Hello family and friends!
Wow this week was absolutely amazing!
I love it here in Taiwan and I love my companion and I love the people and I love the work and the food and the weather and the EVERYTHING! It is so great here :)) Taiwan is the best mission ever! And none of you better dare argue with that - haha!
Monday:
P-day.
Chill day.
Expect lots of letters!
Wow this week was absolutely amazing!
I love it here in Taiwan and I love my companion and I love the people and I love the work and the food and the weather and the EVERYTHING! It is so great here :)) Taiwan is the best mission ever! And none of you better dare argue with that - haha!
Monday:
P-day.
Chill day.
Expect lots of letters!
Tuesday:
We had interviews with President. I talked to President about repentance and it was really cool! He gave me a lot of new insight on what repentance is and how our attitude should be about it.
Guess who I saw at the chapel! Lin Jie Mei from the DaYa ward. She is sooooo cool! She invited us to go to an amusement park the coming P-day! She is awesome and I love her so much!
We met with 2 active members today. One of them just moved in. Her kids are down south and she is up for training. But she calls her kids every night and says prayers with them. She is the best! She also told us that she wants to help out with lessons whenever she can. She feels like her faith has been on at a low point and it is really hard for her because her family in down south so she can't be with them everyday. She feels even more like a little fish in a big pond in that she is teaching English and most of her co-workers have better English than she does. She doesn't feel qualified. We know exactly how she feels ... family in America, can't speak the language...ya it can be rough. That is ok we can be alone together!
Wednesday:
We had THE MOST AMAZING DTM TODAY! Oh my goodness I love my district so much. Our District Leader, Elder Nipper is the most spiritual person that you will ever meet. And the meetings we have are so cool! This DTM was different though. We talked about teaching people not lessons. How do we do that? We recognize why we came here on missions. We focus on loving them. Everyone is a Son or Daughter of God. I said the closing prayer in that meeting. I bawled like a baby. Ok, one thing that definitely has changed about me...I am not afraid to cry in front of people. If the tears come - well they come and I have no way of hiding them.
I feel like the Lord has also blessed me with the ability to not be “trunky”. I am constantly reminded of home and yet I feel like it doesn't phase me. Ya I miss home but I feel like I am constantly working and there is not enough room to be worrying about home.
We had a great lesson with one of our investigators, Liu Jie Mei. I think this was one of the best lessons that we had companionship unity in. It was great!
Thursday:
Sister Carlson and I had a HUGE talk today. We shared our feelings about life, missionary work and such. We both cried a lot .... but then we went back out to work. And it was a very productive day! We met some really cool people! Met a college student who has been thinking about the meaning of life lately. We have an appointment to meet with her this week. And we met another lady at the 7-11. She is yi guan jiao. I have no idea what that is in English. I haven't heard of it until now. It’s actually the name of a religion. They believe that there is one God, a Supreme God. All of the gods and prophets that other religions believe are all messengers from this Supreme God. So they are willing to listen to us. But they don’t believe that there is only ONE religion with the full truth.
Oh and on top of such a great day guess what .... someone stole the two water bottles from my bike :/ It’s probably God telling me that I've waited too long to wash it out ... haha
We had interviews with President. I talked to President about repentance and it was really cool! He gave me a lot of new insight on what repentance is and how our attitude should be about it.
Guess who I saw at the chapel! Lin Jie Mei from the DaYa ward. She is sooooo cool! She invited us to go to an amusement park the coming P-day! She is awesome and I love her so much!
We met with 2 active members today. One of them just moved in. Her kids are down south and she is up for training. But she calls her kids every night and says prayers with them. She is the best! She also told us that she wants to help out with lessons whenever she can. She feels like her faith has been on at a low point and it is really hard for her because her family in down south so she can't be with them everyday. She feels even more like a little fish in a big pond in that she is teaching English and most of her co-workers have better English than she does. She doesn't feel qualified. We know exactly how she feels ... family in America, can't speak the language...ya it can be rough. That is ok we can be alone together!
