Week 68: Chinese New Year STRIKES!

大家好！新年快樂！恭喜發財！

HAPPY CHINESE YEAR!!!!

This week....was a pretty interesting one. 

Tuesday-Wednesday, we went on exchanges with the Xindian sisters in their area, and it was fun. I was with my previous companion Sister Wang's little Sister, Sister Wang who is here visa waiting :D FUN!!!! 

Well I must have picked up a bug in XinDian because Thursday I spend all day laying in bed, and every 30 minutes running to the bathroom to throw up. I probably lost a lot of weight haha.  It was super unfortunate because we had a lot of lessons with all our favorite investigators!

Friday we had a worldwide mission broadcast and some things changed. We now only have 4 Key Indicators, where before we had 8? And our schedule also changed. We plan in the morning and have p-study, and then comp and lang study in the afternoon, and we are free to choose when. We also only get 30 min for lunch. I'll send you a picture. ALSO p-day is now basically all day. We get up, get ready (don't exercise unless you want to) and plan, and 30 min comp study and then out the door by 8:30. WHAT?  Our p-day ends at 6:30! Crazy! They changed the schedule to allow us to have more flexibility, and adjust easier to life after the mission where we have to choose when to study. Interesting. We'll see. 

Saturday, President told us to deep clean apartments. Because of Chinese New year, it wasn't effective to be out on the streets. So we spent ALL DAY cleaning. 

Then Sunday, we had 4 people come to church! :D And then Sister Yee was sick....with what I had. So we spent all of Sunday inside too....it was rough haha. 

Then Monday (today) .... so I really don't have much to tell you. 

I can tell you the few things I learned this week. 1. I LOVE CLEAN THINGS. 2. I am going to make sure I clean a little bit all the time so that my house never gets disgusting. 

Another thing I've learned is that I don't love food as much as I thought. WE HAVE BEEN FED SOOOOOO MUCH RECENTLY. And the thing is I haven't had much of an appetite for it! it's a little miserable but we're working through it. The members have been sooo good to us and we've had lunch and dinner fed to us for a while. I LOVE TAIWAN :D. I love this ward.... I love being a missionary. 

I've really been praying to know what I can do to give my all and I've been learning a lot about myself. This transfer is almost over....time goes so so fast. I'm definitely leaving YongHe next week...which is sad. But inevitable. It's kinda hard thinking about going to my "dying" area. We'll see! I'm excited to see what God has in store. 

Dai JM and Liao JM are hopefully getting baptized on the 11th of Feb!! TWO WEEKS!! 

Nancy, who we thought was going to be baptized next week isn't doing so well. And it's really sad. I'm not sure how to help her. And we're not sure if we're going to keep meeting with her. :(

That's basically it. I also learned this week a lot about grace and the Atonement. There's a great article in this months Liahona and it talks about being imperfect. I know that we are all imperfect. It's something I really struggled with at the beginning of my mission. I was always beating myself up about not being better. About not being the person I wanted to be. For making mistakes. And I've learned this week that that is exactly why we have Jesus Christ. Because justice demands perfection or punishment. And Christ paid the price. He took the punishment. And through Him, we can use His power, and His help to become better. To overcome our weaknesses. The reason we even have weaknesses is so that we can learn and grow. And when we expect to be perfect, when we get mad at ourselves, it's denying the Atonement of Christ, and denying our life purpose. It's denying the gift of repentance. I know that no matter who we are, what we have or haven't done. If we want to be better, Christ can help us. He knows our life, and He knows how to comfort us. We don't have to be perfect. God never expected us to be perfect. He just expects us to be good and getting better. I love you all!!!! 

新年快樂！！！！

Love,

Sister Roberts

羅姐妹

Bowling with Serene

Elders came to give me a blessing

dinner at Liu JM's

Lunch at Zhang JM's

the Chop-sticker!

Sister Yee the cleaning machine

Li family dinner

a whole wall of Ramen (Pao mian)!!

Lunch today with Chen JT (they have a daughter on a mission in Oakland CA) And I got to play guitar for the first time in FOREVER!

