Week 36 - Happy Halloween!

Elder Gong visits the mission.

Happy Halloween Slippers!

Artwork by Delan, Color by Camille

Her District

Check out the cute fall fashion!

Oct 31

Family! You guys all looked ridiculously good. Love Halloween. It deff was not as crazy over here in Taiwan, but still a blast. :) We played games with the Elders and had little fall cookie bake off. Relaxing and fun. I had such a great time. We dressed up in fall colors and just loved life.

I don’t have a lot of time, but here we go...

This week was awesome! Bah I love being a missionary. I love it. First of all I am obsessed with my companion. We have so much fun, and we get a lot done. I like meeting my best friends here.

Alrighty...Folks. Cherry is back!! Do you remember her? She is the cute Pilipino mom that we met at 7 and she cried. Well we set up with her, and she loved it. She ate it all up, and she brought her little boy to church.

Ran Mama the little grandma that cried who and just lost her husband recently. She came to church and she loved it.

Remember that mom stopped us on the road and we ate lunch with? We have met with her a couple times this week, and its been great. We met her daughter and her little girl is SO ready. She is even cooler than her mom. We can’t wait to keep helping them grow.

How blessed are we?? We both feel blessed and its really fun being able to teach and grow with people.

We have a less active family in our ward that we are trying to get ready to go to the temple and its been great doing follow ups with them.

Also we met another less active family that is more special. They both have problems, and it’s kinda a bummer. Well I noticed that she has a box of hair dye and I knew that she wanted to dye her hair so bad, but couldn’t do if her self so we went over there the next day and taught a lesson as I colored away. Who knew I was going to be doing that on my mission? ha

I saw this old grandma carrying a lot of really heavy stuff so I offered to help her carry it on my bike and she wanted me to call down a taxi for her instead. ha So my companion and I biked down the street and had the Taxi follow us to the cute little grandma.

We met another Pilipino at another 7 and just started talking to her about church. She started crying. I don’t know why that always happens recently but random people we meet with on the street will just cry and cry and we never see them again, but its crazy cause that’s when I feel the most like a missionary.

Ok fine so this email might be really lame, but just know that I am feeling really blessed and having such a great time.

This week we have mission conference. Elder Gong and his wife are coming to talk to the mission and I am really excited. I will tell you all of the best parts of course.

Ok oh and I forgot we get to go to the temple next week!! I am so excited. :) So we wont be emailing on Monday. Cause we go to the Temple on Wednesday so ill be emailing then. xoxo

Love you bye.

Sis Lee

My testimony is growing, I can feel it. :)

Week 35 - Well folks that’s a rap. Like the kinda of thing a gangster does.

Oct 23

Today marks the end of my 4th move call. I am staying in my district with my companion, and I am SOO happy. I love this girl; she is my best friend on this Island. I was having serious anxiety that we were going to have to separate. We got the phone call really late on Saturday night. Once Elder Lindsey told us that we were safe together, I just started crying. It was so hilarious. Everyone in the apt was laughing at me. Don’t worry... we got in on tape. :) I’ll be sending that soon.

Happy Almost Halloween everybody! I sent awesome letters to all of you, and then they were sent back, and so I am going to resend them. :)

Ni hao! Nimen hen bang. Wo zhenda hen ai nimen! Nimen shi wo zui hao de pengyou. Wo xian nian nimen danshi wo zhidao shijain kuai daole. na meiyou guanxi. wo hai you shijian. wo ai wo de chuanjiao.

Anyways. This week was power up week!! yahoo! I realize that means nothing to any of you. ha Elder Lindsey gave us a "power" goal each day. He gave us all these tools to help us try and reach our goal. We promised to do our best to try and hit the power up goal. We were super diligent, and totally rocked our goals out of the water. It was way fun. He was a great District Leader. We saw a couple of cool miracles because of it.

We were riding our bikes, and I saw this girl getting off her scooter. I stopped and talked to her. She was just about to go into a restaurant. We just started telling her how great this gospel is and how much she needs it in her life. She asked us if we had eating lunch. We hadn’t yet, and so she bought our lunch as we talked to her about the gospel! It was so great. We are meeting with her tonight, and I am excited to keep teaching her. She was great. Her name is Judy.

