So this week has been a bit crazy. I am training. I got the call on Tuesday morning. I was kind of anticipating it because Sister Thomas had been here for a long time and with the training program being two movecalls, if I didn't train soon, I wouldn't train. So Wednesday morning, we had a special train the trainers meeting with President Bishop, and Friday I went up to Taizhong. We had a big meeting in which they gave us more training.
My new companion is Sister Jarvis. She is super great. She is from Kaysville Utah and is just a delight to work with. She has a great attitude. Her Chinese is awesome. Poor Sister Morey for having to deal with my horrible Chinese when I got on the island! Sister Jarvis studied Chinese at BYU before she came, and she lived in China for a while. She just has a great attitude and is really positive. I am excited for our time together.
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We have seen many wonderful miracles together already. On Sunday our investigator Shu-feng came to stake conference. She is a wonderful investigator that came to English class and in talking after the class we set up time to meet with her. She has just been progressing wonderfully ever since. She came to church and was sitting by Sister Jarvis while I sat next to another investigator. I came up afterwards and there was this very tiny grandma talking to them. Come to find out it is her aunt who has been a member for 30 years. All of her children have served missions, and she has tried for years to share the gospel with her family. She was so excited to see her niece there. She started crying and expressing how grateful she was. She looked at Shu-feng and told her that she has done work for a lot of their ancestors in the temple but that she needs to find the people that she missed and finish the work. She cried expressing how much the church meant to her. Shu-feng started crying and then Sister Jarvis and I started crying. It was such a special moment.
This wonderful sister who had been praying and waiting and trying for years to help her family accept the gospel comes to church to find her niece there! It was very much an answer to her prayers. Shu-feng was very touched by the experience and immediately afterwards reconfirmed her own baptismal goal, which she had previously been a little nervous about. For so many members here, it is so hard to hold onto hope that their families will accept the gospel, but I have heard story after story that for those who remain faithful, the Lord always provides miracles.
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Thursday there was a typhoon hitting Taiwan. Since we are down south the weather was not too bad. There was a lot of wind and rain but nothing too extreme. We had been trying to find time to go visit this less active that the bishop had given us but who lived in the more rural part of our area. Because this area is so rural we don't have a very good map of it, and we didn’t really have any idea how to get there. We determined that the best we could do was start riding in the general direction and then ask for directions.
We rode for a really long time. After passing a train station, and a distant 7-11, we kept riding really far down this deserted road looking for this less active’s house. We get there and it seemed like no one was home. We decided to go tracting for a while and come back. We came back and said a prayer expressing our desire to find this less active and our concern that it wouldn't be very easy to come back very often given how far away it was. We knocked again and nothing.
Sister Jarvis
I decided to call her, not thinking much of it (she has been called many times before), but she answered. I told her that we were in the area. She must have looked out the window because she said with surprise, "Oh you are outside!" She came out, and let us in. As we sat with her, she was amazed that we had biked that far to get to her house. She said that she had been wanting to come to church for a long time, but she was afraid. She didn't feel like she knew any one after so long and was nervous to return. She said she had been praying that she would find a way to come to church. It was such a special lesson and a testimony to me that God does answer our prayers. He heard the prayers of this sweet sister , and he inspired the bishop. He gave us a day with a whole afternoon to bike in the middle of a typhoon out to this sister’s house to let her know that He does love her and He does hear her prayers.
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