Tuesday, February 11, 2014

On Safe Ground :)

We are so grateful for the fasting and prayers of our home ward!  It helped get Sister Gummow through her bout of Kidney stones and helped the Lord's work continue to progress in Taiwan! Here is a picture of her sporting her fashionable hospital gown as she goes in for an X-ray to find out the condition of her kidneys.

Dearest family,

I have good news... I am officially clear of the kidney stone problem and even better... it didn't even really hurt at all.  I don't have to keep taking medicine anymore either, just drink lots of water because there is a bit of residue or something so I have to make sure my insides are good and cleaned out. Thank you for all the prayers and fasting.  

Guonian is very interesting and fun.  It is about a solid week of being invited over for meals and then a lot of people don't have work for 2-3 weeks. Guonian is fun and everyone is happier, but it is mostly just like a really long Thanksgiving... with lots of really loud fireworks... so not going to lie - I am glad it is over.  The good thing is that we were able to use our time pretty well and had some cool miracles of investigators meeting members and RC's being welcomed into the ward.  We were able to call most of our "qingke's" and invite people to attend with us so it all went really well.  We actually ended up having to miss about half of our invitations because of meetings and stuff, but that was ok too because we were constantly full and I had nice little breaks so I actually didn't gain any weight over Guonian!  

My favorite foods... I wouldn't even really know where to start... and I don't know half of their names, but everything is pretty good.  I must admit I am still a fan of sweet things so I love the red bean and green bean soups... soo good!  

So this week we were also taken up in a two day leadership training meeting where all the district, zone leaders, and sister training leaders went to Taipei from 9am-6pm everyday for two days... it was sooo long, but really really good.  We were able to address a lot of really awesome skills that I am really excited to go out and use as well as start training the other sisters on.  Our teaching pool is slowly starting to build up as well.  

We were able to have a really fun cool miracle this week as we were knocking doors.  We don't know our area that well so we just looked at an area of a map and we both chose a road that stood out to us... it happened to be the same road (definitely the spirit!) and then we just walked to wherever the spirit led us. Then I saw this random tiny tiny alley way and we started walking down it.. it led us to another random alley way.  No one was really willing to hear - then we get to a door and a man opens the window to talk to us.  As he opened the window, the man in the last house we knocked also came to the door, so my companion went to talk to them.  While she talked with them I was able to teach the man a lesson and set up for a return time. Then we went back into the other person's house and also taught them and set up a time.  It is really not often on a mission that you find neighbors who are interested in hearing.  They were both very interesting people, but I really felt of the Lord's love for them. We are excited to be going back this Friday afternoon :)  

We also found out that with the boundary splits, we have a few investigators that are not willing to set up with the elders so we are getting permission to keep meeting with them!  We are really excited to get a few of our beloved investigators back.  Hopefully it will all go well :)  

We have really seen the members stepping up and become really willing to help out the missionary work. I am so grateful for all of their service.  We hope we can continue to bring the spirit more into their homes and into their lives. 

I still love being a missionary just as much and the Lord loves me too because we have a really cool surprise meeting next transfer...  Elder Holland, as well as someone from the 70 and the presiding bishopric will all be coming to Taiwan on the 22nd to speak to all of us in Taiwan.  Elder Holland will also be attending and speaking at our stake conference.  Probably one of the biggest events since Pres. day has been a mission president and definitely since I have been a missionary!  I feel very blessed that I can still be a part of it and know it will be an event to be remembered!  

I think that is pretty much the gist of what has been going on here.  I don't really think there is anything I need, but start letting me know if there are any random things, or foods from Taiwan that you all would like me to take back with me.  I realized recently I haven't really acquired many souvenirs and I feel like I should have more... so if there is anything just let me know!  Thank you!  I love you!!!

Sister Sara Gummow

This is me and my companion at the doctor getting the x-rays... it was really an interesting adventure trying to learn all these words in Chinese...  x-ray is S-Guan1, kidney is shen4 - usually they say shenzhang.  

Here is my district at one of our last qingke's with one of our LA members who started coming back recently :)  

No comments:

Post a Comment