Week 23

Hello, everyone! This week has been amazing. We've been able to meet with a lot of our investigators, and a lot of them are making really good progress. We've been working recently on Teaching Skills as a missionary. I feel that as I focus on our investigators, as well as my teaching skills, I feel the Spirit more strongly in our meetings. It lets me feel better that I know I am doing all I can as a missionary, and that it really is their own choice to accept or reject our message. This past week we've had a Specialized training was amazing. There were two main topics, one was to invite the Spirit into your lessons, and the other was How to Begin Teaching, as found in Preach My Gospel. These things have really helped me increase my faith in our living prophets. Preach My Gospel is an amazing tool, not only in missionary work but in our everyday, normal lives. We teach people every day, and we hope to affect them for good. And Preach My Gospel can help us better understand how to do that in a more loving and effective way. Oh yeah, I got to TRANSLATE for my first time! I translated half of the English talks that were given at our training meeting. It was quite hard, and I'm sorry to those Taiwanese who had to hear me talk, but I did my best. At times I could definitely feel the Spirit help me understand their meaning and be able to portray it in my own words. It helped me have more desire to work on my Chinese. I'm grateful to have an opportunity to share my talents with others. I'm really sad to hear about Frisky being put down, but I know it's okay. It just makes me even more grateful for a perfect plan of happiness :) I'm glad we have plenty of pictures to remember him by. This past week we had a Thanksgiving party with our zone. It was great to eat some American-style food! Including stuffing, chicken (they don't like turkey here, sadly), sweet potatoes, and all that jazz. There was a cool miracle this week. We had a lesson setup with 2 highschool kids. And we were going to meet at a 7-11. I saw them there, and a friend that I hadn't seen before. I said, "okay, let's go!", and I walked to where we were meeting. And they ran off right in front of me! Talk about Fang4 ge1zi. They did it right in our face! But I saw their friend stay and she got on her scooter by some other friends, and she pulled out a cigarette. I had a first prompting to talk to her. But I thought it would be weird, so I continued to walk, but then I thought again, that I had to. So I turned around and asked, "Do you want to learn about the Gospel of Jesus Christ?" And she said "Maybe when I have time" (which in Taiwan, usually means no) So I gave her a little tract and left to go sit down with Elder Su and our member friend. We talked for a few minutes, and as we were getting up to go, this girl walks up to us and said, "you can stay, I want to talk with you a little." She asked why I was willing to serve a mission, and a little about our beliefs. We found out her name is Sister Zhou1. She was curious why Christ was so great and his works, so she has been reading the bible recently. It was amazing to see this girl, who didn't look like she would be at all interested in hearing about Christ, and see that she had a deep desire to find the peace and joy that Christ could provide. We've had another lesson with her, which went really well. We talked about the Atonement. She seemed to really like it. Thank you for all of your emails! I know that even though we all hit rough times, every single one of our trials can be "Swallowed up in the joy of Christ." I know this gospel is true. Thank you for your support and love. I love you! -Elder Liu