Are There Even Groundhogs in Taiwan?

Hello all!

 

Still here in Taiwan! And still here in Gangshan. If everything had gone according to plan today would be our transfer/move call day, but unfortunately things don't always go according to plan. We still don't have any new missionaries! Seriously. The group who was in the MTC after me has now waited for their visas in America for three months, and now this week another group of our Taiwan Taizhong missionaries will be going home with no one to replace them. We hear all sorts of things like they are 90% coming this week or we'll be stuck here forever, but until we know for sure we just have to wait. So Sister Grigg and I are just hanging out here until we know more, and in the meantime they will probably have to close a few areas because they don't have enough missionaries to replace them. At this point maybe when we finally get new missionaries they will have so few people left that I will have to train someone. (that would be really awful I don't want to train anyone right now we would have so much trouble teaching lessons it would be like the MTC all over again)

 

Things that happened this week:

Last P-day we went to Costco! It wasn't very fun. It felt like we were in America except things were way more expensive and there's no point in buying Brussels Sprouts if you don't have an oven to roast them in. And I ate six muffins in six days. But it was still nice to get out and go somewhere interesting!

 

People took us out to eat/fed us a feast so many times I was excited to fast on Sunday so that I didn't have to politely eat until I was stuffed past the rafters. Seriously, the members here are so generous. And everybody loves to give us fruit. Once we got seven zaozis (the little appley things) in one day. 

 

We helped someone paint their house on Saturday! It was fun. But kind of hard; we painted three floors of their stairwell but we couldn't really reach a lot of places and it was hard to tell the difference between the original white and the slightly off-white color we put on. Turns out here most people try to paint their house before Chinese New Year, and they do it every year. That sounds exhausting to me.

 

Miracle Sunday! Every week we set goals for the number of lessons we will have, the number of new investigators we will find, etc. On Sunday we were so close to reaching our goals, but it was going to be hard to get all of them. We still had to get one other lesson, a lesson with a Less Active member, a lesson with a Recent Convert, and find 2 new investigators. Well we had a miracle day! We went tracting and ran into two cute girls who were willing to let us teach them about prayer and let us come back, we went over to a LA's house with a member and were about to leave when the LA came outside, and we went to a fireside with a Recent Convert! It was really great to have that sense of accomplishment (hey I know how to say that in Chinese) and to know that because we worked hard during the week the Lord helped us accomplish our goals. There can be miracles when you believe!

 

One of the dinners we went to was with a member and Claire, our investigator with a baptismal date. She is so great! We taught her the Word of Wisdom over dinner right after she ordered some little rice flour things with green tea in them and after we explained that we don't drink tea she was disappointed that she couldn't eat her tea things, but she was willing to start living the Word of Wisdom right then and there! Coffee will be something hard for her to overcome but she is so willing and ready. Now she just needs to come to church! That's kind of an important thing.

 

In conclusion, miracles happen and people change. The Gospel is good and if we have faith we can overcome anything. Yesterday I ran into this scripture in the Book of Mormon, Mormon 9:21 (and proceeded to gasp aloud when I found it because I thought it was so great, which made my companion think I had had some sort of great realization or epiphany when really it was just a good scripture).

 

Here it is: "Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth."

 

Isn't that great? Ask God with faith, and he will give it to you.True facts.

 

Love you all!

Sister Cardon of Gangshan

 

PS If anyone was wondering if we would still have 6 weeks of winter or not the answer is no, what are you talking about, winter never even happened.

PPS I've been a missionary for more than six months now yay

 

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