Hey everyone,
It's so good to hear from many of you this week. Thank you for taking the time to write to me. I always appreciate hearing from you, it helps me get through the week. This last week (of course) has been a pretty bad roller coaster ride. We found out that the girl we were going to baptize this week ended up moving in with some of her family members to somewhere else in Taiwan to help get her away from some of her friends. So, we cannot baptize her even though she is ready and is already beginning to change into a better person. We have so many others that are ready for baptism, but we are still waiting for parent permission. One in particular that I've already mentioned is sweet Elain who is 15. Elaine and a member (Rose who is 17) decided that wanted to be missionaries for a day. So they went around helping teach lessons, add and contact people, and go tracting. They did an awesome job with contacting people and bearing their testimonies during our lessons. I know in the future they are both going to be great missionaries. I just hope that one day Elaine can get baptized and we are hoping for a miracle this week as she tries to get permission again from her mom. Luckily, we found out that her mom's friends are Christians and told Elaine they would try and help her out.
On last Monday night we had a cool experience of meeting a mom and her daughter. My companion found her from one of our phone referrals that our mission uses. When some other missionary contacts someone out of their area they can basically text the information to the correct area so then we can try to contact and add them. Anways, we met up with her and her daughter that night and once she saw the pamphlet that we use to contact and usually during our first lesson (since the pamphlet is about the restoration and the first lesson is about the restoration)....tears immediately started falling down her cheeks as the mention reads in traditional chinese (since Taiwan uses the traditional characters still)...Familiers are Eternal. She explained that she had been praying for years after her husband passed away from cancer (a couple of years ago) for an answer to her dilemma. She went on to explain that she even tried out a fortune teller and told her that she would meet the LDS church and would most likely join. (The church advises us not to go to these kind of people because they are not of God, but it was very interesting to hear her relate this to us). My companion and I felt the prompting that I needed to share to her about my own experience of my father passing away. I tried my best in broken Chinese and I could truly feel the Spirit bear testimony to her of the truthfulness of my words. We continued our lesson and everything was making sense to her.....the reason why there are so many different churches, how the church was restored through Joseph Smith, and everything. She was delighted to get a Book of Mormon from us as well as her daughter. I hope in the future she and her daughter will continue to progress in this Gospel because I know without a doubt that they already have tasted of the sweetness of the Gospel.....just like our family has and will continue to do so as long as we keep the covenants and commandments we have made with our Father in Heaven. This week I'm going to try my best on knowing my experience better with the passing of dad in Chinese so I can relate it better to our investigators. I've already shared this story several times and I know I need to be better at it with my Chinese skills.
Every week is hard, but yesterday was a very stressful and lonesome day. Our ward decided to make some seafood soup and they ended up giving some to me and my companion. Missionaries are not aloud to eat in church buildings so we went outside to eat it. I tried to eat the big bowl of fish soup, but my body would not allow it. I feel myself about to throw-up, but my companion would not hear it. She was so incredibly rude that I wouldn't eat the rest of the food and ended up putting in a bag that I had. For 15 minutes or so she chewed me out on being prideful, selfish, not putting the Lord or others before myself.....she actually ended up making me cry. This rarely happens, but I never felt so degraded in my life by someone. I have to admit, lately it has been really hard getting along with my companion/trainer. She can be very short tempered, rude, careless, etc. I don't mean to be rude or complain, but it has been very stressful and hard to be with her as my companion. Most likely I will be with her for another move call because you usually are with your trainer. However, this morning we had a long discussion about what happened yesterday and things that need to be fixed in our companionship. Hopefully in the future we can both do a better job in being companions and not let it effect our work. Don't worry though, I'm still doing okay.....I guess yesterday I just needed one of you to be there for me, but the Lord of course was there to provide the comfort that I needed.
Well, last Tuesday, we had combined district training (that happens every move call). This is where we meet other missionaries around our area with our zone leaders and learn how to be better missionaries. We also met our new mission president and his wife. They seem very awesome and I know they will do miracles here in Taiwan. During the meeting we had interviews with the mission president, the trainers, and zone leaders. It was pretty intimidating at first, but they definitely helped with becoming a better missionary.
On Saturday, we had the special privilege of meeting with President Uchtdorf and his wife, and the area of the seventy serving in Taiwan with his wife. Pres. Uchtdorf gave an excellent talk on finding hidden treasure here in Taiwan and the importance of converting ourselves to this Gospel. We each got to meet them personally and have a big missionary picture with all of them. I will try and send it to you when I get it.
Don't worry too much about me Mom. Things are tough, but I will get by. I actually worry more about all of you still. I worry about the decisions you make each and every day. Please do what is right because all of you are the most important thing to me and I want to be an eternal family.
Don't worry too much about what I'm eating. I've been pretty good at sticking to my diet of eating lots of fruit such as kiwi, apples, mangos, bananas, guavas, pineapple, etc. Some yummy things I've had here is their bread of course, some pancakes that have filling inside (usually some sort of pudding), zhong wa cha (which is a yummy tea drink that I love, but that we can drink because it doesn't have the tea leaf), their yummy bing (ice), which is a basically a shaved ice with a bunch of fuit on top with a dressing on it which is usually the zhong wa cha (but you can get the ice so its a milky ice, which my companion gets, but its unhealthy so I don't ever get it). They also have yummy pop stickers that I will get once in a while when I really need to eat some meat, but I will only get them when they are boiled and not fried. I also like getting some yummy soups here such as a corn, beef, or bamboo soup. But usually I stick with eating fruit, getting a salad from Seven Eleven (since there are too many of them), or a fruit smoothies. Usually once a week I will also get a turkey or ham sandwhich from the bread store.
Don't worry my companion finally turns on the air at night and in our office/study room.
I love you all very much. I will send letters to you today.
Love you Always,
SIster Museus
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