Fun story number 2. The Elder in our area gave us a referral. Pan Mama. She is 60yrs old, and her husband has just recently died. She is so sweet, and has such a great heart. We went and visited her on Saturday night, and it was a great end to a great day. Because her husband died her husbands family is selling all of her stuff for money and kicking her out of her house. Its so weird. Its so sad. When we first sat down with her were small talking it up getting to know her, and then she just started pouring out her heart. Then she started crying, and I just ran and gave her a big hug. She hugged me so tight, and was crying so hard, naturally I just started crying. She has a heart condition, and so she kept saying: "I don’t want my heart to hurt anymore." It was so sad and cute all at the same time. She has incredible amounts of faith. She kept saying that she knows if she relies on God he will bless her. She says that she prays when she is sad and when she is in pain, and that she always knows that God is there watching over her.

No matter how old you are, or what walk of life you come from this gospel can bless your life. I feel like prayer is a big band-aid, and I know the Savior can help heal any wound. I love being missionary. Only because my life has purpose and what I do everyday is important. But the coolest part is that even when I am not a missionary anymore I can still be doing important things everyday. I can love and serve and lift and bless and inspire just like the Savior did and I don’t need a name tag to love everyone’s guts out..

Emily. Let me tell you about Emily. We found her tracting. She’s single, and works for a fan store in America. She is our progressing investigator. She is reading and praying, and changing and growing, and its so cool. She wasn’t to be happy and peaceful. And I can tell she’s going to take a lot of work and love, but she is so worth it. I am excited to keep you updated.

I love you guys. The church is true, and it changes life. Study the Book or Mormon, prayer for longer than you usually pray, do something nice for someone else that you don’t want to do, forgive and forget, and just love people.

:) Sis Lee

Week 34 - Wo hen kuile! That means I am really happy.

A Pet Pig!

Birthday Bash!

Oct 17

I’m being tempted!!

I have never experienced true temptation on my mission until now... The man to my left is watching the last part of Harry Potter 7?? I’m dying people...DYING?! But still surviving and not looking at his screen. Be proud.

All of my roommates write to their families in Chinese. Or they put Chinese words into their emails, and I think that would be good for you guys to be a tad bit cultured so that is what I am going to do to.

In Taiwan, if someone asks you if you want something you have to say bu yao, or bu yong. That means. I don’t want it. I don’t use it. It sounds so rude, but that is how you have to communicate with these people. Straight forward. I think we could all learn a good lesson form the Taiwanese. In some ways they communicate way healthier than Americans. When my companion wants me to give it to her straight she says: "Stop being an American." ha its funny... I encourage everyone to be more straightforward about what you feel and what you want. It’s the way to go. You actually get what you want or don’t want and you communicate your feelings.

Today was Sister Rigby’s birthday celebration. We all sang her Happy Birthday in our man morning voices as the alarm was still going off this morning. It was pretty funny. We spent the day shopping, eating and all getting our hair cut. We took pictures, and laughed all day. It was so much fun. Tomorrow is actually her real birthday, but tomorrow is sister exchanges so I won’t be here. I’ll be with another Sister doing some missionary work somewhere else. :) She had a great day. I know it. I took so many pictures of her today I felt like Mom. It was such a good feeling. :) Oh! We went out to eat today, and I didn’t like my noodles. I have been here long enough to taste a difference between good noodles and bad noodles. It’s exciting!

On Tuesday we were eating at our regularly Douhua place. We were leaving and the cute worker started talking to us. She was so cute and so nice, and started asking us all sorts of questions. She has lived in Tokyo, Japan for the last 20 years and was visiting this weekend. We invited ourselves back into the place and sat down with her, so we could continue talking to her. It was great getting to know her. We just started talking about how much our missions have changed our lives, and how grateful we are for the knowledge of the gospel, and how it has blessed our family... by the end of the lesson she was crying and telling us that the reason why she was in Taiwan was because she was there for her brothers funeral. She was really sweet, and we were able to give her a Book of Mormon. We got her information and we will send it to Japan, but I know she has the most important book ever. I really hope she reads it. It’s will change her life!

Remember that great investigator Cherry we met last week that was from the Philippines? Well she disappeared. She won’t answer her phone. It’s so bizzaro that this keeps happening. We have amazing great first sit-downs, and then they disappear. ??? Well we went to go hunt her down, and thought about lingering around the 7 / 11 where we met her. ha We didn’t find her unfortunately but, we did find another miracle sit down. She was smoking outside, and so we naturally started talking to her. (That’s what we do…We are missionaries.) Come to find out, she had been to church before and she loved it. We gave her a B of M and she was reading before we got on our bikes. We have a meeting set up with her this week. It’s going to be great getting to know her a little bit more.