Wednesday:
We had THE MOST AMAZING DTM TODAY! Oh my goodness I love my district so much. Our District Leader, Elder Nipper is the most spiritual person that you will ever meet. And the meetings we have are so cool! This DTM was different though. We talked about teaching people not lessons. How do we do that? We recognize why we came here on missions. We focus on loving them. Everyone is a Son or Daughter of God. I said the closing prayer in that meeting. I bawled like a baby. Ok, one thing that definitely has changed about me...I am not afraid to cry in front of people. If the tears come - well they come and I have no way of hiding them.
I feel like the Lord has also blessed me with the ability to not be “trunky”. I am constantly reminded of home and yet I feel like it doesn't phase me. Ya I miss home but I feel like I am constantly working and there is not enough room to be worrying about home.
We had a great lesson with one of our investigators, Liu Jie Mei. I think this was one of the best lessons that we had companionship unity in. It was great!
Thursday:
Sister Carlson and I had a HUGE talk today. We shared our feelings about life, missionary work and such. We both cried a lot .... but then we went back out to work. And it was a very productive day! We met some really cool people! Met a college student who has been thinking about the meaning of life lately. We have an appointment to meet with her this week. And we met another lady at the 7-11. She is yi guan jiao. I have no idea what that is in English. I haven't heard of it until now. It’s actually the name of a religion. They believe that there is one God, a Supreme God. All of the gods and prophets that other religions believe are all messengers from this Supreme God. So they are willing to listen to us. But they don’t believe that there is only ONE religion with the full truth.
Oh and on top of such a great day guess what .... someone stole the two water bottles from my bike :/ It’s probably God telling me that I've waited too long to wash it out ... haha
We had Correlation meeting and our leader, Hong Di Xiong is super cool! She bought us all octopus pizza! Super salty but good:))
Sister Carlson got a blessing from Elder Nipper. Of course it was an amazing experience. And you could tell that God was talking to her through this priesthood holder. Isn't the priesthood such a wonderful blessing?
My journal entry: "He talked about how she should always remember the testimonies that she has gained while on a mission. How that knowledge is the treasure and joy. It made my think of where I find my joy? Is it in the knowledge of the gospel or in other worldly things? Elder Nipper is such a great example of being Christ-like. Like it says in 3 Nephi 5:13 a missionary's job is to represent Jesus Christ. I need to focus more on being more Christ-like rather than being a 'good missionary'. The best missionaries exemplify Jesus Christ."
Sister Carlson got a blessing from Elder Nipper. Of course it was an amazing experience. And you could tell that God was talking to her through this priesthood holder. Isn't the priesthood such a wonderful blessing?
My journal entry: "He talked about how she should always remember the testimonies that she has gained while on a mission. How that knowledge is the treasure and joy. It made my think of where I find my joy? Is it in the knowledge of the gospel or in other worldly things? Elder Nipper is such a great example of being Christ-like. Like it says in 3 Nephi 5:13 a missionary's job is to represent Jesus Christ. I need to focus more on being more Christ-like rather than being a 'good missionary'. The best missionaries exemplify Jesus Christ."
Friday:
I love Sister Carlson so much. She is the bom.com! We learned so much from each other. Today we told each other what has been going on in our minds for the past week. We are now so open with each other. I am so grateful for her!
We had the best lesson ever with our investigator, Christine. She is sooo cool! We had the first lesson with her. And we answered all of her questions. She is totally ready for this gospel. When we met her she told us that she had a Book of Mormon that Elders gave to her when she was in Junior high. She showed it to us ... it is REALLY OLD!!! It is really cool to see how big of an impact a pair of missionaries can have on one person. And here she is taking the lessons.
