November 30, 2014

Hi Mom and Dad! 

Haha, sorry my email last week was so wimpy. This week's will definitely be better. As for last week in Taroko, it was Sister Roy and I, Wu JeiMei (from DanShui) and then a member who drove us there. We went to a new place that I've never gone to before, so that was fun. There's a lot of different sites / hikes that you can go on, and it just kind of depends on what level of difficulty you want, and how cool you want the view to be. Generally speaking, the harder the hike, the cooler the view. It was really fun, but took a long time. It was really good to see Wu JeiMei as well. She's so great. And she's even thinking about going on a full time mission! So I'm hoping for that :)

                  P-day at Taroko Gorge 

Thanksgiving was good here too! We didn't really do anything...haha, but that's ok. We treated ourselves to a really nice "zi zhu can" (help yourself / buffet) place, and it was really good! And then on Saturday night there wa the Thanksgiving Dinner/Talent Show for both branches, so Saturday was more like Thanksgiving than Thursday, haha. At the branch activity the missionaries reenacted the Thanksgiving story, and oh man it was hilarious. One of the recent converts videotaped it, so I'm going to try and get my hands on a copy of that, haha. 

Speaking of Saturday, there was a baptism!  I don't know if you remember me talking about her. Sister Walker and I found her, and then taught her almost everything, and then found out that she lives in the Elders' area, so then they started teaching her. It was really exciting! I'll send pictures soon :)

Friday we went up to Taibei for the Missionary Leadership Council, and guess what...we got to go to the Temple! Yay! Haha, it was such a cool experience. We all felt really lucky. The Temple President and his wife were also at the meeting and spoke to us, a lot about the endowment /missionary work / temple work in general, and it was really cool. I also got my Christmas package! I opened it, so luckily everything inside is wrapped :) Haha, so thank you for that package! I'm excited for Christmas :) We almost have all the decorations up and everything too. 

As for investigators, they're all pretty ok. Not as great as we would like them to be, but still, ok. One hasn't been coming to church recently, so we're a little worried about that. And another was able to come to the Thanksgiving activity, but not Church. But he really wants the gospel to help him, so he has a big desire which is good. 

We were also able to meet some awesome new investigators this past week, which was much needed. One huge miracle was finding a super awesome new investigator! It was Thursday night and we only had about 20 minutes before our next lesson, and we decided to go to an area that we had planned to go to a couple weeks ago, but never got around to. Well we get there, and literally the FIRST door we knock turns out to be this super awesome prepared lady! We taught her how to pray, and shared part of the Book of Mormon with her, and when we said we would like to give her the book she literally said, "Wow! How am I so lucky to have met you guys today and be given this book?!" It was a really cool miracle. We're meeting with her again tonight, so I'm excited.

Another miracle is working with member referrals! They're so great! Specifically, a woman named Y--. We're meeting with her and her member friend tonight and I'm really excited. Last time we had a meeting with her I was on exchanges so I actually haven't met her yet, but I'm excited to see her start to progress.

So yeah, a lot of cool things are still happening. Transfer day is this coming Friday, so hopefully we have some new sisters come to the area and help us out. Haha, Sister Roy and I are exhausted with taking care of two areas. 

Well, that's about is from this past week! I love you Mom and Dad! I'm glad you both had a good Thanksgiving up at Melissa and Rob's :) 

I love you and miss you! 

Love,

Sister George

Amie's response to to some questions we asked her:

I feel pretty comfortable with Chinese now, but sometimes it's still hard to fully express myself. Actually, I think most the time I can express myself the way I want to, it's just whether or not it comes out smoothly or not, haha. I passed off Phase 2, which was good. Phase 3 is all about characters. So I think I'm going to spend some time doing Phase 3, and spend some time doing the topic study because I think that would be more useful. Do you have any suggestions at this point for the language? I love learning characters (they're easier for me than speaking) but I want to keep improving my speaking stills too. 

Yeah, Relief Society is pretty much the same as it is in America. Just a lot smaller. There are a lot more sisters than there are brothers in the branch. Actually there are just more active sisters than there are active brothers. So we're going to start doing a lot of work with less active Melchizedek Priesthood holders. Especially since we're trying to build a stake here on the East Coast.

Exchanges