November 28. 2011

Hello!

This week our mission had another power week. Lets just say, after 2 power weeks in 21 days we are wiped out. This morning the first activity we planned into our preparation day was a nap. That tells you our priorities. The 2nd activity was a Thanksgiving dinner with the zone at KFC. Potatoes, corn, biscuits, and bird. And we all went around the table saying what we are most thankful for. It was a pretty great Thanksgiving. I love your pictures! And I got your first package on Friday! I loved it. Me and Sister Wainright love our socks! And I contemplated doing the Christmas tree one a day... for about 30 seconds and then I decided I was too excited to see all of the pictures to wait and do it one by one.

Ok so this week of power week was so great! We left the door an hour early every day, didn't take study time at lunch and ate our meals on the go. I figure this gave us about 2 extra hours of proselyting every day, and it was so cool to see the miracles that happened this week. My favorite miracle, I think, was with one of our less-actives. I didn't think I'd have time to write all about it and still tell you anything else, so I took a picture of my journal entry for that day and attached it. I would love if this could get put up on my blog. It was a huge miracle. Let's just say Shawn Spencer knows what he's talking about with all those pineapples.

On Monday I cut Jing Yi's hair. I have never cut short hair! But it turned out pretty cute. It was fun.

On Tuesday we had some really great peikes (members that come to our lessons with us). I was amazed once again at just how incredible our members are here. They are so willing to help and they have such strong testimonies. They instantly befriend our mudaoyou and they have such a strong spirit with them as they bear their testimonies about the gospel.

On Wednesday we taught all of our recent converts and less-active members about the temple. It was such a powerful day! They all set goals of when they want to go and we gave them all pictures of different temples and we got to keep bearing our testimonies of how strong the Spirit is in the temple and how important it is to go there, for ourselves and for our family members on the other side. It made me really miss the temple!

On Thursday we had a mission-wide "Flood the Earth with the Book of Mormon" day. Last power week when me and Sister Wainright did our own "flood the earth" day we gave out 21, and this time we had a goal of 33. We started out by passing out 4 that morning when we went running. After that we spent most of the day contacting on the road and at the park and giving out as many as we could. We got detoured for a little bit in the middle when we went to go visit a member referral and we ended up at a bagel factory, eating the dough (which they thought we were crazy for, by the way, but it was soooo delicious!). By the time we were heading home we still had 3 to give out. We were talking about how bummed we were that our favorite doorman wasn't working today, because we gave Books of Mormon to the 2 other ones last time. 3 minutes later we are riding our bikes down the road, and who should come riding his bike the other way but the doorman! I slammed on my brakes and he flipped around to say hello to us and we gave him a Book of Mormon and it was probably the biggest miracle of that day. We felt like the Lord put so many people in our path that we know just really needed to have a Book of Mormon that day. It was a super powerful day. One of my other favorite moments was giving a Book of Mormon with a Word of Wisdom pamphlet inside to a man that was smoking and drinking black tea outside the 7 where we ate lunch. After we gave it to him he asked us when and where our church was. He said he wants to come with his wife. At the end of the day, with 2 minutes to go we were finally able to give out the last Book of Mormon to the lady at the fruit stand. (See picture of journal to see more.)

On Saturday there was a baptism! The elders in our ward and the sisters in the other ward both had kids lined up to get baptized that night. We invited one of our less-actives who is trying to help her 9-year-old son get baptized, although the dad wants him to wait til he's older. We were super excited for him to see kids close to his age get baptized. They got there a little after 7 when it was supposed to start..... but it turns out the sisters' mudaoyou had family opposition at the last minute so she couldn't get baptized and then the elders' little boy was nowhere to be found. We were super worried, because it's always the saddest thing in the world when people don't show up to their own baptisms. Finally at about 7:30 the elders tell us there is going to be a baptism- it will start at 8. The little boy comes with his dad and little brother and he gets baptized and it's such a sweet baptism! And luckily he only has to go under once because our little mudaoyou is afraid of water and I think if he had to see the other kid do 3 or 4 tries it would have scarred him forever. My favorite part, I think, was when the boy got confirmed after and during the prayer his little brother came up to him and flicked him in the nose. Kids are the same everywhere.

On Sunday we didn't have a whole lot of lessons lined up, but we knew we needed to step up a little bit if we wanted to hit our goals for the day and for the week. We only had one mudaoyou confirmed for church, but we were praying that we could get 2 peikes after church. So for the half hour spot after church, we wrote in our planners "miracle." We literally planned in a half hour for a miracle. What do you know, our recent convert's husband brought his mom to church and asked if we could sit down with her after. Hello, miracle! It was so great! She has been to church with him before and she loves it. She is not quite sure about the baptism part, but her son and the other peike both bore their testimonies of the Restoration and of baptism and she is coming back next week! For the rest of the day we spent a lot of time contacting, and we met some really cool people that we will meet with later this week. Finding people has been really really hard lately, but we felt like a lot of the people we met during power week can really progress, and I feel so blessed that we were able to see so many miracles this week! We had another really great lesson with another less-active's son (the lady from the Friday miracle). He only comes to stay with his mom every other weekend, so this was only our second time meeting with him and we haven't talked to him for 2 weeks but he said that he had already read 1 Ne. 1 and 2, so we read 1 Ne. 3 and talked about keeping commandments. He likes Nephi a lot. We taught him the word of wisdom, and he was totally willing to keep it! He was so cute, his mom said, "you know this means you can't drink milk tea anymore" and he said, "that's ok, I'll just drink donggua tea." (one of my favorites : ) ). I am so excited for this little family to help each other and for this little boy to get baptized!

Ok I'm almost out of time. I love you! Thanks for your Christmas gifts! Have a great week :)

Love,

Danielle