Sister Museus, April 24th 2011

Dearly Missed and Appreciated Family, Happy Easter lovely family!!! Oh, how I miss all of you realizing that you all just finished your Easter Day full of hunting for baskets and eggs, watching the boys get really excited, and eating a wonderful dinner with the family. I wish I could have been there, especially so could spend time with each of you. However, it was such a nice suprise getting a Easter package from all of you. Thank you all for remembering me on this special holiday. It means a lot to me because I realize how much you all and miss me. Well, I am very excited to talk to you all on Mother's Day, which will be in less than two weeks. I still haven't received any information on when this will take place, but I promise to give it you when I receive it. Mom, I apologize for sending your Mother's Day package late. I promise to send it off today or tomorrow. You might get it on time, but it might also be a little late; sorry! Things are looking okay in Taiping. Lately, we've been blessed to have many progressing invesigators, but they are not ready for baptism in the next two weeks (which is when our move-call ends and most likely I will move again--since Pres. Bishop likes to move me). However, we still have three great investigators who could get baptized anytime, but we are sitting on the fence and could fall on either side. Sister Fu, from China, loves going to church each week, but is afraid to keep all of the commandments and because of this she doesn't want to get baptized until later in the future. However, she is ready and just needs more faith in Christ and understand that we are not perfect and will make mistakes when keeping the commandments. Sister Zeng (the little girl) is doing awesome. However, Sister Lai and I visited her mother on Wednesday and she believes she is too young and doesn't understand baptism (same as Sister Lin in Tanzi's situation). We tried to show her what the church is all about and especially Primary and Young Womens and provided a schedule full of scriptures, questions, and activities for Sister Zeng to do to help her prepare for baptism. However, her mother wasn't a big fan of it and said she can only get baptized if she really shows that she wants it. Sister Zeng and her dad didn't come to church so we are thinking things are still not looking too good. Nevertheless, we will try and visit them one more time on Wednesday when Sister Zeng and her mother are home. Sister Lian is still as busy as ever being a professor and working on her PhD. However, we are meeting with her tonight and hoping things go smoothly. Her big problem is being so busy and still drinking tea. I will let you know next week how things go with this lesson. I would just love to see her get baptized, especially after hearing her bear a powerful testimony on how the church has blessed her children (since they were baptized a couple of months ago). We continue to have faith that we can have at least on baptism during the move-call. I just feel like a failure when I cannot help at least one soul enter into the waters of baptism during a move-call. Nothing else new has happened this week. I just need to have more faith and a better attitude when things are not working out. I just hope we can have a miracle happen so we can have at least baptism together. How great it was to celebrate Easter. I actually didn't do anything to celebrate other than focusing our lessons (over the past week) on the resurrection and the importance of it. I must admit that (like many of us) in the past I have overlooked the importance of this great holiday. Easter in Chinese is Fuhuojie, which literally means resurrection holiday. I hope we can all realize how significant this great event is that through our great Savior and His resurrection we can all overcome death and live again. How great it is to know this that everyone (whether good or bad) will overcome death. I have come to appreciate this great holiday even more while on my mission and especially knowing that we can all see dad again; that death isn't the end. How neat it is that Dad's birthday is just a couple weeks away from Easter so we can remember them both. Dear family, please remember the importance of this great event and continue to do righteous things so we can always be an eternal family. I love you all dearly and can't wait to talk to you soon! Ash, thanks for sending me the letter from Sister and Elder Greene (the office couple here in Taiwan). Sister Greene informed (last week) that she was able to give Mom additional information on how to arrange things with the church; Mom, I hope the information helped. Ash, I would love to hear about your fun trip to Disneyland with the boys, Cole, John, and Mom. I would also love to see some fun pictures from this great vacation. I'm glad you were able to spend some splendid time with the boys at the most magical place on earth, :). Mom, thank (as always) for spending some time each week to email me. I fully appreciate it, even though I know