Week 67: Specific Goals & Prayers Bring Specific Miracles

Hi ya'll :) 

This week I gained a strong testimony about prayer and miracles. This week Sister Yee and I wanted to focus on getting a NI from member referral, and we made some goals and plans. One being we were going to try to pray in every single prayer, for a miracle. Well, we did temple tours this week. And do you want to know what happened? Ok I'll tell you, first of all, at temple tours, we try to ask for referral, for any area. Well we don't always get them. But this last week, we had three members who gave us referrals. BUT the miraculous part was that they were for our area!!!!! Then we had a member activity on Sunday and we got 4 member referrals. THEN Sunday that night we had a member call us and said her friend wanted to meet with missionaries. WHAT WHAT WHAT???? HOW???? That's my question of my last two transfers. This area is on fire, and we see so many miracles. HOW AND WHY? Why is it that we are seeing so many miracles??? I DON"T KNOW. I'm just soooo grateful. We are really excited this next week to contact them and try to set up with them :) YAY

Well these next couple of weeks will be a little slower. Chinese New Year starts this week. So everyone is leaving. Darn it :) We still have some lessons. It'll be a lot of dinner with members and a lot of finding on the streets that no one is going to be out on... haha. President has set apart a day where we all are going to deep clean apartments. Like 5-6 hours worth!!!! Crazy. Too bad we have a huge apartment!!! :D 

Liao JM is our most progressing investigator. She came and did a temple tour with us and she basically taught us the first lesson. It's incredible how much she knows and understands. She even brought her sister to one of her lessons. :D WHAT. AND she said she loves reading scriptures because she says it's a time with just her and the scriptures, and God. That there's no other worries. WHAT???? AND we never told her to wear a skirt to church (because we forgot) but last week she wore one. THEN this week, she didn't wear glasses, and wore makeup!!! WHAT??? She literally is the most prepared person I've ever met! I literally can't explain how much I love her and how proud I am of her. 

At temple tours we also met this incredible person walking back from dinner. I noticed she was looking at the temple and taking a picture and I asked if she wanted to do a temple tour. She said yes. So we went in, sat down and prayed for her. And she cried. We talked some more and just had a great tour. She's incredible. My whole point with this is I don't understand why God has been putting these incredible people in my life. These miracles....  I just don't know. 

Dai JM is also doing incredible. Like there's nothing to say about her. We asked her why she comes and she just kept saying "Just because I want to. I really want to. I want to" And I just looked at her and was like "Well....ok. You should just be baptized now haha" She's amazing. We asked her to come a little early to church so that she could be more spiritually prepared for church and we said like 10-15 min, and she came 20. And she comes 10 min early to our lessons so that she can learn more....what????? I love her!!!!!!!

Nancy was supposed to get baptized in one of the next coming weeks but we just found out that she doesn't really believe in God. We shared 10 commandments with her and she has a problem with number 1. Thou shalt not have any other Gods before me. She said that God is really prideful because He doesn't want anything above Him...and just things like that. Her prayers haven't been specific and she just said that she will believe in God if He helps her change her work. SO we have some work to do. But I don't understand why she's been coming to church and been doing everything she's supposed to if she doesn't believe... oh well. 

Our other investigators are doing well. We've found some more great people and I just don't know why we have been so blessed.... like I really don't understand but I'm so grateful. 

This next week is a worldwide missionary broadcast. The only thing anyone knows about it is that there's going to be some big changes. I've heard that there's going to be a schedule change. Like 1 hour personal study, 30 min comp, 30 min language. And 30 min for lunch.....I'm not sure.... Also heard there were going to be some changes to p-day. But really it's all just rumors. The schedule change I heard is legit because one of the Sister missionaries here has a friend who their mission changed the schedule. I think probably cause they were testing it. There's been a push for hastening the work. URGENCY. and I think it'll take a lot of humbling for something like this to happen. I just worry if this happens that the poor missionaries who don't have anyone to teach and who are on the streets all day anyway, are now going to have more time on the streets, and just get more discouraged. I also worry that when I leave Yong He this next transfer, that I'll go to an area that's struggling and that we will be finding a lot. I only worry cause my body hurts a lot. Anyway. Sorry about that rant about something that I don't know if it is actually happening or not but we will see. 

