Best and worst week ever!

Hello! 

I can't believe it's March already!!! Happy Birthday Mom and Sister Bailey! Love you both! I got my "death" letter. My return date is Aug. 2. That is so soon! I still have lots to do and learn! I went on exchanges with the temple sisters and on Friday, we had to go to Taipei to exchange back. I rode the train with Sister Barden and the train lines had problems mid way and it took 2.5 hours to get there. Then when we got to Taipei Main Station, we got lost trying to find the other sisters for 1 hour. I don't know taipei main station at all since i usually take the bus to taipei. Then when we took the train back, it was still having problems so it took forever. It was packed too and stuffy. I felt so claustrophobic. We ended up sitting on the ground eating our dinner since our feet hurt. But all this was hilarious and we just laugh about it now. Anways you can read below why this was the best and worst week. 

I really want to work on bringing the LA's back. We have SO many great LA's that have testimonies but are just lazy to come to church. They know it's true, they just need to be reminded of it! 

We have had 2 miracle member referrals from LA's! The first one is from our LA Jiang JM. She introduced us to her friend Luo JM and we shared with her the Restoration and invited her to be baptized. She set a date too! She has heard a lot about our church from her friend. She really wants to be baptized but she thinks her husband will fandui. We told her to keep praying and to have faith. She says that she has seen her prayers answered before in her life. She was able to come to church but just one hour of it. Our LA Jiang JM came with her too! The biggest worry with Luo JM is that we think she will follow the ways of Jiang JM, who thinks that she doesn't need to come to church because Sunday is a day to do what her husband wants to do. Luo JM has the same thoughts too. We are going to try to get other peike's and members to help us with our lessons so that she has other examples to follow. But I think through Luo JM, we will be able to bring Jiang JM back to church. 

Our other referral was from our LA Yao JM. She loves us sisters a lot and we made cookies at her house. She invited the person who just moved into her house and is renting a room to make cookies with us. He is 28 and his name is Kila. He is a software engineer. Yao JM's 2 sons are super active members. We all sat down and we shared a scripture with Kila and he agreed to come to church. After he agreed, I turned to Yao JM and asked if she would come to church and she said yes! She wasn't expecting us to start teaching Kila and I know Kila wasn't expecting it too. It just happened to be the perfect situation. We will get to know Kila better next time we officially meet with him and invite him to baptism. I'm really excited to teach him. It's the perfect missionary opportunity for Yao JM and her two sons. Also at church, Yao JM's son bore his testimony and I think it really touched her. I think it was good for Yao JM to see how awesome her sons are in the Gospel. What a great Sunday! 

Probably one of the hardest days of my mission was this last Saturday. We had a baptism all planned for and ready to go for our 9 year old investigator Chen (X). His dad is a member, but has mental disabilities and no one really takes care of little (X). The little boy passed his interview with flying colors and told us he wanted to get baptized. However, on Saturday, his cousins came over and all he wanted to do was play with them. When it came to 7PM, he still wasn't at the church. Our MM leader and a few members and a primary boy went to go pick him up but he still didn't want to come. He wanted to play with his friends. Our little primary boy told him that he really wanted to see him get baptized. I was so grateful for the members that went over there to help with this situation. The water was ready and people were waiting. I felt so embarrassed and so bad. We decided to cancel the baptism and the MM leader said that the ward needs to work with (X) more and that it wasn't our fault. When I heard the final news of it's canceled, me and my companion's hearts broke. I was so sad. I felt really bu hao yi si. We all prayed that he would show up, but in the end, the miracle we wanted didn't happen. Sister Bennion and I were both really sad, but I realized that Heavenly Father maybe wanted this to happen to open the eyes of the members and let them know that we missionaries can't do this alone. We NEED their help. Members weren't as willing to help with (X) before but after this happened, it seemed like they were all on the boat to get this boy baptized. I know Heavenly Father works in mysterious ways. I know He wants (X) to get baptized, but maybe he is testing our faith and our members' faith first. Anyways, I learned a lot from this experience. But I never want to have a failure baptism again! I know he will get baptized one day, maybe he isn't quite ready yet. 

However, this week was really filled with miracles, despite what happened Saturday night. We were able to find 6 new investigators and set 4 new baptism dates. I know that when we do the mission invite of inviting everyone to baptism on the street, you will see miracles. This week, we almost hit all the standards of excellence. I don't even know how we did it. I was pleasantly surprised and I know the Lord really helped us. I've been waiting for this day since I got to Xinzhu and it finally happened. I hope we can keep it up. I love being a missionary and Sister Bennion is awesome. I love her so much and I feel like we work really well together. 

we get to go to the jedi meeting in taipei again this week and I'll be going on exchanges in Toufen. Yippie! 

Okay Love you all! 

Sister Chao