August 8, 2011 + pictures

Ok. So I don't want to freak you out. But I got hit by a motorcycle the other day. No joke. We were both coming around opposite sides of a truck to get up to the stop light and when we met back up in the middle we totally collided. It wasn't too serious. All of her stuff fell off of her scooter and I was totally shaken up but neither of us were hurt. As you'll see from my pictures the real danger is the paving stones at the park we run at in the mornings. Luckily when an American trips and faceplants there are 15 amas there to come see if she's ok, tell her she needs to be more careful, and suggest that she go to the hospital. A couple of bandaids were more than enough.

I bet we bike around 10 to 12 miles on an average day, sometimes more or less depending on how many appointments we have at the church or if we have to go back and forth between donghai and fengjia multiple times in a day. We just got a bunch of names of less-active young women to go visit on top of xingku shanqiu, so we'll be doing that hill at least a couple of times this week. I love those days!

Yeah, it is absolutely crazy that I hit my 1/3 mark next week. It really is flying by soooo fast and I wish time would slow down! I honestly feel like another year doesn't seem like enough. But seeing 2 companions go home, I know that when this next year is up I'll be ready.

To answer other questions, I get to see President and Sister Bishop about every other week. I feel really blessed to be so close to the mission office that I get to see them so often; lots of missionaries only get to see them once a move call at meetings. The Bishops are amazing. I love that whenever we see them, whether it's at the office or zone conference or whatever, I can tell how much they love us and we know that they work so hard and really care about each of us.

Ok. I'm attaching pictures!

I think the first ones that show up are the ones from last p-day, when we went to eat snake with the elders and some members. Yes. Snake. In soup. I didn't like it. At all. The ones on the other email are from 3 weeks ago when we went to the Elephant buffet. The other girl is Yuan Ling, one of our members. She is the one going to Taibei in November. There is a picture of me and Sister Lew and another Sister Smith, she is super cute. Sis. Lew trained her before Sister Lee. I have loved being with Sis. Affleck. She is an awesome teacher and she is really patient and fun. We have to work really hard on focusing during comp study and planning because we both just get super distracted talking to each other about different things. She has a super strong testimony and I am learning a lot from her about expecting miracles. And she has really, really good Chinese. I'm really excited because I feel like I improved so much with Sister Lew and I know I can keep getting better this move call. I feel a million times more comfortable now than I did 6 weeks ago having conversations with investigators and members and just being able to pick up enough to get the gist of it. And now that I have moved on to phase 2 I am studying a lot more of daily vocab, which helps a lot.

So right now we have about 5 progressing investigators, but pretty much all of them were out of town this weekend for Taiwanese Father's Day. So I can't wait to get to keep meeting with them this week! We have one lady who is in the hospital for some prenatal complications that we've been going to see, and she is awesome. We hadn't seen her for about 5 days, and when we met with her again we asked her if she'd been reading the Book of Mormon. She looked embarrassed for a second, which is usually a sign that someone didn't even pick it up. Then she said, "yeah, but I've only read to chapter 18." Me and Sister Affleck were both thinking, "only?!" She is still not quite sure how to get an answer if it is true, but she said if she can know for sure that she definitely wants to join the church. She is really looking to find the truth, so I know she'll get an answer. Timing is interesting, because then yesterday we went to go visit a less-active and she was asking if we had a testimony that the church was true. We told her we did, and she said, I probably would if I read and prayed and went to Church. But I feel like I want to know if it's true before I do those things, because if it's not true then what's the point in doing them? We were all over the place with the way we answered her questions, but I feel like everything we shared with her was guided by the Spirit because by the end of the lesson she was saying she'd do those things because she knew that was the only way to find out if they were true or not. I am constantly reminded that what we say makes such a small difference in people's conversion, it is all about what they are willing to go do. They have to take the step of faith to find out for themselves if the message of the gospel is true, and then when they get an answer to change their lives to live it. And I loved your other email story- we get answers to our questions in all kinds of different ways if we keep our ears and our hearts open to recognize them.

I love you!

I hope you're having a great week!

-Danielly