I know that this church is true. I also have been learning a lot more about the Atonement of Christ. I've been really heavy hearted recently thinking about coming home and just dealing with life, and some other things, but I've slowly been learning the power of the Atonement. Christ knows. He knows how you and I feel. He knows how much something hurts, and He knows how to fix it. All we have to do is give ourselves to Him. To have faith, and to do our best to follow Him. To pray and ask for His help. I know that He lives. I know that He has the power to take away the pain, the guilt, the sorrow. The heartache. I know because I've felt it. I love Him, and I love this work. This is the work of God. The work of the eternities, and I'm so grateful to play a part of it. 

Until next week. 

Love,

Sister Roberts

Week 66: A Short Week

大家好！！

Well considering I just e-mailed on Wednesday, there's not too much to say. 

Dai JM is incredible. She's probably the best part of the week. We had two exchanges this week. Thursday to Friday, then Friday after WPS to Saturday. Crazy. Well we sit down in a lesson with Dai JM and she pulls out her BOM. But....what does it have on it? It has hand written tabs that she made herself because she didn't like always having to flip to find a certain book. And she also had a plastic cover on it to protect it. AND she had scriptures marked and little notes next to the side. She said when she doesn't understand a word, she goes to the back to look it up. I don't know how she knew how to do that but it's fantastic!!!! She's incredible!!! AND this is the best part. We made a baptismal calendar with her which is a way to see how far away their baptism is and also has marks to check off if you prayed and read scriptures. Well every single day was marked and she just expressed how she really really wants to make this goal. We told her that in order to make this goal, she had to come to church in our ward (she's been coming for two weeks to the morning church before she goes to church) and what did she say? She's like "Oh that's kinda hard....." and she sat there for a second. She's in the restaurant industry and Sunday afternoon is the busiest time (we have afternoon church) and she's like "I'll just move to Zhong he" And she's legit. She introduced herself to someone in the hall, and they asked where she lived and she said "Yong he but next week i'm going to live over there!" And she pointed to the direction of ZhongHe. Hahahahaha crazy right???? So so crazy. I love her!! Oh and one more thing, I was extending an invite, I said "Are you willing to....." And then I extended another invite "Are you willing to .... " And in the middle of my sentence she says "Yuan Yi" Which means yes, willing. She's like "I'm willing to do whatever you say" :D :D :D :D :D WHAT??? haha I'm a little worried though! It's too perfect. But I love that a sister that we went on exchanges this week said "If she keeps reading the BOM she won't have any problems". :) 

Liao JM is also doing so so well!!!! She came to church and is just basically a member. She just always has a smile on her face and always giggles. She's so precious!!!!!!! I literally don't know what else to say. She's doing great!!!

Grace is also doing well. We are still working on helping her to change some weird a little bit skewed views she has on Christianity but it's all coming together :) She's changing. 

We're working on helping Nancy to be baptized in January. And she's almost there! I'm so excited for her! She just has to decide to do it a week earlier. Her date is for the 4th of Feb. We're sharing commandments with her and she's already been taught WOW and LOC. :) Yay. No problems. I love her!

As for the rest of my life, everything has been good. This transfer has gone super slowly for which I am grateful. I love Sister Yee. We go to bed every night laughing! Seriously, I am so so grateful for her. We have so much fun. I'm just nervous for next transfer.... it can only go downhill right? aah...

My heart has been a little heavy but I'm just trying to stay focused. I try not to think about going home, and really I think God has has helped me not think about it too much, etc. It just doesn't feel real. 

I love being a missionary. I love being on the Lord's errand. Not having to worry about the little things. Being completely dedicated to the Lord. It just couldn't get any better. I know this church is true. It has to be. If it wasn't, I wouldn't feel so much peace and joy and comfort. And that's exactly why I'm here. TO help other to have the same joy, peace, and comfort that I feel. This gospel has brought my life inexpressible joy and I can't explain how grateful I am. Christ lives. He is real. He is our Savior and He loves us. If we turn to Him, He can take away our sorrows, our pains, our sadness. These feelings will be replaced with joy and peace. I know because I've experienced it. He lives. And that's my testimony. 

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week! 我愛你們，希望你們有一個美好的禮拜！

Love,

Sister Roberts

羅姐妹

Sister Yee and me enjoying yummy Taiwan desserts

Exchanges

Exchanges

Week 65 - 4/6 Exchanges done :-)

I love exchanges. 

