I am still really loving being a missionary

Hi Mom and Dad!

First, thanks for all the prayers! I think they help a lot. For example, it amazes me how close I can come to colliding with a bus or a scooter and not have it even phase me at all haha. I haven't been hit yet which is good. Sister Thomas said she got hit by a scooter on her first week on island, so I'm doing good so far haha.

Well as for me, this past week was so great! We had zone conference on Tuesday which was wonderful. It made me want to work harder and be as obedient as I can. We have been focusing a lot on less active recent converts, so we visit a lot of those. Hopefully we can get them to come back to church. Not a lot of people came to church this week because it was stake conference about an hour away from here. Nothing super exciting happened, except I did get sick. We ate lunch at this Thai food place and it gave me food poisoning. We were calling phones trying to get ahold of more less active from the ward list, and that's when I started throwing up. Luckily we were at home. I felt bad because we stayed in for the rest of the night, but I was throwing up all night. I slept it off though. I slept from like, 5 pm until we woke up the next day at 6:30....I just barely realized how long I slept...I must have been really sick! 

Oh! Except guess what! My worst nightmare came to life that night! I woke up at 1 am to go throw up, and as I was walking back to the bedroom you will never believe what I saw. A giant spider. When I say giant, I mean that it was bigger than my hand. You know how much I hate spiders right? I was freaking out! I didn't know what to do because Sister Thomas was sleeping. I was like, close to tears.  Finally I woke her up. We sat on the couch (at a very far distance from the spider) and stared at it for an hour trying to figure out what to do. Then it started moving!! AAAH! Then we started freaking out even more. It crawled behind a poster that is on the wall. By this point we just decided to leave it there. We closed all the doors to all the rooms and put clothes covering the cracks so that it couldn't get into another room. All night I had bad dreams that it had gotten into our room and was crawling up onto my face. The next morning we like, poked our heads out of the door to make sure it wasn't like, waiting for us outside the door haha. It was still behind the poster. This is where I consider the miracle to happen. The day before we were supposed to have some people come install an air conditioner in our room, but they had called to reschedule for the next day. So that morning when the air conditioning people came, we asked them if they would kill a spider for us. They thought we were just being silly girls you know, afraid to kill a spider. So we handed them a mop and pointed to where the spider was. They started hitting at it and then a few of the spiders legs crawled out from the top of the poster. They were like OH! I was hiding in the bedroom, but they put it into an envelope and then let it go outside (they didn't even kill it! It's still alive somewhere!) I think Heavenly Father planned it out perfect though because there is no way sister Thomas and I could have gotten rid of that thing, so He planned it to have the A.C. guys come after we found the spider. And we got an air conditioner in our room which is also a blessing! Heavenly Father loves us! But really, that spider still haunts me, every time I enter a new room I think I see it. I'll attach some pictures.

Anyway, I am still really loving being a missionary. My testimony is strengthened every day. I love the Book of Mormon! I was just reading about the two thousand stripling warriors. As I was reading about how when they were being chased by the Lamanites and Helaman asks them if they thought they should turn back and fight, and the two thousand warriors exercise their faith in the Lord. It's amazing how much faith they had! They didn't doubt even a little bit that the Lord would be with them and help them as they were doing what was right. And He was with them and protected them, not a single soul was killed.  And I like that they mentioned that they had this much faith because their mothers had taught them. As I was reading, I got a confirmation that these are real people. This isn't just an inspirational story written to help motivate us to do better. It actually happened. And then I try to put myself into their shoes. Would I have that much faith? To go fight against an army that I knew could easily kill me and all the people I love? I like to think I would, but that's really scary? But I'm really thankful that they did. There are so many amazing people in the Book of Mormon that did such amazing things and demonstrated such amazing faith. They have set such good examples of how I should be living my life. I don't have to face a large army ready to kill me, but we all have our own trials that can be equally as scary. I hope that I can have as much faith as they did, and as much as their mothers did so that when I have my own family I can teach them and raise kids who have as much faith as a stripling warrior. 

Well, I think that's about it. Oh, to answer your question about the JM. It's just a shorter way to write Jiemei which means sister. So Zhang JM is just Sister Zhang. You say the last name first and then sister. So yeah :)  Well, I love you both! Thank you for all you do for me! And thanks for the pictures! Cooper is so cute!  Have a great week! Love you! 

