Time is going fast, I hit my one year mark

Speaking of time going fast, I hit my 1 year mark this past week. Weird. Also, about 2 years ago I went to China....that feels like it was yesterday. Also weird because I feel like that was a completely different person. I feel like I have changed so much, and for that I am grateful. I'm thankful for the Atonement, that every day we are given the opportunity to change and become better than we were the day before. I don't like to think of where I would be without it. 

 

As for me, this week was amazing! We had 2 baptismal goals drop out (they didn't come to church, so they have to have new goals so they can make it to church at least 3 times) but we had 2 new goals drop in! So we are still at 5, but should soon be up to 7!!! They are all doing so great! We met with a new investigator on Tuesday? and gave her a goal for March 1. She was so excited! She has work on Sunday but said she would talk to her boss to see if she could come in late so she could make it to church! She is 23, super cute! The other one is an 18 year old student who wants to be a nurse. She works at a tea shop. She accepted to be baptized at our first meet, too and said she would share the plan of salvation and Book of Mormon with one of her friends and her sister! She is super cute! Heavenly Father really is blessing us so much, just putting prepared people right in our path. We have so many right now, its a challenge keeping track of them all! But Heavenly Father is helping us with that, too. It's really amazing to see it all just fall into place as we are working our very hardest. We also met with one of Wei JM (our AMAZING investigator who couldn't get baptized on Christmas) friends. About a month ago she gave us a list of 3 friends that we prayed for by name every single night. When we set up with her I was like, wait....why does this name sound so familiar. And it's because it was one of those friends who we prayed for every night! So cool. She is super cute! she didn't accept a baptismal goal yet, but she committed to read the Book of Mormon and pray, so basically she is awesome. I'm loving all the work that's going on here in Beitun. It's amazing how much this area has changed and progressed. 

 

I had a few more of those moments that you mentioned that you have, Dad, that you will remember from your mission for your whole life. It wasn't a huge moment, it was actually really small. We have this investigator, she is 69 (I think? really old), and I love her with me WHOLE HEART! She is so so cute!! I just love her! Anyway, we meet with her a lot because she is old and has nothing to do haha but every time after the lesson she walks us out to our bikes and then walks to us to the stop light until it turns green and we have to ride away. It was in the evening and it was a beautiful day, sun was setting, didn't need a jacket yet it wasn't hot, clear sky (no smog), and the light turned green. We had said goodbye and I love you like a bagillion times, but as we rode I way I looked back one last time to tell her I loved her. She was just standing there watching us off and waved goodbye. And right then I felt the spirit. And I said a prayer of gratitude for Heavenly Father allowing me to come to this wonderful place. I don't know what I did to be so blessed, I don't feel like I deserve it, but I am so so thankful.

 

Also, this week is Chinese New Year! Didn't quite keep up on your new years resolutions? No worries, this year you have two new years! Yeah! It's actually pretty cool, a less active told us the story behind new years. So anciently in China, there was this large animal called "nian" (nee-en) and every year at a certain time he would come and eat all the people. The people discovered that if they put red stuff around their front door, the big animal wouldn't eat them. So they would. And now everyone has these red posters that they put up around their door that says, everyone, congratulations! Congratulations you didn't get eaten! haha. So that's why its called guo nian. Guo is like, pass, to pass through, and nian is the name of the animal. Pass through the animal. haha. When she told us I was like hmmmm.....wait a second! That sounds like it's from the Old testament! Moses sound familiar to anyone? Yeah, Christianity has definitely been in China before. Anyway, Chinese New Year is actually a really scary time to be a missionary. Our ward has created a sign up list on when to feed the missionaries. As a result, every single lunch and dinner for every day this week is going to be spent at a members house. President Blickenstaff has given us permission for us to be at each appointment for 2 hours to show politeness. Crazy. That's how big of a deal Chinese New Year is. On top of the 15 pounds I've gained in the past year of being a missionary, I'm about to gain another 15 in just one week. AAAAH! But! When in Rome do as the Romans do. I only get to experience one Chinese New Year, so I'm going to simply enjoy it. Also, I'm considering waking up at 6 am to get some extra exercise. haha.

Week Schedule-Booked

Anyways, thanks for all your support and prayers, mom. I really do see that they are helping. My language is getting better and better (even though I'm still pretty hai hao) and we are seeing so many miracles every single day. I'm so thankful for this time that I have to give all that I have and all that I am to the Lord. I wouldn't trade the experiences I'm having and the people that I am meeting and helping come unto Christ for anything in the world. I absolutely LOVE Taiwan and I LOVE the people here and I LOVE the gospel! So much love going on. haha.

 

Have a great week! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

Sister Fuller

Miracles Every Day

HEY MOM! 

Thanks for the email. I love getting to hear from you every week :) 

The  weather this week has been really great! It's been perfect weather, not hot not cold. Today its a bit chilly but not too bad. Yesterday we were eating dinner and a cute 13 year old member came over and ate with us, she asked us if we had heard how cold it was in America. She said there was a huge snow storm in California? I don't know, all I can say is that I'm thankful that Heavenly Father sent me to an Island because I haaate being cold haha. 

