After last week's letter, we are grateful that Sara was able to get over being sick and push through the discouragement! I appreciated the advice that her father gave her when she was discouraged about not having baptized anyone and reaching her halfway mark - "Hang in there Sara. Remember it's about loving others. That is where happiness in missionary work comes. Not baptizing, Jesus never baptized anyone as far as we know. He did love and care and do good. Making someone laugh or feel better about themselves will lift you as well." Great advice and I hope that it lifted her in her efforts to be Christlike! Here is some of her email:
"It is funny how it is so true that mission time is just crazy. I look back on the weeks and think it has all just flown by, but sometimes I cant believe all that has happened in one week... I did hit my half way mark and received the camel mom so thoughtfully sent. ha ha it is hanging up on our wall and gives us a good laugh whenever we see it. So I did take your advice and get a blessing as well. I could really feel Satan working hard on me to get me down. I pushed through the hard times though and didn't miss a beat out their on the street. I am a firm believer that whenever I am out that door, I have to put on a smile and have to open my heart to the spirit or there is no way I can do the lord's work. I may have been not quite as Christlike as I want to be, but I did my very best and we saw some awesome miracles.
We are really finding through our LA's this week. Most of our LA's are the only member in their family and lots of them have kids that just adore us missionaries. As we have been bold and loving in teaching their children we are definitely starting to make some progress on the whole family. It has been really fun to go to some new areas of Taidong as we are searching out the lost sheep. We got lost a little ourselves sometimes, but is has been fun. It is soooo hot. I cannot describe how powerful the sun is here other than that I am getting darker and darker and most of the time the most we spend outside is an hour or riding our bikes to and from places. It is dangerous to be outside in the sun too long, so we have been trying to be really careful how we plan everything. My poor companion has really fair skin so it's even more xinku(difficult) for her.
So some of the highlights of this week.
We lost 3 of our solid investigators :( 1 moved to Tainan, one to Pingdeng, and one to america. This is S... (on the far left of the photo) Far right is Zh... ma ma. She is an awesome member that takes care of us so much! One of our members opened a new Korean food shop a little while ago and this is us at their opening party. 
It was cool to watch the broadcast about missionary work... unfortunately it didn't affect us as much as I would have liked. The church here isn't quite as established so we are not quite at that point yet, but they have strong testimonies and that is why there are so many missionaries out here! We have seen the blessings of members and missionaries working together and it really makes all the difference. We are going to start working on helping them become more modern missionaries.
Another strange experience that happened this week was one of our recent converts W.. Jm. Her cousin died in a scooter accident. He was out in this area for vacation and he and his girlfriend crashed. It was such a terrible experience for their whole family (he was only 19). It was all over the news here, but it was also an amazing chance for us to testify to her of the plan of salvation. It all became so real to me as we watched all their relatives in mourning... as they all did the Buddhist traditional funeral... I just wanted them all to know so badly where he was right now and that they could see him again. I could feel the spirit testify so strongly of everything we talked to her about. It was really amazing! I could also see her mother and father open up to us and they could see we were servants of the lord. They may not know it yet, but it was definitely a seed planted.
We also had a fun experience going to our investigators house to eat. She has been nervous about telling her husband she has been meeting with us, but he was actually super nice about it and supportive. he also likes waiguoren (foreigners). The elders were also super awesome and went with us to teach him English and he asked for their number... which is awesome! He even let us teach them all how to pray. Her last name happens to be the same as mine too (wen JM) so we definitely have a special connection her family is awesome!
Well that's about it! Keep "jia you" family!!!
Love you all!
Sister Sara Gummow"
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