Sister Museus, September 5th, 2010...A baptism coming

Hey Everyone, Thank you Mom for always being willing to email each week. I know I can always count on hearing from you. Thank you for your willingness to do this. It is always good to hear what you and the family are up to these days. I especially loved last week receiving so many great emails from everyone. They were very spiritual and uplifting. I hope all of you will take time to email me each week. I love to hear what all of you are doing. Mom, I hope you received my suprise in the mail (hopefully it didn't break). I thought you would like it since it is a very popular thing to wear here in Taiwan. Many of the women here wear them. I'm glad you and the family are going to Bear Lake together. I love to hear that all of you are still spending so much time together. Families are what it's all about and I'm very grateful that my whole family still live very close and not in some far off state. I'm also excited to hear that you are going to Swiss Days with your friends. I would love to come with you when I get back from my mission. Hopefully we'll get back in time to go; if not I promise to go the following year. By the way, how is Janae doing with her broken collar bone and Viki and her mom? I do hope to see pictures real soon of the boys in the cute Halloween outfits. Mom, I love that you pick out the cutest Halloween outfits for them each year. Maybe you can get my sisters to send some Philippine pictures while they're at it as well. Mom, it's funny to hear you already talking about the plans of coming to get me. My release date is probably still September 13, 2011. It may three weeks earlier, but since I've already graduated college they may want me to stay until my release date. I would love to stop in Hong Kong on way back. I've only been to the airport and I hear they have great shopping and fun things to do. I would say we should probably stay at least a week here in Taiwan. However, I've only served in one area and seen part of another area during Sister Exchanges. You would probably laugh at me since I've already gathered several brochures of Taiwan so I can start doing my homework for when all of you come to get me. Let me know the earliest you want this stuff and I will do my homework better and see what I can find out. I love you Mom and I'm glad that you are already excited to pick me up even though it's still in a year. John, I apologize for not mentioning you in my emails lately. I haven't seen an email from you so I don't know what to mention to you. Though I did have a weird dream last night and you and Alex were in it. There were a ton of slugs all over the carpet outside of my room and I made you and Alex clean them up. You were so willing to help me since they were so nasty. I guess this relates to all of the hard work you put into our family (as well as Alex and the rest of the family). Please forgive me John and I promise to mention you in my emails each week. I'm also sorry for not telling you more often how grateful I am that you are a part of our family and you have brought so much more joy and happiness in each of our lives. Thank you for all that you do John and remember I would love to learn more about antique shopping and how you refurbish everything so well. Alex, I was so excited to get your package today! My companion and I picked it up before coming to email today. You should have never spent so much money on sending so many goodies with your neat pictures and sweet letter. I loved the scarf and the necklace. I will definitely wear while I'm here in Taiwan. My companion and I have started a diet, but I guess I can eat a few of your treat at a time (so I can savor it longer :) ). My goal is to lose at least another 20 pounds while I'm here in Taiwan. Which won't be too hard to do since there is so much yummy fruit and we're biking all day. All of the treats that you sent me I cannot find in Taiwan (except for the Pringles) so thank you for sending me some yummy things. I'll have to find you something extra special here in Taiwan and send it to you. I was really happy to finally get pictures of your great boutique. It looks amazing! You will need to start saving the best things for me since I know you will need to help me with my wardrobe when I get back from my mission. Sister Roper loved your boutique and the many owl things (she is a big fan of owls). She was wondering if your named your store "Violet Hill" after a Coldplay song. Let me know if you did she is very curious. Sister Roper actually reminds me of you since she is into music and know every song and artist. I will make to write you a letter Alex. I am not very deserving of the package that you sent me. Thank you again for everything and I hope to hear from you more often. I know you are very busy, but I would love to hear from you (we are twins and everyone that I tell here seems really excited to hear that). I love you Alex. Keep up the good work and please take some time to write me. I promise to write you a letter real soon expressing my thoughts to the letter that you wrote me. I apologize that the package took so long to get here (it went through customs). Paige, I'm sorry that I failed to mention the dresses here in Taiwan. The style of their dresses are pretty much the same in America. However, I feel that they are more unique since a lot of them I've never seen before. Just in this small town of Huwei I've seen at least 3 different formal dress stores. You would definitely find a beautiful dress here and the majority of them are pretty modest since the Taiwanese people don't like to show their cleavage at all. Thank you again for your uplifting email last week. Please continue to write me. I love hearing how life is going for you. I know you are more busy with school, but I know you can still find just a little bit of time. Please send pictures of the Phillippines and let me know how the trip was. I just found out in Alex's letter that you never got to go to Marinduque. Where did