Work in Xizhi

It has been good here. We have been visiting a lot of inactive members and getting to know the church leaders here. We have a few new investigators that we are teaching. Most of the time I can understand what people are saying, but sometimes we run into someone where I cannot understand their speaking at all. For example, we visited an inactive sister (about 50 yrs old) and her vocabulary was very complicated and it was hard to understand her. But I am learning slowly and the Chinese is coming :)

Everything is great here in Xizhi, just need to establish a foundation and we are going to be changing lives! Love you all!

Love, Zhang Jie Mei

1 Ne 22:25-26
Good scrip

Quite the unusual start

I must say that I have quite the unusual start to missionary work. Where do I begin. After the flight (to LA and then Osaka and then Taipei) we were met by Pres. Nielson, his wife, the assistants and the bendiren missionaries from other parts of Taiwan. I was the only sister from Provo MTC, but there were 4 Taiwanese sisters that I roomed with and spent the next couple of days with. We trained at the mission home and spent some time with the pres. and his wife.

One of the mornings we went to the Grand Hotel in Taipei to a place where Elder Mark E. Peterson dedicated the church in 1959. It was in a more secluded place with lots of trees... and well, we all know the mosquitoes feichang ai wode xie... and because they love my blood so much they bit through my nylons. Lets say that while we were supposed to be saying our own "dedicatory prayer" that the only thing I could prayer for was for the mosquitoes to stop biting me. I took some fun pictures of my bites :)

Well, we met our trainers and my trainer is a fellow ABC from Georgia, CA who also went to BYU. Sister Teh has been here for over a year and she is great! Its going to be fun working with her. And her most recent companion was Sister Lai, and the 3 of us have been living together for the past few days in an area called Bade. Tim, Sis Lai worked at Teriyaki Stix at BYU, so she knows us from my freshman year, haha.

Sister Teh and I

So the reason why I say that my first few days have been unusual is because there was a typhoon that came through that wrought all havoc. We couldn't leave the apartment and we were stranded inside and I thought we were going to go crazy. We couldn't even go to church and 2 Elders had to help us with the sacrament on our ironing board. But, I guess it was HEavenly Father's way of telling me that I need to be more excited and have more desire to get out and get tired. And well, I am excited to be able to walk around!

The first night out, before the typhoon however we bought a bike for me and rode to an appointment at the chapel, which was about a 20 min ride. Wow, I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life. It was pouring rain, and it was night time, and tons of cars and scooters all around us... But I toughened up and made it, soaking wet, to the appointment.

So this morning we banjia-ed and moved from Bade to Xizhi and we are in the process of moving into our new apartment, which is very nice :). I've had my first taste of real Taiwanese food and I know I am going to enjoy it very much.
So even though I've been eaten by mosquitoes and have been forced to stay inside for days (only to eat ramen noodles and toast... gross) I know that this is what I need to be doing right now and that this area, Xizhi- (did I mention that we are whitewashing the area? 2 missionaries that both don't know the area and don't know the members, lucky us) has elect people and that we need to find them! I know this gospel is true and that it truly can bring happiness into our lives.

Heading for Taiwan...closer than ever!

Guess what? I am leaving tomorrow morning, 9/9/08! I'm leaving for Taiwan, woohoo! I am so very excited and I really want to just get out there and start the work. The time in the MTC has been great, but the time has come. We meet at 5am, so its going to be a rough travel day. But we'll see how many people on the plane commit to baptism...

This gospel is true! This gospel is so full of hope!! Moroni 7:41- we have hope through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. My testimony has already been strengthened so much with my time in the MTC. I know that with the Lord's help that I can become an effective tool in his hands.

Miracles through the Spirit

Our district goes to the TRC every Saturday morning to teach volunteers the lessons in Chinese. These volunteers are most of the time members and want to help. Well, my teach Brother Hodges found some Taiwanese people that weren't members and played basketball with a couple teenage boys with a bunch of other Chinese MTC teachers. Well, Brother Hodges brought these teenagers to the TRC on Saturday.

When we found out we were going to teach these real investigators our companionship got really excited and nervous and must have said about 3 prayers. Well, we taught a 35 minute lesson and it went great! We taught about how God is our loving Heavenly Father and how we can pray to him. He is the creator (Mosiah 4:9) and loves his children. We taught them about receiving answers and feeling the Holy Ghost. Well, there was an aunt and two cousins from Taiwan. The 2 boys were both 17, Xu dixiong and Lin dixiong. The spirit was soo strong as we bore testimony of our loving Heavenly Father. We helped him recognize what he was feeling. He felt nervous at the beginning but then felt comfortable and we told him that this was the Spirit.