you are very busy. I do love hearing from you (and the rest of the family), especially since it lets me feel like I can still be a part of these great memories you continue to make with the family. I am also very excited to talk to you on Mother's Day as well; I can't wait! Thank you for the wonderful Easter package; it really made my day. My companion and roomies appreciated it as well since I shared some of the sugar cookies with them (since there are very few baked goodies in Taiwan). I hope Easter went well with the family, Deb and the family, and Papa Jun and Mama Norma. I'm glad to hear that you had so many people together to celebrate Easter. I bet the boys loved hunting for Easter eggs and the basket. I wish I could have been there, but in less than 4 months I will be able to see you all again! I'm sorry to hear that you had a bad dream about Dad. For some strange reason, I've never had a dream about Dad. In my dreams He is always part of the background and if I do talk to him only a few words are shared between the two of us. However, this week I did have many dreams about the family; I guess I've been thinking about all of you a lot lately; I sure do miss you all and I hope everyone is still doing great. It's good to hear that Alex will be graduating in May; how exciting! Tell her I'm sorry I can't be there to celebrate in this great event. Let her know that I love and miss her to pieces and that I am very proud of her. Now we can both work on our Masters together :). I hope Logan is doing okay with all of the flooding. Luckily, we don't live near a river so we don't need to worry too much about this situation. But, like you said all of the rain will help us out in the summer time. Mom, here is some additional information on the trip. I noticed you spelled the airport wrong (or maybe I spelled it wrong) so maybe that's why you couldn't find it. Today, I did buy maps for each of the 4 cities that we are going to visit and will get help from my companion and roomies on more places we need to visit. The main airport in Taiwan is located in Taoyuan city (near Taipei city). The name of the airport is called Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. My release date is still August 23rd. I would love to get permission to leave a week early (so Whit can come), but I feel that you, Mom, will need to ask my mission president because he is already expressed (in the letter to you and to me) that he prefers that parents don't come and pick their missionaries up). So, I feel that to get permission for this must be from you Mom. Just email a short letter explaining the situation. If you don't want to do this I will try next week to discuss this with him. I will try better to get more information on which places to go so you have a better understanding. Please let me know if you any more additional information or if you would like some idea on what we would do in each city. I can email or send a letter full of this stuff. I promise to do this in the near future when I have everything compiled together. Please let me know what you think and if you think we will spend any time in China and if three days in each city (maybe 4 days in Taipei) is enough. How long do you think the trip should be? Two Weeks? More? Let me know Mom and I promise to give you more information soon! I hope you were able to email Sister and Elder Greene about the trip. They just need to know a better idea on when you will be coming and such. I hope their additional information helped you on how to arrange things with the church. Sister Greene wasn't sure if the church was going to pay for my ticket on the way home since I will be leaving Taiwan with you all on a different date. You will need to ask the Church Travel Office on this subject. Please forgive me Mom for not getting more information to you sooner; the only time I can compile all of this stuff is on Mondays. But, I will continue to work on it. I love you Mom and I hope you had a Hoppy Easter; SomeBunny Loves you :). Whit, I apologize for not mentioning more of what you said in your email. It was great to hear that Deb, Lexie, PJ, and Mama Norma came to hear you and Alex speak in Sacrament. That was very nice of them. What did you and Alex talk about? You probably both did an amazing job. You're probably done with school by now, which is real nice. I hope that means you will email more often since you will have more time. Whit, I think it would be best for Mom and John to ask my mission president for permission for me to leave a week earlier. But, if they are not willing to give it a try, I promise to call him next week and ask him about his matter. Love you Whitie, Happy Easter!! Love you all family and I hope to hear from many of you next week. Take care and l love you to pieces! Have a Fabulous Easter!!! Love you Always,Sister Museus p.s. For some reason my camera won't work again on this different computer. Hopefully it will work next week so you can see some fun pictures from our P-Day trip to the Apostasy Mountain. Sorry Fam!