This week we went on 4 out of the 6 exchanges, and they were so so fun!!!!! I learned a lot and we saw sooo many miracles!!!! This work is real that's all I have to say :) I think the biggest thing I learned was that I can do missionary work , t hat I can find and I can work hard, and that I can be led by the Spirit. It's not that I learned these things but it's more like I gained confidence in these things. And I'm really grateful. I was/am also exhausted from these exchanges. But it's good. 

Our area is absolutely on fire. We have 9 baptismal dates this week and they are all (maybe except for 1) soooo prepared. And hopefully will be baptized these next coming weeks!!!! One is Nancy. Sister Yee had a great lesson with her this week. The members in the lesson really really helped her and she committed to a date and is going to be baptized hopefully at the end of the month!!!

Liao JM is incredible. I met her on exchanges and I literally just can't explain how golden she is. She reads everyday, bears her testimony to us about how we are all God's children, is repenting, comes to church loves church, she cries because she's gan dong (touched) Etc. She's absolutely incredible and her husband supports her! Best part yet! :D haha . We've invited him to come listen but she's not really sure and she wants to be baptized first. 

Dai Jm is an investigator that the elders met on the street who came to church last week. Last week was our first time meeting with her and every time we meet with her she's just like " i want to be baptized, I've been waiting my whole life to find a church and I'm just so excited" She's incredible. She's been praying that she can find a new work so that she can come to church on Sunday!!! :D Dang. 

Yang Jm has been a little bit harder. She's the one who smokes and drinks a lot. Well I was starting to give up on her a little but I really felt like we needed to bring a member to her lessons. We have been having a hard time bringing a member because she doesn't live in our ward so we don't know the members in her ward (because we cover three wards) anyway. She actually came to church on Sunday!!! Which she hadn't before!!! And it was so exciting. We had 6 investigators at church!!!! Blessings! Well Yang JM she met with us yesterday and she said that she didn't like church because of something that someone said about tithing. And she said she was about to give up. But the lesson we had, we found a member to come with us and the member literally saved her. She bore a powerful testimony of the Plan of salvation and about her family in the spirit world etc and it made both Yang Jm and the member cry. Because they have similar experiences. I just am sooooo grateful that we were able to find the right member to come with us. And I'm so grateful Yang JM is still willing to meet with us. She told us that she had been reading everyday. I'm just so proud of her. 

Oh my word I had the scariest moment of my life this last week. So the other day we were knocking and I randomly was like "We should knock on this door" so we knocked on it, and this man answered and set up with us. I was like "Holy smokes miracle!!!!" Well we met with him and his wife the other day.................and they were Jehovah's Witness's......................... and the wife was white who spoke Chinese. They were both young like 30? Had only been married for 6 months and literally it was hard. Both were good looking people and I have never been more scared in my entire life. I was with a sister who didn't speak much Chinese and another member who said things but not a lot so it literally was me.....teaching these people who know the bible like the back of their hand...... And holy smokes.  It just strengthened my testimony of how true this gospel is. They kept sharing these bible scriptures and stuff and I was just like ".....freak" The whole time haha except that I just tried to stay calm and listen to the Spirit. But I think God helped me to not understand things that they said because I think it would have offended me or distracted me or something. They refused a BOM and were really nice about everything but intimidating. They said "If you can prove to me that the Bible talks about the BOM then I'll read it" I was like "Haha ok....next time. " Yikes...... anyway. Just wanted you to know my scary experience. 

Everyone is pretty good. :) We met this other awesome investigator on the streets. She's a mom of a 1 year old daughter and she has tattoos everywhere. We prayed for her on the street and had a good contact and she let us come over to her house the next day. I asked her why she let us come over and she said "When you prayed for me my heart relaxed and I realized you were good people" HOLY SMOKES. ISN"T THAT THE COOLEST THING EVER???? This kind of thing also happened with Liao JM. All because of a prayer. We met with this mom (Wu XJ) the other day and she set a baptismal date!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHH. Why are we having so much success??? I"M SO GRATEFUL!!! AND SOOOOO EXCITED!!!!!!

