Transfers are Coming!

Hi Family!!

This week has had a lot of new experiences and surprises, but has been alot of fun. Sister Weng and I were doing companionship study on Tuesday morning when we got a call from President Grimley. I was kind of nervous, because getting a call from the mission president out of the blue can never be good. Haha. But he was calling to tell us that a new sister would be coming early to the mission and Sister Weng would be training her and we had to go to Taibei that night to pick her up! We screamed for the next half hour of studies. Sister Weng has never trained before and I REALLY didn't want to move away from Zhubei. It's true that Heavenly Father really takes you away from comfort when it's time to learn something new. This past transfer has seriously been one of the happiest experiences in my life. I've learned SO much, and LOVE Sister Weng! Some nights I would just come home and be so happy that I would just pray in thanks. It was sooooo awesome. Zhubei is wonderful and I'm finally getting to know the wards. But I can see that sometimes when you get too comfortable, you're not moved upon to learn as much. I feel like my teaching skills have improved this transfer, but I have other skills that could be built with a change of surrounding. I'm just a little afraid of my new companion/area. Sister Weng and I just had such a good time, it'll be hard to top that experience. Sister Weng is so cute. Sometimes she makes faces that look like the bull from Bugs Bunny and makes me laugh so hard. I just love her. She teases me and I love our companion studies. They are so edifying. She loves the gospel but she's very real. Anyway, I'm really sad to leave Zhubei. It's the "Yingxu Di" or Promised Land. I'm so afraid of being sent to a big city. So many people stresses me out and I'm afraid I'll get hit by a bus or something. Apparently taxi drivers hate missionaries...

ANyway, so Tuesday night Sister Weng and I went to Taibei and stayed in the temple hotel thingy while we waited for Sister Li, our new companion. Sister Li is American Born Chinese, so she speaks complete fluent Chinese and English, her parents are Chinese and she grew up in Provo. So she actually came 2 weeks before the transfer, just like me. So now we're in a trio until next preparation day. It's interesting how Heavenly Father always puts you in situations that help you further understand others. I'm now in the same position as Sister Scott from my 1st transfer. I'm the 3rd wheel missionary sleeping on the floor and living out of a suitcase. Actually, we just separated one of the bed's mattress and box springs so our beds are actually right side by side. It's kind of fun. Like a slumber party every night. My bed is in the middle of the floor, which is nice, because that's the coldest part. Here are the things I'll miss most about Zhubei:

1. The Hotpot restaurant (restaurant in the loose sense of the word...) with the all you can eat ice cream and pop
2. The Leprechaun Man. That's actually not a very nice thing to call him...he's actually this really cute handicapped man that hangs out outside of an investigator's hair salon. He has fluffy hair and side burns and always wears shorts and a green vest, so he REALLY looks like a hobbit or a leprechaun. But he always waves at us when we pass and he's so excited to see us. One day a man was just giving out peanut butter popsicles and when he gave L. M. one I've never seen a human being that happy. It was so cute.
3. Our huge beautiful chapel
4. The Relief Society President and the 1st Ward Bishop who collects the stamps.
5. Lai Weiting, my first transfer baptism.
6. Sister Weng!!
7. The BEAUTIFUL scenery in Xinpu, Xinfeng and the Haitan.
8. My own bathroom and a clean, new apartment.

Anyway, that's really not the best of even a small part of how much I love Zhubei. But anyway, I know where ever I go, it will be because the it's the Lord's will and I'll still love it. I find out on Friday where I'll go. Scared!!!

So we had a neat experience the other day during exchanges. We got kind of lost looking for a less active member's house because it was dark, and the address was wrong. So we were biking in an old part of Zhubei, surrounded by very old homes and rice fields, when we passed a woman who just walked out of her house. Sister Collyer contacted her and the 3 of us (Me, Sis Collyer, and Sis Li) bore testimony and tried to get her to set up a time, but finally she just said no and we left. But I told the Sisters that while we were trying to convince her to meet with us, I had had a feeling that we shouldn't ask, we should just start teaching. But we'd lost our chance since she now didn't want to talk. But we then decided that the NEXT person, we would just start teaching. Two minutes later, we stopped to check the address and saw a man smoking outside his house. We acted on our decision and taught the man the first lesson. He was 67 years old and we gave him a Book of Mormon and will meet with the Elders! It was just neat because the Spirit was really strong in the lesson and all 3 of us are very new missionaries --Sister Collyer and I with horrid Chinese and Sister Li only out for 2 days. It was neat. I really know that when we depend on the Lord, the power of the Atonement can enable us to do great things. The other day an investigator asked why missionaries who are so young go out and preach the gospel and we shared with her Alma 36:6-7. And this scripture is very true:
"Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.
"And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and be very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls."