Tonight Sister Carlson and I tried to change our water filter. In order to accomplish this challenge you have to be a body builder to get the thing unscrewed! We tried ALL night to get it. It wouldn't budge. So we called the elders. They couldn’t get it either. So we called the office. They just told us to "put some muscle into it." Hmmm … thanks.
Saturday:
I got a wonderful package from my dear mother! I love you soooo much mommy!
This morning we went to a market to contact...not much success on our part. And the sun won big time. It totally destroyed the back of my neck. I look like a farmer!
Guess what I ate for lunch!! POPCORN! I miss my theater popcorn. It is hard to find popcorn here in Taiwan so I had to take advantage of this.
We planned to do a district activity today. The Qing Shui elders and us were waiting for the other elders for like 45 minutes. But we had a wonderful conversation about our investigators and how we can help them. It was really good to hear what was going on in the Qing Shui branch. They don’t have sister missionaries so I feel like all of their investigators are our investigators. We coordinated on how we can help each others investigators. And then when the other elders came they were with 2 of their investigators. We just talked with them for a while. I really like the love that our district has and that we are helping each other out. Sometimes you just need to focus on loving other missionaries investigators rather than worry about going out and handing out fliers. We’re really glad we did. The next day at Church one of those investigators came and the elders weren't there yet. He didn’t know where to go. And because Sister Carlson and I had chatted with him before, he felt comfortable enough to come and talk to us. We were able to introduce him to some other members.
We had dinner at a new couples house. They made pasta! So good! They also had a huge pet Beetle from Japan. That was cool.
Love you all! Hope everything is going well :)) Till we meet again.
"In the sight of the Lord, it is not so much what we have done or where we have been but where we are willing to go." -Elder Dube (70)
-Sister Graham
I love Sister Carlson so much. She is the bom.com! We learned so much from each other. Today we told each other what has been going on in our minds for the past week. We are now so open with each other. I am so grateful for her!
We had the best lesson ever with our investigator, Christine. She is sooo cool! We had the first lesson with her. And we answered all of her questions. She is totally ready for this gospel. When we met her she told us that she had a Book of Mormon that Elders gave to her when she was in Junior high. She showed it to us ... it is REALLY OLD!!! It is really cool to see how big of an impact a pair of missionaries can have on one person. And here she is taking the lessons.
Tonight Sister Carlson and I tried to change our water filter. In order to accomplish this challenge you have to be a body builder to get the thing unscrewed! We tried ALL night to get it. It wouldn't budge. So we called the elders. They couldn’t get it either. So we called the office. They just told us to "put some muscle into it." Hmmm … thanks.
Saturday:
I got a wonderful package from my dear mother! I love you soooo much mommy!
This morning we went to a market to contact...not much success on our part. And the sun won big time. It totally destroyed the back of my neck. I look like a farmer!
Guess what I ate for lunch!! POPCORN! I miss my theater popcorn. It is hard to find popcorn here in Taiwan so I had to take advantage of this.
We planned to do a district activity today. The Qing Shui elders and us were waiting for the other elders for like 45 minutes. But we had a wonderful conversation about our investigators and how we can help them. It was really good to hear what was going on in the Qing Shui branch. They don’t have sister missionaries so I feel like all of their investigators are our investigators. We coordinated on how we can help each others investigators. And then when the other elders came they were with 2 of their investigators. We just talked with them for a while. I really like the love that our district has and that we are helping each other out. Sometimes you just need to focus on loving other missionaries investigators rather than worry about going out and handing out fliers. We’re really glad we did. The next day at Church one of those investigators came and the elders weren't there yet. He didn’t know where to go. And because Sister Carlson and I had chatted with him before, he felt comfortable enough to come and talk to us. We were able to introduce him to some other members.
We had dinner at a new couples house. They made pasta! So good! They also had a huge pet Beetle from Japan. That was cool.
Love you all! Hope everything is going well :)) Till we meet again.
"In the sight of the Lord, it is not so much what we have done or where we have been but where we are willing to go." -Elder Dube (70)
-Sister Graham