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.

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