Missionary work and life is just a miracle sometimes. I think Heavenly Father works in every detail of our lives to try to bring us back to Him. It's just our choice to follow Him and listen/notice His enticements. Over a month ago, Sister Weng and I talked to this man cleaning out his van. We tried to set up with him but he kind of laughed at us and said "here's my card but I'm not interested". So we took his card and just held onto it and thought nothing would ever come of it. Then we laughingly gave his card to the Elders the other day and the man came to church and is now taking the lessons! Miracles! I fully believe that in that month, the Lord used that time to prepare him to be more receptive to the gospel, so when the Elders called him, it was the right time.

Anyway, life is good! I love you!! I'm working on my handwritten letters to all of you!! Dad, I need your physical address! Love you!!

Coley

Teach me all that I must do

Hello Jiating!

How is everyone? Happy Birthday Danny! I hope everyone is having fun and getting ready for the summer!! I bet everyone is so excited!

Here's the latest from Pooh. By the way, I hope my emails aren't really pointless and boring. If they are, please tell me and I'll try to shake it up or something:

*I found out that I have an unpleasant sun allergy. I know Rachel and Jessica do as well, and I thought I did before too, but as I've always had the Madam Mim approach to the outdoors ("I hate horrible wholesome sunshine. HATE HATE HATE!!!) I never really knew my skin was this sensitive. Last week the sun came out really bright and my forearms are in the direct light as I ride my bike all day. At first they just itched like crazy then I started developing a rash with little white blistery bubble things. So now every morning I put on a lot of sunscreen and every night I put on a lot of Aloe Vera. I'm pretty proud of the fact that I tan so well (even if the tan is only from my sleeve to my wrists...) but every Chinese person (even mid-lesson) points to my arms and says "tsk tsk, Hei hei!" Or "black black!" Every sunny day my companion says "I hate being black!"

*We went to a ward activity on Saturday at the beach. It was so windy the sand stung our skin so bad! We cleaned the beach of all the garbage and junk. It was kind of gross and scary because there were sick stuff like syringes and drug paraphernalia all over the place. The Relief Society President, Dai Jiemei that I told you about last email, was SO funny!! She was afraid of getting black in the sun, so she wore some sort of flowery head covering that resembled a ski mask with only a rectangle opening for her eyes. She looked like a ninja. Then the wind was so strong it kept blowing her shirt up. She's really the funniest, most wonderful women. I really look up to her. After we cleaned the beach, we played volleyball and relay games. It was so much fun!! That ward is so good. Us missionaries obviously couldn't go anywhere near the water (which was fine, it wasn't that warm plus the foam that kept washing up was some frothy puke color) but it was still awesome! The waves were really pretty since it was so windy.

*We knocked some doors last night before going in. It was pouring rain and we were both soaked so no one let us in. We spoke to a man through his intercom and he said he was Christian already so he wasn't interested. We didn't have a BOM to leave, so we put a whole gospel principles book in his mailbox. Haha. We had it left over because we'd donated a few of them to the local library. We'll see what happens with that!

*The other day we were teaching Li Pei Qi, a 27 year old girl who is the daughter of a woman I met at a stoplight. Mid lesson she looked at me and said "I don't want to ruin your lesson, but you have a little spider on your head." Haha. Our member who came with us, Jessica, who is REALLY funny, grabbed a tissue and instead of flicking the spider off, squished it on my head! Haha!

*Early last week Sister Weng and I were going around in the evening and contacting people on the street. That specific day I just felt especially afraid of contacting and speaking in Chinese. In my mind I just prayed and said "Ugh, I just can't do this. My Chinese isn't good enough and it's just too hard." I then had a thought come strongly in my mind that said something to the effect of "Do you actually think I'd let you do My work alone?" That was a big moment for me. It really taught me something important about God. I have often had the thought that I am doing missionary work and Heavenly Father is looking down on my like this is some big test and if I don't do it just so, then I'll fail and He'll be disappointed or someone won't get baptized or something. But at that moment I just realized that Heavenly Father isn't scrutinizing our performance with a clipboard but that He's always in the action with us--as if He's contacting as well, if you will. And the reason He wants us to be obedient, to work hard, to talk to everyone, etc. isn't because "if we don't he'll be REALLY REALLY ANGRY!!" but because if we do those things, we'll be eligible for blessings according to the laws He's already established. So He's always encouraging us to do better and be better so He can bless us because that's all He really wants to do. Bless us and help us bless other people He loves. He's a lot like the sweet Chinese fathers I see around Taiwan, taking their little toddlers out on their little tricycles or with their little toys, holding their hand or pushing them along. Heavenly Father is always there helping us like we're just little kids. But sometimes, we're like the little kids who have delicious candy in a hard to open wrapper and we "just wanna do it ourselves" and we struggle and struggle and whine that we can't eat the candy. Then finally we say "fine, Dad, will you open it for me?" I'm still working on that part. Sometimes you walk into a lesson, then walk out and realize that you taught that whole thing depending totally on yourself. And you know that that's why the Spirit wasn't quite there, or your Chinese wasn't all that understandable. But then there are the occasional lessons where you feel like you can't do it, and pray your face off as you bike to the appointment and the lesson just works out because you gave it to the Lord.