you spend all of your time? I love you Paige and keep up the good work that you are doing. Ash, it was really good to hear about the spiritual dream that you with dad. I actually received a letter last week from Grandma who told me that you were preparing for the temple. It is very exciting to hear that you are doing so. How very proud I am of you. Just make sure that you feel prepared and worthy to go because the best and most glorious blessing await there for you. I love you Ash and I am so glad that you are turning your life around. All of you us are very proud of you. Continue to do righteous things and you will continually be blessed. I will write you a letter real soon and express my thoughts to you more. Whit, I didn't hear from you this week, but I know you are very busy with school. I'm glad that you are doing so well and Rob too. I hope to hear from you next week. It's always a treat to hear you and how uplifting and positive you always are. How is nursing school? I love you Whit and miss you. I'm glad that you are home since you are very needed there. I am so glad that we all live so close to each other still. How blessed I am that we have the opportunity to see all our family members each and every day (and you will see me sooner than you realize). I love you Whit and keep up your amazing work! Cole, I haven't heard from you for quite some time. How is school? How is swimming? I hope you're not spending too much time on the computer and more time with your family and friends. I love you Cole and I hope to hear from you real soon. Sometimes I worry about you Cole. Please keep in touch with me. So far things are going great on the mission. We have another sceduled baptism for September 18th with a girl named Sister Liao. She is in her twenties and doing awesome. I have to admit that when I first saw her I didn't think she would have much interest since she wore tons of makeup, big eyelashes, big hair, and dark clothes. However, over the past month she is really changing and progressing. She stopped smoking within a week and was keeping the law of chastity (even though she is engaged). She has stopped wearing less makeup and told us last week that she knows she doesn't have to wear so much makeup because the Gospel has helped her realized how beautiful she has always been (sorry too many shes). Sister Liao even told her friends that they need to be nice to us when we try and contact them since she knows how hard we work to bring other to Christ. We are very excited for her baptism and I will tell you more about it when it is closer. My companion and I had a very spiritual lesson on Saturday with Sister Fang (the eternal investigator) who is actually progressing since she believes the Book of Mormon to be true and is reading and praying. We decided to watch a cheesy 80s LDS video on a family who all gets baptized after their little girl passes away. I had already seen this video a long time ago in seminary, but throughout the whole movie I was holding back tears since I was thinking about dad the whole time. I was able to hold everything in until Sister Roper started sobbing when she started talking to Sister Fang. Seeing her cry just made me cry as well. I couldn't hold in the tears any longer. We both sat their crying as Sister Roper bore her testimony on eternal families and related a personal experience of seeing her sister who she never met who passed away at birth. Afterwards, I related my experience about dad and gave my personal testimony on eternal families. How grateful I am each and every day to know that we can be an eternal family if we do what is righteous. How blessed I am for mom and dad's decision to marry in the temple and raise our family in this marvelous gospel. John, you are now a part of this eternal family as well and I hope and pray that you will realize this and soon accept this great gospel. Thank you all for being the great people you are. It makes me so happy to know that we can always be an eternal family. Please continue to do what is right so this can come true. I forgot to mention that I talked to the Hong Kong doctor on Tuesday night about my fingers. Don't get too worried Mom. He just told me that I need to take care of the problem now so I don't permanently damage the nerves in my hands. Luckily, last Monday I took care of this problem by getting the old-fashioned handle bars which has been taking the pressure off my hands and today I'm going to buy some dorky bike gloves that will give cushion on the palms of my hands. The doctor suggested that I get some. He also told me that I should get a priesthood blessing so I did on Wednesday night (my district leader gave it to me and his companion). The blessing was really spiritual and said to continue to be diligent and to remember that angels are around me helping accomplish the Lord's work. It went on to say not to worry about my fingers and they would get better in the future. The doctor told me that it might take so time before the numbness goes away since I've had so much pressure on them for three months, but he believes I'll be fine. I hope this doesn't worry any of you too much. I just wanted to let you know everything that is going on without leaving anything out. Tomorrow I go on Sister Exchanges. I don't know where I'll be going yet, but I will let you know how it goes next week. I failed to mention last week for Sunday was Stake conference where I was able to meet Sister Cooper (she was the black girl that I was roommates with at the MTC). It was really good to see her and to hear how she is doing. I hope one day I can be companions with her because she is such an amazing person full of light and energy. I bet she gets a lot of stares from people since she is the only black person around, haha. I love you all very much and thank you being so great. It's always good to hear from you so make sure to continue to write me. Here are some photos of the hike, the ghost festival, and the baptism, enjoy! Love you Always Everyone,Sister Museus