Okay, well, thats not even the best part. We heard later that Lin dixiong was taught by 2 more Elders in our zone. They taught him about prophets and Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. The missionaries asked him what he knew about prophets and he told him that he thought they were men called of God that received revelation to teach the Church because God couldn't come down to earth. Amazed at his knowledge, the missionaries asked who had taught him and he said that "The sisters taught me this morning." What!?! We didn't even say the work prophets and we didn't even mention about what a prophet is. The Spirit was teaching him!

Wow, what a wonderful opportunity to be an instrument in the Lord's hands. The Spirit is the real teacher, the missionaries are just the ones trying to bring that Spirit. Its so awesome! Missionary work is great!!

Thank you for all the support. Love you all!

Identity theft

Things have been going good in here, same old thing. There was one day that I accidently took the wrong name tag from the desk in the morning, and it wasn't until about 3 hours later that we noticed that I was Sister Son for the day. I happened to see Tim's old roommate, Ryan Beauchamp (something like that) in the MTC cafeteria, and he said "Hi Sister Chang!" but then looked at my name tag and got very confused. It was very funny, but don't worry, I let him know that I was really Sister Chang.

New missionaries came in, 24 of them! 4 of them are sisters. Its exciting to see so much enthusiasm come in.

ps. Funny story about Chinese that I'm not sure if I've told you yet. We were teaching a lesson a couple weeks ago in Chinese with another companionship. I asked the "investigator" what kind of work he did, he said he was a butcher and I asked him what type of meat was his favorite. I told him that "wo hen xihuan chi nu rou" instead of "niu rou" which translates to " i really like to eat women flesh" instead of beef. Our teacher found it very funny.

Savor each moment

Anyways, just wanted to share some cool quotes from this week. Our teacher, Brothers Hodges read us this cool poem about the importance of time. I will paraphrase:

Want to know the value of an hour? Ask a woman in labor.
Want to know the value of 30 minutes? Ask a friend who has been waiting for you.
Want to know the value of a minute? Ask someone who just missed the train.
Want to know the value of a second? Ask someone who just avoided a car accident.
Want to know the value of a milisecond? Ask someone who received a silver medal in an Olympic spring competition.
Yesterday is history,
Tomorrow is a mystery,
today is a gift, that's why they call it the present.

So savor each moment of the day and make everything count! Don't forget to read your scriptures. There are so many treasures found in the Book of Mormon its amazing. My testimony has been growing and growing.

Alma 26:12-this is the Lord's work! He is the gift giver and we are the postmen.
Have a great week!

100% SYL

Anyways, this week has been good. Starting with this week, we are 100% SYL (speak your language) which means we are only supposed to speak English when we are talking with our Branch President, or having companion study, or a gospel discussion. Our teacher, Brother Hodges, or He Laoshi, said that we should be prepared to get very frustrated because he will not be speaking English anymore! The Elders in my district are still struggling with the language but they are making great progress.

My companions are doing great. It is a little different working in a three-some and teaching gets a little tough, but we are working on it. Our teachers say it is a blessing in a way because it will be easier to teach with members when we are out in the field. But we are trying to learn how to teach off of each other without reteaching. And right now they are emphasizing teaching the investigator, not the lessons. So that has been a big part of our learning, learning how to find the needs of the investigator and teaching according to what we find out instead of a rote presentation. It involves getting comfortable with asking some pretty straightforward questions, but I'm sure its going to help so much in Taiwan.

Anyways, we are having a lot of fun in the district. There are 5( one 3 some companionship) Elders and 3 Sisters. Yesterday Sister Son said something really funny... she was eating her first York peppermint patty ever, and she said, "It's like eating chocolate... and toothpaste." It was really funny in her Korean accent, but she likes toothpaste so she loved the candy! Haha.

Another funny story. We were playing a game where we were in partners and one person had to describe a word in chinese without saying the word... to the partner who had to guess the word. Elder Day, from St. George was describing binqilin (icecream) and he explained it like, "Ruguo ni chi kuai, ni tou..leng!" So in other words, if you eat fast, your head gets cold. We all thought it was really funny. And whenever our team would get a point, we say "cheng gong!" meaning, "success!"

Have a great week everyone!
Omni 1:26
3 Nephi 17- I love this chapter