This work is real. I know that this gospel is real. I can't explain how I feel. My heart is just at complete peace, and I have so much faith, and I can feel that these things that we share are true. It just makes sense and I just want everyone to understand the peace and joy and happiness you can have if you just come to church and if you just believe in Jesus Christ, and repent and are baptized. It changes lives!!!!! It's completely changed mine!!! I love you all so much and I hope all of you are happy and doing well. 

Last note, I can't believe I speak Chinese. ...... like literally it's insane. And that I can read characters? How? It's not possible. It's through God. That's how it's possible. 

Have a fantastic week!!!

Love,

Sister Roberts

Us Teaching at  Zone Conference

Week 64 - Happy New Year & Sister Yee

Hello beautiful friends and family,

My dreams were shattered the other day.....haha not really. But new years eve, they had the fireworks off of 101 and I just decided that it's my dream to see the 101 fireworks on new years eve. And because I'm an obedient missionary, I didn't see them...or hear them. Oh well. Some other time ba. 

The area is doing incredible right now. My heart not so much haha. Sister Tinsley left me to go do amazing things. She's training again and opening a new area in XinZhu. She's a killer missionary. Me, I'm still here in YongHe with a cute new companion. She's from Hawaii and her name is Sister Yee. She's super smart and super cool. She goes to Stanford and is also super fit and I love her. I really did get attatched to Sister Tinsley and she's super excited to be off and doing great things and I'm just still here missing her haha. Oh well. Love her and really excited for this new transfer. 

Just in these past couple days, I've seen how hard working Sister Yee is and I'm so grateful. I have so much to learn from her. She's been on island for about 9 months. But she visa waited for one transfer. We aren't actually sure how old she is on the mission. Like she's not sure either haha. Oh well. 

This last week we saw some great miracles. Sunday, we realized that we still needed 3 pei ke's (and we only had 1 lesson set up), we needed 1 new investigator, and 1 baptismal date. Well we showed our faith and set those goals. Which the possibility of it happening (in realistic eyes) was pretty slim. But guess what happened? The elders set up someone for us after church and we got a pei ke, new investigator, and baptismal date. She's soooo golden. Her name is Dai JM. And then we had another pei ke after church (which we had 4 people at church) The standard of excellence is 3. Yay :) And then we had a member set up her friend after the fireside so we got another pei ke. WHAT?? How incredible is that????? SOOOOOOOO awesome. And I mean it's just one of those small things that's like "Well you can't say it's coincidence" you know? God is so great. 

We also met with this incredible girl, Liao JM. She's so so golden too. We found her on the streets during exchanges. And when we prayed for her on the street she was like "I'm so moved" and then she met with us and she said a closing prayer and she cried. Because she was so gan dong (Moved) and then we met with her again this week and she came to Yo's nephew's baptism afterwards and she cried when singing "I am a Child of God." She's sooooo awesome. She completely understands repentance and I feel like she' going to get baptized so fast! I love her!!!!!

This work is real. I don't know what else to say other than I'm so so grateful that God has blessed us with so many incredible people. We went to MLC on Friday and it was so awesome. I really felt this sense of urgency to do the work. We watched some trainings from President Oaks to the mission presidents, and it was incredible. I felt how important this work was. And it was kinda cool, they talked about the culture of our mission, what it was, what we hoped it would be and President Oaks said something about how "You mission president's and wives, think you own the culture of your mission, but you don't . Your zone leaders and sister trainers do." Then President went on to explain how we are the one's that set the example, and help the other missionaries to have the faith, skills and necessary things to baptize. We want the culture of our mission to be one of faith, focus, energy, and skills. We want our mission to be obedient, be a PMG mission, and we want our mission to TEACH REPENTANCE AND BAPTIZE CONVERTS. I've learned a lot about repentance recently and I feel like that's what I've been trying to focus on more. I've been hearing a lot of members share their testimony and the theme is the same. I feel like the members who are the most converted are the ones who sincerely repent. I hope that all made sense. 

I know this work is real, I know that God is guiding our lives. And I know that as we repent and change, that we will come closer to God. We will feel His presence in our lives. As we are humble, and have faith in Him, He can work miracles through us. I love you all so much. 

Love,

Sister Roberts

P-Day

101 Building

Panoramic of  Taipei

Subway!

Qing Ke with Jian Yao & his family

English Class

Sister Yee my new companion

Exchanges

Liao JM ... so prepared!!

Selfie doing our weekly emails