As for missionary work here in 北屯, things are going SO GREAT! Oh my goodness, Sister Henderson and I are seeing soooo many miracles. We are working our little hearts out and it's amazing the blessings we are seeing. We are consistently raising and hitting all of our goals, its pretty fun. We had 3 investigators at church yesterday, they were all able to come the entire 3 hours! So awesome! We are also finding a TON of people who are prepared to hear the gospel. Heavenly Father is putting them in our path, it's pretty cool to see. I think last Tuesday is the day that sticks out the most. 

(I am going to assume this is Sister Henderson.  Michaela uploaded some pics in dropbox, but there were no explanations with them.)

Ok, so first we had a really awesome zone training meeting at our chapel. Our zone leaders are awesome, they talked about being completely consecrated and sacrificing in order to better help the people here. They also talked about how Satan is working really hard on us and trying to discourage us to not want to talk to as many people as we can. We did this little activity where we were in groups of 3, 1 person was the missionary, 1 the "investigator" (random person on the street) and 1 person was Satan. Satan had to be right there in the missionaries ear trying to distract the missionary, and the missionary had to talk to the "investigator" and invite her to meet with them or come to church or something. It was hard! haha. It was a really great activity. It was really motivating, and right after the meeting we went out and we had like, 3 or 4 people give us their phone number saying they are willing to meet and learn more! 

We then went over to a less active's house, she is really old and doesn't say much, but she likes it when we come over and sing to her. That day she wouldn't let us in, which was really sad. So then we had to make a choice; we had an appointment with an investigator, but it was pretty far away and her phone had been off for several days, so we hadn't been in touch with her. After her appointment we had another appointment with someone who lived nearby to the less active's house that we were currently at. So we had to decide if we should still ride our bikes all the way to the appointment that probably wouldn't show up or not just so we could turn around and ride our bikes back. We decided that we would go anyway. Our investigator didn't show up, but as we were sitting waiting at the place we had planned to meet, we met a wonderful sister who's dad is Christian and wants to learn! We taught her about the atonement and are going to meet with her again this week. 

After we met her we had to make another similar decision about whether or not we should ride our bikes back out to where we were. I called the girl we were supposed to meet and turns out the girl had given us the wrong number. So we were a little iffy on if she would actually show up to the place we had planned to meet. We went anyway, and we couldn't find the place we needed to be. I think we even accidentally went out of our area. SIDE NOTE: while we were looking at the map to see if we were indeed out of our area, we ran into two different people. person number 1. A new potential investigator! She is already Christian and wants to learn more about our church :) Person number 2. the relief society from my first area, Yeh JM! She remembered me haha! It was really crazy seeing her because it feels like it was ages ago and also when I was there I couldn't speak Chinese, the other night I was actually able to have a conversation with her! haha! Anyway, we didn't end up finding the place (I think it was in Xi Tun, my first area!), but we did also run into ANOTHER 18 year old girl who wants to meet with us. She also has a little sister who just happened to go to UTAH this past summer. WHAT?! So yeah, the little sister has been to church before and sees us riding our bikes around all the time and every time she sees us secretly hopes we will stop to talk to her. Sadly we never did. BUT. We talked to her sister! And we met with them later in the week and they are AWESOME! We taught them to pray and a little bit about the word of wisdom. The older sister said there is no way she can stop drinking coffee. We promised her some blessings and as we were leaving she told me she was going to try and stop drinking it. YEAH! I love them already, they're adorable. 

I hope you know this is all happening just on Tuesday. You'd think that it would stop there, right? That's already a ton of miracles. BUT IT DOESN'T. At about 8:35 pm sister Blickenstaff called and wanted me to go check my blood pressure, she said we could just go to a 7/11 and you can usually check it there. So we were riding our bikes and I was going to go to a bigger 7/11 by our house, but right as I was about to turn left to go there I had a feeling I needed to turn right and go to a different one. It's much smaller, and I almost didn't listen to the prompting because I knew I wouldn't be able to do it there. But I turned right anyway. I was right, they didn't have one. So they told me to go across the street to a little clinic. So we did. They wouldn't help me. They told me to go across the street to a different clinic. So I did. This doctor took me right back (my blood pressure is fine, by the way), but as we were leaving she asked, so are you from Utah? I was like, Yeah....how did you know? She said, You're from the church, right? Um...yeah! She then went on to tell us how her family lives in Canada and they are members of our church! She also told us how she loves to pray and read the Book of Mormon, she gets a special power when she does. She also gave us her phone number and told us to come back over and we could read the Book of Mormon together. Cool, right!? 

That was all just in one day! Every day we are seeing so many miracles! Every day I am more and more convinced that this is God's work. I am trying my hardest to be worthy of the blessings and miracles we are seeing. I am trying to have more faith and humility because it is when I doubt and when I am prideful that I get in the way of what God has planned. I'm so thankful that He has trusted me to come serve Him and His children. I love them so so much and I feel like I'm the luckiest person on the planet to be here right now.

Well, that's about it ba. I hope your week goes absolutely WONDERFUL.  I love you both SO MUCH! Thanks for being the best parents in the world! 

我愛你們！！

Sister Fuller

Here's a belated picture from December.  This is her Christmas package strewn out all around her.