Coming Back to Church in Taiwan

This week was a great week.  We are still working to build up our investigator pool.   I am trying to have the right attitude because we do have investigators, and there are so many wonderful things going on; however, I just feel frustrated because I feel like I have seen the area soar and do so much better than it is doing right now.  I just want it to soar again.  I don't want to be ungrateful for all of the people that we do have right now, but I just wonder why I can't get things back up to the way they were before.  I know I need to have patience.  Every area goes through its low points, and this point isn't even that low.  I just don't want to be satisfied with mediocrity. With that being said, we have been extremely blessed this week and have seen a lot of miracles.   

I also had a really cool experience with a less active this week.  Her name is Ruby Chen, and we have been working with her for quite a few weeks now. She has acknowledged that she has felt this Church is true and that the doctrine and spirit is stronger here than anywhere else.  However, about 10 years ago when she was a new member, she decided to leave the church and go back to her old Christian church.  She has a teenage son that at the time didn't want to go to church at our church but was willing to go to church at the other church.  She also talked about how she came to church, and all of the hymns were unfamiliar the scriptures we used were unfamiliar.  She didn't really feel like she had friends or any responsibility, and eventually, she just went back to that which was familiar - where she felt like she had a purpose and was loved.  As she was telling me all of this, I was sad. She and I both knew that except for the church being true, she had every reason in the world to just stay at her current church.   

Our invitation to come back to church is basically an invitation to change her whole life, which she feels the weight of very acutely.  I told her that the only reason that I was willing to ask her to do this is because I know that the Church is true and because I want to help her go to the Celestial Kingdom.  I testified that this is why God wants her to do it.  She told me that she was just so afraid that it would all be the same and that she would be lonely at church again.  I sadly couldn't promise her that she wouldn't feel lonely.   I hope that it will not be the same, and I will do all I can to make sure it is not the same.  However, there are many members of the church who feel lonely at church, but we need to keep going because it is the right thing to do.   

At the end of the lesson, I asked her to pray and ask Heavenly Father what He wanted her to do.  We knelt down, and she said a very humble, very sincere prayer.  We got up, and wiping tears from her eyes, she said, "I think Heavenly Father wants me to go down the harder path."  Almost immediately all of her fears and legitimate concerns started to come out again, so we got out a piece of paper and wrote down the revelation so that she could always look back and remember her answer.  It was a huge miracle.  There is still a long way to go.   We right now are focusing on setting small weekly goals because the thought of switching churches all at once is just too huge.  She really is a special woman.   

The Hsaio family is doing well this week.  They went to the temple to do baptisms for the dead this week and Hsiao Dixiong's older sister got baptized this week.