Fond good-byes and Elaine Dalton's visit

How's everyone doing!? How's Christmas plans?? I love Christmas. They have Christmas lights around the MTC which makes it nice and cheery.

Well, I just made a little list of the things I did this week...I'll just go down the list, not in a particular order of importance.

So we have the most amazing branch President here. His name is Liu Huizhang (huizhang is his title meaning president...). He comes on the weekdays and tutors our Chinese (he's from Taiwan). He's seriously the cutest, most humble, caring nice man. The other day he beckoned me to the white board to "tell me a secret". He secretly wrote "you are on your way to..." erase "Chin..." at that point I had a heart-attack because I thought he was going to write "you are on your way to China" but then he finished writing and said "you are on your way to Chinese excellency." He's so nice. He has a lot of faith in my Chinese skills and said that my accent sounds good and not to let the Taiwanese pollute it since they don't sound very good. Haha. So yeah, we LOVE him in our branch. Yesterday we went to Church and saw the Mission President there which was kind of interesting. Then out of the blue, President Liu was released!! All 6 of us Sisters started bawling our eyes out. The 8 Elders in the zone were also leaving which was sad as well. The Lius spoke and we kept crying and crying, which was slightly embarrasing. I haven't cried that hard in a long time. The MTC makes me cry alot. haha. ("Ku" is "cry" in Chinese...so our district jokes around that the girls always go "ku ku ku", sounding much like pigeons. haha.) We're way sad to see President Liu leave. He and his wife remind me a lot of why I love Chinese people so much. They are such wonderful, humble, kind, happy, and selfless people. They are so amazing. I'm really so happy to teach in Taiwan.

That reminds me! Our very first investigator from the TRC (the place where we role-play) who was the REAL investigator...Wang Xiaojie....remember? Guess what?? She's getting baptized in a week!! I don't think our lesson we taught her was the first or the last, obviously, but my companion and I cried (of course) when we found out because we knew that she'd felt the Spirit in our lesson and were so happy that she accepted the gospel.

So we had an interesting mishap the other night. We were all asleep when we were abruptly woken up by the squealing fire alarm and flashing lights in our bedroom. Sister Clyde yelled, "Don't DO this!" haha. We thought it was all a drill so we were pretty bugged. But we wrapped ourselves in our trenches and/or blankets and stumbled out of the building with 200+ other sister missionaries. They herded us into the gym where we huddled in little groups. Apparently a water pipe had burst and flooded the basement and somehow it set off the alarm. Weird. A few days before this happened, something wacky had happened with the furnace in our class building and we were evacuated and everything smelled like tar. All's well now, but it's kind of strange the things that happen.

So He Jiemei and I are pretty excited for Christmas. We're going to surprise the Elders in our district with a mini-Christmas. On Christmas Eve we're going to put presents and "stockings" with candy on their desks. It's definitely not necessary, but if anyone wants to mail some *unused* cheapo nylons to use as stockings...that would be grand. If not, I'll figure something out. :) We're excited for Christmas here.

Elaine Dalton came and spoke to us in Relief Society yesterday. She shared a really neat testimony of the Savior. Then she gave a neat story about how she was running with her husband one morning when he started going up a really steep hill. She said she didn't feel like she could keep up or reach the top, so she told her husband she was going to turn around and get some water from the car. Her husband laughed at her and said, "Elaine, don't you know you never turn around when you're in the middle of a hill?" Then she pushed harder until she reached the top where they had the most amazing view she'd ever seen. She compared that to our lives, how often we're in a "hill" of our lives and it's just so hard and we just want to give up and turn back, but if we keep going then we'll reach the top and have the most amazing view. She said she'd shared that same story to some MTC sisters a few years ago. Then a couple years afterwards one of those sister missionaries came up to her in a restaurant and said, "thank you so much for that story about never turning around while you're on a hill." Then sister Dalton said it was amazing because she'd forgotten her own story and at the time that that sister missionary had come up to her and reminded her, Sister Dalton was in the middle of another hill.

That was really neat. I feel like every week it's a new hill here at the MTC. Then I reach the top and have some amazing experience or grand perspective then I head up another hill again.

Anyway, sorry this is so scattered. I love you all!
Coley