Pray for China!!!

Merry Christmas!! I hope everyone is happy and so excited for Christmas! I hope you are seeing the lights, drinking hot chocolate, sitting by the fire, making snowmen, and watching Little Women. For some reason, of ALL the things to do on Christmas, I really just want to watch Little Women. I feel like that is the epitome of Christmas.

Thank you for all the letters and presents and stuff!! I really appreciate it. I'm never lonely here.

So, this week at the MTC has been a rough one. I have a bulls eye on me and Satan is sitting around and shooting me with his beebee gun full of discouragement. The meany. I have just felt overwhelmed with those thoughts of "you can't do this" "you'll be an awful missionary" "why waste your time, go home and get married." But I know that thoughts and feelings like that are not of God. I also know I'm not alone. One particularly bad day, a few of the other sisters got back to the room also saying how they felt strangely depressed and beaten down. It is just hard sometimes. I know things will be okay, but it just takes patience and faith in Jesus Christ that things will look up. The Lord protects and fortifies His servants and I know we'll see peace and success as long as we are patient and endure it well. I know that the Lord will use me to bring the gospel to the people of Taiwan.

We had a really good experience in the Teaching Appointment on Saturday. It was our first week teaching in Chinese. We felt like we were children or something because our sentences were so basic. "I know God loves us. God loves us so he gives us families. God loves families." But at the same time, since we were weak, we were more humble and focused alot on listening to the Spirit. We taught better to this investigator's needs than when we've ever taught in English. In the words of the investigator, "the Spirit was thick." We committed her to pray with her husband and children and read the Book of Mormon. It was so neat.

Yesterday we had a fireside be Stephen B. Allen of the Missionary Department. It was so neat!! He used to produce all the "on the homefront" commercials. He played about 10 of these commercials and compared them to us as missionaries. It was exactly what I needed. There was one called "the practice" that won an Emmy even. It showed a kid playing baseball and a girl playing a piece on the piano and failing but then trying again then succeeding. At the end the message was, "when all else says you can't, listen to that little voice inside that says you can". That was sooooo what I needed and was so neat. Then there was one that showed a dweeby kid with glasses and a pig-tailed girl with glasses that both felt gawky and awkward, but then at the end they smiled at each other and the message said, "don't think of who you aren't, but who you are. And that's pretty great." It was so cute!! The basis of alot of Brother Allen's talk was for missionaries to remember who they are, believe what they can do, and be themselves...because they were called to their certain mission for being who they are with their experiences. It was again, what I needed to hear.

Haha, so I do some crazy things sometimes. So there's this picture developing machiney thing in the MTC bookstore that is really hard to use sometimes. But I swear I figured out its quirks. So anyway, there was a little piece of tape over the SD card slot saying "out of order". But I figured I was smarter than the tape and knew how to work its magic so I peeled back the tape. I shoved the SD card in hard and it sailed right into the belly of the machine. The bookstore lady was not happy and I don't know if I'll ever see that card again which is really regretable since there are pictures of my district and Grant and stuff on there. Bah!

Oh! Important bit of info. I CANNOT call home for Christmas! I will be able to write a quick note, however, so sorry Mom! But I'm pretty sure I can call from the airport on January 28.

So guess what?? One of our Sisters in our zone ran into a Branch President who works with the Church to try to get us into places around the world where the gospel cannot be taught and has some crazy news about China! So apparently China re-wrote part of their constitution/manifesto or whatever to include the allowing of Christian religions. But before it's totally put into play, they want to read Christian materials to see if this is a good idea and if Christianity is something they want in China after all. So China is waiting as BYU Law School translates over 100 Christian works into Chinese!! Isn't that crazy?? That means that in not too long, they could ratify that and we could be IN China teaching the gospel!! WOW!! Pray everyon, PRAY!! Pray all day, every day that it goes through and we can preach the gospel there! Miracles are happening!! It gives me the chills!! Fast and pray!!

Well, I love you all and wish you a Merry Christmas!

Coley