This transfer has already started out great. My companion is amazing! We feel so lucky to be together for one more transfer as well. I feel especially lucky that she is my last companion. She really has so much fire for the work and wants to keep working and doing her very best. She has enabled us to see so many miracles. I am so grateful for her. One of the fun things we are doing as a companionship is we memorize a song every week, so when we aren't feeling the greatest or just need a bit of a spiritual boost we will sing and it cheers us up... and it also makes the Taiwanese people laugh to see us riding around on our bikes in the freezing cold singing at the top of our lunges smiling. This week was "Lord I would follow thee" and last week was "hark all ye nations".
So this week has been one of the coldest weeks ever! and it rained... a lot... and we don't have many investigators so we were finding a lot... but this week we saw so many awesome awesome things happen!
So to start out we were able to get some pretty awesome miracle referrals. We were able to set up with two former investigators that popped up out of no where and still have interest. Both of which know the gospel is true, but have faced some family opposition. I think it is their time though and they really will start progressing! We also ran into a little old christian lady. At first she told us she was too busy to talk, but we asked if we could say a prayer to bless her and she let us in. After, she showed us this job that she is doing and was complaining a bit about her life so we just said we would love to help and we helped her for the next hour. She is aborigine so she doesn't speak Chinese very well, so we just sang to her for like and hour while we helped her do her job. It was so fun and as we left we said and prayer and hugged her. As sister G hugged her she broke down in tears, pulled away a bit and then hugged her again crying. I went over and we just told her the lord loves her and He will take care of her. Then we told her we would be back again next week. One of the coolest things ever! I really understood the line in "Lord I would follow thee" that says' I would be my brothers keeper, I would learn the healers art, to the wounded and the weary I would show a gentle heart.' This song is one of my favorite songs because I feel like it describes exactly why I LOVE TO FIND. It is so cool to be able to be the lord's hands in bringing about good.
One of the funniest things that happened was one night we prayed to find a mother and we did... she turned out to be kind of crazy and dragged us to this random miao where they were giving away free lanterns for the lantern festival. So funny... but good story. We actually got to go to the main place where they send off lanterns for the festival last p-day. It was freezing cold and raining, but we have a cool video that the member took for us of us sending off a lantern. The area was really pretty too so you will love the pictures. My flash drive is having problems right now so I can't send them today, but next time I will for sure.
Ha ha and I don't know why, but the whole kidney stone thing clearing up really did clear up my skin as well, so I am looking much better recently.
There were many more miracles this week, but that is all I can think of off the top of my head right now. One of the cool things was that we made almost all of our WPS goals this week! It was really exciting especially because we don't have many progressing investigators right now, so to get members at our lessons was a bit difficult, but the lord really helped us because we were trying so hard.
We finished the week very tired, but feeling great... we faced lots of rejection and lots of freezing time in the rain, but we know we worked our hardest and the lord really blessed us so much.
One of the things I studied this week i would love to you all to read a talk called, "recognizing god's hand in our daily blessings." http://www.lds.org/liahona/2012/01/recognizing-gods-hand-in-our-daily-blessings?lang=eng
It actually reminded me a lot of what dad has been going through... Elder Christofferson talks about when he first got called as an apostle how they went through a major time of financial trials and how in the end he was glad the lord didn't take away the trial right away. It really allowed him to know his heavenly father in a way he would not have otherwise or may have taken more time. It also shares a cool story - I will quote it here:
In the 1950s my mother survived radical cancer surgery, which was followed by dozens of painful radiation treatments. She recalls that her mother taught her something during that time that has helped her ever since:
“I was so sick and weak, and I said to her one day, ‘Oh, Mother, I can’t stand having 16 more of those treatments.’
“She said, ‘Can you go today?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘Well, honey, that’s all you have to do today.’
“It has helped me many times when I remember to take one day or one thing at a time.”
The Spirit can guide us when to look ahead and when we should deal just with this one day, with this one moment.
I also really saw this come into play as we prepared to leave our house this week... as we prepared to go out the door every morning knowing it was cold and we didn't really want to go out in the pouring rain again for a long time... but as we took it an hour at a time, a day at a time... we saw so many miracles and we made it through happily even though looking at the prospect of 8 hours in the freezing rain looked terrible somehow it really wasn't bad at all. This talk was seriously so good and really helped me take a new perspective the hard things we go through in life as well as the many many blessings we really do have.
I am so grateful for the savior and his love for us. I feel like my testimony of Him is increasing everyday and I am so grateful to be serving Him with all my heart might mind and strength.
ha ha - dad I will let you know when I have time to be trunky... for now I don't think I have any time to stop and think about it too much! :) I love you all and my prayers will continue to be with you!
Sister Sara Gummow
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