Crazy Times

Dear all,

First off, some shout outs. Props for the first letter I have received since being in Taiwan goes to......: Sister Mary Clarence! I mean Mary Seals haha. And first package I've gotten goes to Sister Michelle Van Leeuwen - she said she's my visiting teacher so she sent me it. Talk about going above and beyong your calling!

Thesis: Crazy things have happened this week.

Main Points: Almost got kissed by a black man at church. Talked about gangsters in Lesson 2 to describe the different kingdoms of glory. And offended a whole room of Taiwanese people (luckily it was only 3 people and it was a translation issue). But the work is going well, I love it here and have only had diarrhea a few times.

Conclusion: Missions are awesome.

So on the street my companion and I found this black man and he was so friendly and he was the one who said, "You're Christian, I'm Christian, let's meet up sometime and I'll buy you some beers!" And my native companion said, "Yes! Can we have your number?" Haha. Anyway, we gave his number to the elders and he came to church and he came in I was walking past him and he leaned in to kiss me, luckily I have been working out in workout time so I dodged and he was like, "Oh, you don't kiss in your church? We kiss in my church." Fun times.

We were meeting with a mom, 13 year old daughter and 6 year old son who occupied himself by taking funny pictures of me on his mom's phone. And we were teaching lesson two about the plan of salvation. So we talked about how when we die everyone will have a chance to hear this gospel and that we will be judged according to our works, desires, thoughts, and words, and go to 1 of three places (Kingdoms of Glory). We talked about how we can be with our family forever only if we go to the highest place. And she was like, what if my son is bad and goes to a different one, I can't be with him forever? And I likened it unto missionaries/church members and gangsters. I was like, gangsters live in one place, I live in another. I can go visit them (and we do) but I don't want to live there, and they can visit church, but they don't want to live with church members or come to church all the time. So we can visit our family members in different kingdoms/places but we want to live with other people like us. And she actually understood! Who knew that meeting with a gangster's wife would help me be inspired in a way to help an investigating family!!

Offending people: My companion, a recent convert who just moved here from Utah, an investigator and I were all in this room together. The investigator was a referral from a member. The investigator is friend's with the member's son. But my companion told me the member's son has a gan mao which I was taught in high school means cold. So her son had a cold and she went to the south part of the island to visit him. They are super rich so I was like, ok she can do that. So we said she couldn't come because she is taking care of her son. I said, "It's kind of ridiculous that she went all the way down there because he has a cold. But she loves him a lot. My mom didn't even let me stay home from school when I had a cold." Our investigator looked horrified. The peike/recent convert who was there was laughing so hard at me, and my comp looked really serious when she said, "He's been at the hospital for 5 days, it's serious." WHAT? WHO KNEW THAT IN CHINESE THEY HAVE THE SAME WORD FOR A COLD AND FOR SERIOUS ILLNESSES?? Whatever. After some mistranslations, my comp said he had blood poisoning then we found out she just meant he has an IV. Anyway, it worked out and the investigator agreed to meet with us again haha.

But the work is really going well here. We have a Less Active who we have been meeting with every week and I think I said last week that she came to church again. Well, she has gone to all 3 hours of church 3 weeks in a row and she came with us to visit 2 investigators (peiked) and shared an awesome testimony. And that night we went to the church for a lesson and she was one of 4 people who came to clean the church. The Bishop, another man with a calling, and a woman who just used the phone at the church to make calls, and the only person who cleaned was our less active!! I love her so much! Such a miracle!

We almost got fang'd by an investigator, she had to work at 10 but said she'd come to church before work. She called and said her daughter was sick and they had to go to the hospital but they'd be late. It was 9:58 and they weren't there so we left. She called again and was like, I'm here! We rode back to the church as quickly as possible and gave her a mini tour of the church, and even though she was late for work, she didn't fang us. So awesome!

The work is going well here and members are getting more on board with the work and helping us out and it's awesome.

I love you all and I pray for you everyday!

Love,

Sister Perkins (aka. Lizard)

ps. You should try doing only thankful prayers. It's hard at first to not ask for things, but you learn to ask for things in really tricky ways so you can still be grateful and it also really built my faith this past week as I did it. Because I had to pray in faith to be grateful for things that hadn't happened yet and know that if I was obedient, the Lord would provide.