September 5, 2011

Hey Mom!

My week has been great. It has still been a little crazy getting to know my new ward and my new city and everything, but it just goes to show that the Church is true everywhere- I already love all of the members here and our investigators are awesome! We had 8 at church yesterday, and we're hoping and praying that we can help some of them get baptized this month.

I am uploading some pictures- some for the baptism and some from last p-day. We had so much fun. Picture the caption, "What happens when 6 sister missionaries go to lunch in a typhoon?" I love being so close to the other sisters here! We are planning some upcoming p-day activities for the next few weeks. My favorite is just getting to see them around at the church at random times during the week. Oh, there is also a picture from this morning- taking one of our old desk chairs out to the trash.

So, this week started out kind of iffy. We had a couple of mudaoyou that seemed really solid that suddenly stopped picking up their phones, and we had a lot of people who were supposed to come for a first lesson that never showed up. It ended on a pretty good note, though. We were able to get a hold of some of the people who disappeared, and one of them came to church yesterday. She seems as golden as ever, but I'm still a little worried about her going mia like that for so long. But she lives in our building, so at least she can't go too far. Another one was actually our mistake- we copied her number down wrong from her card to our APR so when we went back and checked she answered. Oops. It makes you wonder how many people are really interested but because of a misunderstanding the missionaries think they aren't. It's cool to hear the stories of the people that happens to but then it turns out later it was all because of the Lord's timing. I'm glad that He is the one keeping tabs on all of the things going on, because as hard as we try we are far from perfect.

One of my favorite parts about church yesterday was this cool girl I met there. Remember the girl I told you about last week? She is 14 and we had her peike for a lesson and she had a super strong testimony about how she came to know this Church is true. Yesterday she brought a friend with her to church. The friend said she noticed that this Li JieMei had all of these things going on in her life- school, homework, dance class, and that even through all of the stress she was always happy, and Li Jiemei told her it was because of the gospel and she invited her to come with her. I love this girl more and more the more I get to know her! She has the most honest, solid testimony and she lives it. I know when we meet with her friend again later this week Li JieMei will be able to help her see how the gospel can bless her life too.

We have been working a lot with the 18-year-old kid we are teaching, and it has been really cool to see him finally start to progress. He is finally starting to understand why keeping the commandments is so important. His thing is that he is really interested in wisdom- he wants to learn and he wants to know what is right but he still hasn't made the changes he needs to to show his faith so he can gain that wisdom. But this week he really started to have that desire to change, and we've been coming up with all kinds of ideas to help him. We give him tons of scriptures to read, different talks, we meet with him almost every day, and we even asked everyone what their favorite Sabbath day activities are so we could give him a huge list of things he can do on Sunday now that he's willing to keep that commandment. Even in just this short amount of time we have seen his heart soften and he is a lot more humble and ready to trust the Lord. I love being a missionary and getting to see miracles like this kid every day!

I love you all and I hope you are having a great week! I can't wait for the package- honestly, there couldn't be anything more exciting in a package than pictures of my favorite people in the world! Oh, by the way, guess what I had for breakfast this morning? Honey Nut Cheerios. Seriously. I have made them last this long. I eat the tiniest little bowl maybe once a week. At this rate they might even last me til Christmas!

Ok. So that really is everything.

I love you! Hope you are having a great week : )

-Danielly