We saw success and the Lord blessed us by finally meeting a couple of our Less Actives and Recent Converts that we haven’t met all move call?! We were SO excited. Because of their schedule and their stubbornness its been really really hard to meet up with them, but we got to meet some of them this last week, and it was great. We had great lessons, and invited lots of them to start praying and reading again.

Hmm what else? All is well over in Tanzi. I love my companion, I love my ward, I love my cute Recent Converts Less Active's, and I love those people I don’t really know yet. We had 2 solid progressing investigators, and they just kinda dropped off into the middle of no-where and so we are still faithfully searching for those ready and willing to change their lives and accept this gospel.

I love you guys. Thanks for updating me, and keeping me involved in your life. I love you all so very much. I pray for you like all the time. :)

Love you!

Sis Lee

Week 33 - General Conference is just as good as getting letters in the mail.

Oct 9 - Read this one…it’s pretty funny!

I loved this weekend! I can’t believe that its over. I feel like this October conference was way faster than any other session I have watched. Maybe time speeds up really fast as a missionary because it even felt like the prayers were shorter than usual? Of course it was all really good and I have a million favorite parts but I will tell you the ones that are coming to my mind right now. Elder Scotts talk on memorizing scriptures. I have already memorized Psalms 37:5 "Commit thy ways unto the Lord, and trust also in him, and he shall direct thy paths." Good one huh? :) I also cried all through Sister Daltons talk cause Dad is like my best friend ever, and he had followed all of her advice to the T. It was such a peaceful feeling knowing that I am already "grown up" and have been so well taken care of by my dad. Also I loved loved Elder Richardson’s talk about teaching by the spirit. I just so happen to be a missionary type teacher and so that was something I really loved hearing. Anyways... Conference weekend was the bomb.

It was also Sister Bryce’s birthday this weekend and so we celebrated with birthday cake between sessions, and eating smores at night. Its so much fun living in a 4 man. My companion is my bestest friend ever. I’m so lucky.

This week was really good. Extra good for some reason? We worked really really hard, and I think that is why it felt so good. I mean we work hard everyday, but you know... its just that satisfaction you get when you hit your goals, and you are doing all you can type feeling.

The Lord blessed us with a miracle this week. Sister Rigby and I had to use the bathroom at 7/11 and we bumped into a friend. She was staring at us, and so we went over and talked to her. She started speaking to us in English, which was a pleasant surprise. Her name is Cherry and she is from the Philippines. She is married to a Taiwanese man, and she has to great little boys. We happened to catch her right after work. She asked why we were in Taiwan and so we just started testifying that our church was true. We asked her if she has time to sit down with us right then, and she did! We pulled up chairs to a table and we taught her a first lesson. She told us that she was lonely in Taiwan, and that she was having a hard time at work. It was great timing meeting her because she was humble and ready to listen to our message. She is so cute, and I know she really felt the spirit. We told her that God is aware of her, and loves her and she cried. Its crazy what miracles can happen as a result of a bathroom break. Tons of moments happen like this every week. Its such a blessing to see Gods hand in our plans, and in our day. Well Cherry was willing to come to General Conference this weekend! She came totally soaked it up, and left an hour later than she was supposed too because she was so wrapped up in the spirit. I am so grateful that we have found a prepared investigator! Yahoo for missionary work.

On another good note. Someone on the road this week was willing to set up with us, because my companion made her laugh her head off. I contacted this lady on the railroad tracks last night. Because of traffic I ended up somehow in front of her instead of beside her. Sister Rigby noticed so she rode ahead of me, parked her bike on the railroad tracks, and then went over and stood next to the girl and started teaching with me. :) We got her information, we set up a time, and we were talking to her about baptism when the railroad tracks lights started beeping and flashing. haha ok. haha. So anyways. My companion goes into panic mode and starts yelling and flailing her arms about as she runs back to her bike. Because she was scared she obviously had a hard time thinking rationally about how to get her bike off the tracks. Instead of kicking up her kick stand and calmly rolling her bike to safety she starts dragging it towards herself in the possibly the most incontinent way possible. Me and this cute woman were dying laughing. It was so hilarious. She was screaming and seriously stressed out, and all I did was cry with laughter. It was so great. I am excited for this person to get to meet us on Tuesday. She is going to love us. I just started telling Sister Rigby about what I was typing and she had already told her family, and so I am going to include her version as well. :)

Sister Rigby version:

