'll be very committed. It's is funny though, because DaiDai's friends all had a dream (like 2 or 3 different people or something) that she died and decided she needed the protection of the Holy Ghost, I can't remember if I already told you that. But yeah, they are SOOO excited for DaiDai to get the gift of the Holy Ghost this Sunday coming. DaiDai just wants to do it because she believes, but all her friends want her to do it because they want her to have the Holy Ghost's protection.

Our next baptism goal is a week from Saturday with a Wang Zixia. She's the one we met at the church because a member saw her looking at it and invited her in. She's really great. She made that baptism goal at her first lesson. And she's been really good about remembering it. She mentions it every time we meet. We've had to start meeting with her twice a week to prepare her for it. She's really going to have to keep her commitments to gain a testimony of Joseph Smith and everything else we are teaching her. She has a lot of questions, she was really surprised at first to find out that we believed in a Pre-mortal life and the spirit world and everything. But she's really great. She keeps her commitments to read and she comes to church every week. She's from mainland China and her husband is really possessive of her though, so I hope she makes some friends in the ward and stuff soon. She can understand the language, and a lot of characters, but it's different here in Taiwan.

The accent is different and the characters are harder to read. Since we use traditional here instead of simplified. We have another investigator though Wei Yan who is also from China. She has lived her for 7 years. She had us have Wang Zixia call her before we started the lesson. They set up to play together sometime.

They have a lot of similarities. They are both from Mainland, and they have husbands who are Buddist and Taiwanese. However, Wei Yan's husband don't let her be baptized yet, she comes to church every week, but works with her husband and they let her come to church, but she has to break the Sabbath a lot because she can't have Sunday off, and they refuse to let her get baptized, I think because they don't want her to pay tithing. So I think Wang Zixia's husband is a little better because she doesn't work like Wei Yan, so he just lets her worship how she wants. He's not opposed to her religion. He just wants to know where she is when she leaves the house, and wants her to schedule her appointments with us when he isn't home. So I have a feeling they will both be really good friends.

Right now besides who I have already talked about, we have one more lady with a baptism goal. Her name is Zhu Di. Or in English, Judy. Haha. She's really great. She was found by our zone leaders E. Rice and Huang. They are really excellent missionaries. They are always giving us really great investigators. They have a whole lot of faith. They met her in the park when E. Rice's tire popped, then after we set-up with her, before our appointment, E. Rice had another tire pop, and he ran into Judy again. So he told us before we ever met with her that she is really special. And she is.

She told him that she had been meeting with Jehovah's Witness missionaries, but felt like something was missing. She's already really great about reading the Book of Mormon,E. Rice had given her one, and she had already read the introductions to the BOM before we had our appointment. She's willing to be baptized and everything. The only set back is that she is without a job, and so she has been moving from place to place living with other people. I'm really hoping she can find a job. She said the Jehovah's Witness missionaries gave her food and clothes. So she is really grateful to them. I'm sure as she keeps her commitments and comes to church and starts to learn and keep the commandments, she will be blessed. She's read the Bible 5 times, so everything we teach her clicks really fast in her head. It's really great because usually since we mostly teach non-Christian's, you have to take it very slow and simple. But Judy get's things really fast. I'm excited to keep working with her.

We have a lot of excellent investigators besides that, in fact, these last couple weeks we've had appointment after appointment. Our time is not empty. On Monday we had president interviews, then immediately after had 3 appointments every hour. 4, 5, 6. Then we rushed over to Neili to do FHE with a part member family. It was crazy. And so was yesterday, we had appointments all day. We actually ate dinner with a lady who we met that day. She was so excited she insisted we come back to eat with her after the appointment we were headed to, so we did. Neili is a great area! We've found 3 new investigators there in the last week and a half.

It's great to be busy. It means the work in Zhongli is going really well.

I only have 1 minutes left...so bye!