Great Week In Taiwan

Well, we had a great week here in Taiwan! I have a few funny stories. We were going to visit this family that doesn't come to church that often because the mom works on Sunday. They live at the top of this big hill. We were riding our bikes and Sister Thomas was going a little bit slow. I didn't want to lose my momentum and stay behind her, but I didn't know where the family lived. I decided that if I stopped I wouldn't be able to get going again, so I passed Sister Thomas and went all the way to the top of the hill. It was exhausting! Well, I turned around to see how far back Sister Thomas was, and she was pretty far down the hill...but she was stopped waving me to come back down. I had climbed the entire hill and I didn't even need to, I missed the turn! haha. It was pretty funny.

Michaela's Beautiful Bike

Another funny story, we were calling referrals on the phone and Sister Thomas was like, "Hi I'm Sister Thomas, I'm a missionary..." the person on the other end was like "I can't talk right now, my hands are wet" ........... hahah! We got a good laugh at that one. Last funny story. This one is more awkward though. We were at an investigators house and I said the prayer. After I said the prayer she said that I have a really pretty voice. Then she asked if I had a boyfriend. I said no. She then proceeded to turn around to her brother who was sitting just behind her in the next room. She said, this is my brother what do you think? He could be your boyfriend. Aaah. I then pretended I didn't understand anything she was saying (I didn't have to pretend too hard) and Sister Thomas had to explain that we are missionaries and aren't allowed to go on dates. Super awkward! And now every time we go over she mentions it! Note to self. If anyone asks if I have a boyfriend, just say yes. 

Sister Thomas & Sister Fuller

Easter In Taiwan

I hope you had a great Easter! We had an Easter activity with some recent converts and less active sisters. We painted Easter eggs and ate some food, it was fun! They had never painted eggs before so it was fun to see their reaction.

 Well, this last week has been crazy! We got up early on Tuesday morning and arrived here in Taiwan Wednesday night at about 10. We had a 2 hour bus ride from Taipei to Taichung, we started orientation right there on the bus. It was hard to stay awake, but then it was hard to stay awake for like the next 3 days haha.

Thursday we had more orientation and then on the way to dinner we practiced contacting people. It didn't go very well...haha. Probably because there was this HUGE group of strange white people dressed up in nice clothes and it was probably just intimidating. After dinner though we went to a night market and did Dan Jones. We all sang a song to gather a crowd and then we stood on a little stool holding up a Book of Mormon and yelled out our testimonies. It was scary and exciting and awesome all at the same time haha. Then we did some more contacting and gave away some Books of Mormon. It starting POURING rain while we were doing that which just added to the excitement. It was pretty great.

Friday morning we got up and went over to an Olympic training stadium. We ran a bunch of bleachers, my legs are still sore from that! It was actually pretty terrifying because they were pretty steep, the stairs were painted, and they were wet from the rain. There were also no railings at all so when I was going down I felt like I was in a life or death situation because I seem to have a pattern of falling flat on my face. Anyway, then we had some more training and stuff and then we got our new companions! My trainer is the lovely Sister Thomas. We are in the Xi Tun area here in Taichung. We cover two different wards, Donghai and Fengjia, so on Sunday we had to split up....scary for me! I also had to share my testimony in both of the wards, also scary. Our church building is on the 19th floor of a big tall building, and our apartment is just about a min away so that's nice.

Hmm...what else. Oh! I have a bike. We are going to get spray paint today and make it look really junky so no one will want to steal it! So between sore legs from the Olympic stadium and riding my bike around and also my feet are still swollen from the airplane (so annoying!) I feel like I'm walking around like an umpa lumpa. It's okay though, we don't really walk around that much, we are mostly on our bikes. 

I don't think I have anything else to say...everything is so great and I'm loving every second and I'm working hard and sleeping great because of it. If you want to pray that my feet will stop being swollen you could do that, maybe if we both do it they will go back to normal. It's super annoying. Oh, I also wanted to say that when I ride my bike I feel like I'm in that one movie that is about nothing except a guy riding his bike really fast around New York City. It's pretty intense. Oh, I also wanted to say that I don't think I've stopped being wet since I got here. Whether it is from random rain storms or just being sticky and sweaty from the humidity.  I might come home a prune. But it's okay, I love it here.