Quick, Rainy Week!

The week started off with a super fun P-Day. We went on a hike to an orchard of oranges with one of Elder Kelemen's old convert families from a previous area. The views were gorgeous and the fresh oranges tasted heavenly. Later that night we had dinner at the Manzonie's house for New Year's Day.

We had a ton happen this week but I would just like to explain little about our two most progressing families right now. The first is Phines and her two daughters.  She is Filipino and married a Taiwanese man. She's been in Taiwan for several years and speaks alright Chinese but her children only speak Chinese. It makes teaching lessons a little tough because we teach the children in Chinese but her in English. She finished all the lessons this week and so far is good on everything. All she needs now is her husbands permission to be baptized but she's too afraid to ask for it. As soon as she asks, she and her two children will be able to be baptized together.

The second family is a South African dad (Shawn) and a Taiwanese mom (Tina). They have 2 very young boys, ages 1 and 4.  The mom doesn't have any Christian background but the dad grew up going to church and said back in South Africa he had been looking for the truth for a long time but never really found it so he stopped looking.  They also live with the dad's mom who is 89 years old and has some of the strongest faith I've ever seen. We asked her this week if she has faith in Jesus Christ and she responded with, "Child, I have TOO much faith in Jesus". It's hard to explain but she said it in the most humble way ever. It was awesome. She has a baptismal date right now but the mom and dad don't yet. They've come to church several times already and the little 4 year old always sits next to me and plays with me the whole time. Safe to say I've really been looking forward to sacrament meeting the past several weeks :).

I went on exchanges with Elder Budd this week, and he actually finishes his mission and goes home this next coming week. 

Miracle of the week: It was super rainy this week and so every night we came home drenched. It's honestly always super fun to come home like that. But on Saturday night it was the first time we had a night open to go finding without any lessons. We decided to go to this little town in the middle of no where in the northern rural part of our area. It was pouring rain so no one was really outside, so we decided to go knocking. Long story short we pretty much finished in one part of the houses and we were about to head to a different area to visit an LA, but then Elder Kelemen felt like we should do this one last line of a couple houses. The 2nd house we knocked on a mom opened the door and said, "What are you guys doing in the rain? Get in here, come eat dinner!". She invited us in and we found out that her husband and her have a 13 year old daughter who is amazing. They are super humble and love each other.  We shared about prayer that night and then they invited us back over for Sunday night. We shared about the Book of Mormon and it went really well. They asked us at the end when our church meets and they they'd come 'visit' us there. It is super rare to find a humble, loving family willing to listen.  We had a 40 minute bike ride home in the rain after that but it was the happiest bike ride of my life. Nothing like riding in the middle of nowhere in Taiwan in the pouring rain with no cares in the world! I love it.

We met with all of our other investigators this week as well but an especially cool person we found was Gong Sen who is from Mainland China and is going to college here. We met with him and he also came to church. He's super curious and I can't wait to keep meeting with him!

Elder Smith 施德臻長老