*As far as learning Chinese goes, that ALSO has taught me a big lesson. 1) That despite the fact that I'm NOT good at studying, I really have learned alot. That alone has taught me another thing about Heavenly Father. That He sometimes blesses us even if we don't necessarily deserve it. He just does it because He loves us and cuts us some slack. 2) If you're grateful for what you HAVE learned, you'll see that you HAVE learned! 3) Sometimes it takes a while to learn something not because Heavenly Father is thinking "I just want to humble you for a little while so just figure it out by yourself, bye!" But sometimes it takes a while because again, He has to operate by His own laws and sometimes He just needs something to work with. If I pray every day that I will learn "a lot of new words today!" but then don't choose the words I want to learn and provide a way for it to happen, then Heavenly Father's "got nuttin' " to work with. He won't just magically plant 30 new chinese words in our memories every day. I'm sure if we were brain damaged and it was His will to do so He could. But really He just wants us to learn how to learn and He'll expedite the process. Anyway. It's been a good week. I think I've learned this lesson about God's merciful character dozens of times, and I will still keep learning it over and over again. I think it's the hardest thing for me to learn and have faith in so I'm really grateful that He's patient enough to keep teaching me.

I love you all!! The church is true!! Joseph Smith was a prophet!! The other day in a lesson we watched the "Restoration" DVD and I remembered my trip to Nauvoo with Mom, Dad and Michael and was really touched by the Spirit. I know Joseph Smith was a prophet and restored the full and living gospel of Jesus Christ to the earth. Love you all!!! I love every one of you!! MUAH!!!

Coley

Apostle Visits

Hey Family!!!!

I can't tell you how amazing it was to talk to you on Monday!!! I loved talking to all of you and hearing about all you're amazing things that are going on and your new goals and desires in life. I'm glad everything is going so well for everyone!! What a big blessing!!

Well, things have been really good! Last week we had a mission conference and Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve came! We all got to shake his hand. I told him I was from Sandy and he and his wife were excited because I guess they are too. I wish I brought some notes with me...but he basically did what Elder Holland did in the MTC and just answered missionary's weird questions. Haha. One of them was "what God's hand was in other religions?" He said a lot of stuff, but one thing in particular I liked was that he said that some people receive all sorts of blessings because as the scriptures say, there is a law in which all blessins are predicated ...or something like that. So it doesn't matter if people know they are keeping a commandment or not, they will still receive the blessing. That makes alot of sense to me. He and his wife then spoke in our Stake Conference. Their talks were about building faith and getting people to the temple. He said he was really sad that only 14% of the adults in the stake had been through the temple and said that people needed to do all they could to get there. Sister Christofferson's talk was amazing!! Maybe you've all heard this story before, but I hadn't. She talked about a bishop who always helped people who were stranded on the side of the road because he trully wanted to live the gospel. But one day he was robbed and thrown in his trunk and driven across town and left in a parking lot. By the time the police found him, he'd died. But he'd managed to open a little can of house paint and with his finger write "It's true. He lives." A lot of people were crying. So good.

We went on exchanges yesterday. I went with Sis Collyer from the MTC and we had a BLAST! We had some miracles happen. I felt like we should find an open place to eat dinner and someone would come up to us. We went to a park to eat, the lo! A woman came up to us and said, I want your Elders to visit my son in the hospital. AMazing!! Time is up!! Gotta Run! The picture is of Sis Collyer. If I had more time I would have added more pictures or a picture of me. :S

Love you all!!

Coley

Chi Bao le ma?

Hi Family!!