Next story. Yesterday we were riding home and my comp saw a girl on a scooter waiting for the train to pass. We went over and talked to her and ended up pulling to the side to swap info. Im a dummy and parked my bike right by the tracks and got off to go talk to her. Right as I was telling her about baptism and committing her to be baptized (because that’s what we do here) I was just in the middle of "Are you willing" when the ding ding ding of the railroad went off and the lights started flashing. I immediately forget everything except getting my bike away from the train and basically yelled the rest of my sentence at her, didn’t wait to hear her answer and ran frantically over to my bike before the things could close on me. Obviously incapable of thinking rationally, instead of kicking up my kickstand and rolling my bike calmly to safely, I went into panic mode and started dragging my bike sideways, very slowly but not on purpose, my bike was seriously like, not moving. So then in my frantic state I start like, grunt yelling as I huff and puff my bike sideways and just as the things start closing I finally make it to the other side. This to me felt like an hour when in reality this all happened within about 15 seconds. I finally realized what an idiot I must look like and look up to see my comp in tears, screaming laughing and then I look behind me and the girl is like, wide mouth laughing at me. They were seriously hysterical. The only thing my comp could get out was, " You looked.....so .... Intense.....so concentrated.....and panicked! Why didn’t ..... you just..... kick up ...your kickstand!!?? "

She was gasping for breath. She thought it was hilarious and so did the woman I yelled a baptismal goal at. She later told me as I ran over I was flailing my arms about. Who we are meeting with next Tuesday :) As we were riding away we were both in tears laughing at how incapable I am of remaining calm and my comp says, "well, at least we know she thinks were funny, now she’s like, ten times more likely to show up to meet with the weirdo Americans." Oh good.

Well I love life, and missionary work. Thanks for all your prayers and love and support. I am so lucky to have this gospel. I am lucky to know that I am divine, and that I can have lasting happiness in this life. It’s all because Jesus Christ is my savior and Joseph Smith was willing to pray about his salvation.

I love you guys...

Love Sis Lee

Week 32 - Whata week :)

Oct 3, 2011

Hi Hi Hi family...

We went to an amusement park today. SOO much fun! The weather was kinda cloudy today and so there were only 5 other people at the park. We got to ride every ride as many times as we wanted, and we definitely took full advantage of that. The bumper cars man let us bump into each other for an hour and a half. I am so sore….so worth it though.

We had a good week. Every week is a good week really. We had Zone Conference, which was a spiritual pump up. We talked about the importance of covenants, and it made me grateful for my own convents I had made, and made me super excited to help my investigators prepare to make the covenants of baptism.

So we are still having a really fun time trying to find investigators. I know that there are prepared people everywhere, but the trick is that they don’t even know it. We talk to a ton of people everyday, and we set up lots of apts. People just don’t show up all the time, but that’s the life of a missionary. :)

We decided to start going places where no other missionaries have gone. Our thought process was that maybe more people would be more receptive to our message because they have never seen us... The places include the mountains, and little tiny roads that are inconveniently out of the way. We have been seeing success though, and so our strategy is working!! ha We got chased my a three legged dog, had a lesson with an Amah who thought I looked like Joseph Smith, and met a couple of really cute families, along with cute girls our age. It’s also been good because we have gotten to know our area better.

We have one cute investigator who is a nurse. She is so spunky, and her family is so Buddhist. We met with her right after Zone Conference and so we were pumped. We were really frank with her about reading, praying, and our purpose and it was such a great lesson. She agreed to read, and pray. Due to her crazy schedule we only get to see her once a week, but we have been following up with her, and she is doing great. (Her name is Yi Chang)

Our other great investigator didn’t come to church yesterday. I was about to cry/strangle her. She promised. We ran over to her house 10 min before sacrament meeting started and she didn’t answer her phone when the security guard called her. He wouldn’t let us go upstairs and pound down her door. She promised that she was going to come. She loved church last week!! I don’t know what happened? We were sad, and because she doesn’t have a house or cell phone we haven’t been able to get a hold of her. I’ll keep you posted.

All right, well I am super glad everyone had a wonderful conference weekend. Our goal this week is to get all our investigators to at least one session of general conference. I am SO excited I can hardly wait... :) Ok. Well I love being a missionary, and I wouldn’t rather be doing anything else right now. This message changes people and it’s changing me. I am learning so much everyday. What it means to be bold, and loving. What it means to sacrifice, what it means to listen and to find and teach by the spirit. What it means to study the scriptures, and how rewarding it is when you reach your goals.

Study conference. Read it on line. Eat it up. It’s the best thing in the world right now. Literally.

I love you all so much. Can’t wait to talk to you next week.

xoxo

Love, Sis Lee