McKenzie in Taiwan

One of our great and funny experiences for the week was going to teach a member referral that had come in from another area. We discovered that we were about to teach in her baibai shop.  In Taiwan, a lot of times people will tell us they are baibai de ren, or people who baibai, which is pray and worship in Buddhism.  It was kind of funny to be teaching the First Vision (when God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith in answer to his prayer about which church to join) surrounded by incents and all the other materials you use when baibaing.  It was great though because the spirit was really strong. This lady owns this shop but is very open to the gospel. After our first meeting, says she believes it and thinks we are angels.  Since visiting again she is still really earnestly seeking to know, and we are excited to keep working with her.  We are wondering if she will have to change her profession in order to be baptized.  I am not sure.  

The church's policy on baibaing here is that if your family requires it as a family activity, in order to maintain family ties you can participate as a baptized member, but it would of course not be something that you do because you want to.  And, you, while doing it with your family, you would need to maintain in mind that you are not actually praying to your ancestors or these gods.  We are hoping for the best with her, and we will of course get our leaders’ counsel on this.   

Another miracle of the week was totally unintentional on our part.  On Saturday we had a great day lined up with appointments and members at every one.  Two of the three didn't show up and our third one just went way too long.  We didn't feel like we had gotten anything accomplished during the day even though we had been running back and forth.  It just was one of those days.  We went to the church where we had to practice quickly for a musical number for a baptism that was happening that night.  It was one of the elder's baptisms, and we had invited a couple investigators - one of whom we thought was coming but didn't show.  We were sitting in the baptism, and I was thinking to myself, we have so much to do, we are the only women here, we have no investigators here, why did the elders ask us to sing? etc,etc.  I was just kind of feeling stressed out and like we weren't using our time effectively.

But we sang our musical number and the baptism was very sweet.  We got home and the zone leaders who had performed the baptism gave us a call saying that they wanted to thank us because a miracle had happened.  One of the male investigators who attended the baptism had been an investigator for a long time and isn't baptized because his mom will not let him.  The elders said that after the baptism, he said that while we were singing he had closed his eyes and imagined that Jesus was in heaven blessing people. He had a vision of sorts, and he said that at that time he knew for a fact that Jesus was his Savior and that he needed to be baptized.  While with the elders, he called his mom on the phone and said he wanted to get baptized. She said yes.  We felt so humbled to hear of this experience because if it had been up to our wisdom we would have been out contacting – not singing at the baptism.  But the Lord knew better than we did what we should be doing.  It was a wonderful reminder that the Lord is very aware of his children, and he is very aware of where we are and where we need to be.  So often he makes miracles happen in spite of us.   

  
The weather here has been surprisingly dry.  It has only rained hard one day.  I have heard that I mostly just missed the rainy season although there are some typhoons headed our way, so we will see how that will go.  I have been trying to be diligent with sunscreen – especially on days when we will be traveling a lot.  Everyone in Taiwan wears long sleeves in an effort to not get tan.  They don't understand how we can expose our skin to the sun without worrying about it, and we don’t' understand how they aren't dying of heat!

Another funny thing is that the people in Taiwan are always wondering why my skin is so red.  My skin is its normal average redness which as you knows is above a normal white person’s average redness.  My companion is constantly having to explain to people that this is just the way my skin is. It is pretty funny.