The first week of my 3rd transfer is over and all is swell in Zhubei! Hey, just for clarification, my mailing address never changes. I used to think that when someone was transfered you'd have to mail to a different address, but I guess it always goes to the mission office. I know Jessica had mentioned needing the new address, but it is the same! :)

This week has been SO GOOD!!!! I LOVE my companion, Sister Weng. She's so cute and so much fun. She loves Stitch from Lilo and Stitch, which is funny, because she kind of reminds me of/looks like Stitch. She's really random and scatter brained, very down to earth, and just funny. She's VERY clean, which is good for me. We spent 5 ours of our P-day scouring our apartment. It looks and smells so nice! Haha. She is a very picky eater, which is funny too. She thinks everything is so "exin". Funny, you'd think she's not from Taiwan. She really loves "cute" things. So she bought the little happy meal toy stuffed rabbit at McDonalds and sometimes buys little toys at 7-11. She's so funny. She's also very humble and spiritual. We have some good conversations. She has a lot of faith and is very honest about her feelings. I love it!

So our second day together we had to make our transfer baptismal goals to send to the Zone Leaders. We went over all our investigators and Sister Weng said, "Let's do 8." I thought that was a very high number, but I thought she knows what she's talking about, so I didn't worry about it. Well, as it turns out, last month our entire mission baptized 37 people and the goal for our little district of 4 companionships is 21! Haha. The Zone Leaders gave a lecture to the district leaders (I was there just because my companion is the coordinating sister in the zone) about making goals too high and stuff. It kind of was frustrating just because who says we can't achieve that goal? Seeing as we only got 1 baptism last transfer you may say it is highly improbable of finding and baptising 8 people. But seeing as Sister Weng and I already made the goal and can't change it, why squelch our faith? Lecture us AFTER we don't achieve it. So anyway, it's been a really good week. We've prayed ALOT and done alot of changing. I've realized that for too long I've allowed myself to be a back-seat companion because I was too afraid of speaking or I figured I would "ease into it". Sister Weng is an amazing contacter. She contacts everyone she sees, which is very exhillirating (still frightening). So I've tried to do alot of changing and am contacting ALOT more people. It feels SO much better. There's no guilt when you're talking with all you can. I still can do so much more. Our district leader, Elder Broadhead, is a very good guy and has alot of faith. Instead of passing on the message that our goals are too high, he's pumped up our district to try our best and have as much faith as we can to achieve the goal. He told me the other day that he had some inspiration that if I watch Sister Weng and do everything she does and "get in on the action" then we'll see miracles. I still have alot to do, but it's gotten better and actually, we ARE seeing miracles!! Our 8 goal had no foundation, but we so far have 3 people that are farely solid with 1 that is almost there. They are really neat people and have alot of faith. It's really neat because we know that really, these people coming to us out of no where has been nothing of our doing. Heavenly Father really blesses us if we believe He will and we do our own part. I know that's true. If we can be as motivated as we have been, things will be great. Here are a couple of the miracles (although small) that have happened in the past week:

1. We taught the cutest 50 year old women named Lily. We set a baptismal date and she accepted it very easily. Then we taught her the word of wisdom and she came to Church the next day very tired because she'd already gone cold turkey on coffee and tea. She's soooo full of faith and so good! She read half of 1 Nephi in a week!

2. A woman named Grace came to English class. Elder Sessions taught about baptism in his after-class "fenxiang" and she came up to him and said, "what does it take to be baptized?" We taught her for the first time yesterday and she set a baptismal date!

3. I contacted a woman at a stoplight but didn't have time to get her info before the light changed. On the other side of the intersection, SHE stopped ME to give me her information and set up an appointment to meet. So cool!!

4. We're just meeting alot of people. I really believe that when we make a decision that we will contact everyone we see, he will trust us to place prepared people in our path so that we will contact them. I fully believe that. I believe that's the case with everything. When I get home I want to try it. If we make a decision to look for an opportunity to serve someone, bare our testimony, whatever everyday, the Lord will put someone in our path who needs it most because he'll trust that you'll do it.

5. We tracted a door of a girl that had wanted to join the church a while ago but hadn't due to family opposition. She set up an appointment with us!

Anyway, despite the miracles and good things that are happening, we've had some let downs too. It's been good though. We had such a good feeling when we prayed for 8 people to receive the gospel that we know that every let down is just a trial of our faith so it doesn't hurt quite as much. For instance, we lost our cell phone...this hurts our work quite a bit...but it's gotta be for a reason, right? And no, I wasn't the one who lost it. Haha. But we also had a really awesome investigator, Liao Ming Hua tell us that her life had changed since she met us so she was thinking of setting a baptismal date sometime--but then her daughter miscarried and she was so sad that she "lost desire and that feeling to continue" so she cancelled her lessons with us!! Ku!!! (cry). So SAD!!

Anyway, it's been a really good week and alot of fun. Haha, an investigator came to church yesterday, sat down, and held my hand!! She held it for at LEAST 3 minutes. It was so awkward!! I didn't know what to do! Haha. Very interesting.

Anyway, life is great! Elder Christofferson is coming this weekend! So excited!

Love you all!!
Coley