Selfless Service

     

This week has been awesome!

Monday

     Went to our area Fuli (15-min train ride down south). Very beautiful. First took pics in a fun area. It was a cloudy day, so we went up a steep mountain in the most gorgeous view I have ever seen...covered in fog. That's ok, we had the place to ourselves. I definitely want to go back sometime when it's beautiful weather and take breathtaking pics of the view of the valley. We then went to a dried river bed and hunted for jade or some sort of expensive blue stone. We have a ward member who knows where precious, expensive blue stones are and sells them for a living. He always give some to missionaries when they leave. He gave my companion Sister Scharman some expensive, beautiful blue earrings and a small stone to make a ring when she went home. 

     Got a new branch president yesterday! He is super awesome and all fired up about missionary work. The members of the branch are so awesome right now, they are itching to help us with missionary work. We just need to have the right prepared investigators, and see how we can work their schedules with the members schedules and ours, which is hard, since we are all have busy schedules and they work hard and are diligent. So excited to see what happens and what miracles unfold!

     Chinese New Year (Guonian) is coming up very quickly! I have a love/hate relationship with this holiday. I like it because a lot of people from out of town and college students will come here to visit their grandparents, there are decorations, and it's exciting, but I also hate it because people use it as an excuse to not meet with us, and it's true they are busy being with family that time. Guonian is big like Christmas, but it's filled with just eating and being with extended family like Thanksgiving for a week or two.  Members always feed missionaries for Guonian, but our members are out of town, so guess we will have to fend for ourselves. It's probably a good thing, I've heard horror stories of missionaries being fed like crazy by members during Guonian, to the point of throwing up and one sister saying she almost went bulimic. It's like being invited to Thanksgiving dinners multiple times a day for a few weeks, and you have to eat all the food otherwise the person will get offended. I think I would enjoy it more if I weren't on a mission. But it's my only one, so I'm going to enjoy every second of it!

     Already getting the excuse Guonian kuaidaole, tai mang, meiyou kong. "Chinese New is coming up, very busy, no time." Yep, it's that time of the year, my favorite... I remember my trainer being like, "As soon as Christmas is over, the excuse to not meet because Guonian is coming soon (even if it's weeks away) will be used." And we are like,"Nooooo!" Oh well, the work must go on! Hopefully, we can meet some really cool people. I'm grateful I'm down here in the south instead of Taipei or anywhere up north, where it's cold. Plus, everyone will leave Taipei and Kaoshiung to visit family, and those people are coming to us :) Hee hee hee.

Chinese New Year Facts 

- People give each other pineapples as peace offerings, so at grocery stores we see tiny pineapples with bows on them 

- It's the Year of the Rooster, seeing tons of rooster stuff everywhere 

- Lanterns are decorated in the towns like Christmas lights 

- They have a day where they clean their houses-(another excuse why they can't meet with us) 

- Red envelopes are given to children filled with money, so they go broke giving money to a lot of kids (like Christmas).  People think money is better than gifts, cause they can use money for many things. 

Other random facts :

     Most of the time, you take shoes off when you go into homes. even at the temple you take off your shoes before entering. Talk about white carpet!

eating with chopsticks and spoons, gotta love it!

They have little temples here with their tiny idols/gods. sometimes there are parades filled with firecrackers, drums, and little gods in their small shrines being bounced up and down by the people carrying them. They are going around to see their people. We figure the gods are going for a walk. They also have birthdays, so on those days it's pretty busy at their temples, or as they are called, miao. 

     Yesterday after church, I originally wanted to go to Lehe the aboriginal village to visit a girl, but we followed the Spirit and instead tried to visit RC Ding JM. I didn't know where she lived, so I went right off the baptismal record address. I think she didn't know her new address yet since she recently moved, so we went to her old house written on her baptismal record and someone else was there. We then went to the Veterans hospital nearby. (It's for everyone not just for veterans. Did you know Veteran in chinese is rongmin, which means "glory person"?).We went there and met a cool guy with a broken foot. He was Christian, and he was telling us how his minister just reads out of the Bible at church, so he doesn't really understand much about God. We taught him the restoration, gave him a tract and the Book of Mormon, and we hope to see him again. Just a cool miracle of following the Spirit to prepared people. 

     When I was in Reisui, there was one older guy we knocked on the door and visited (we just said hi to his son five minutes before, who was waiting outside for a friend to pick him up). He didn't seem too interested. We were leaving, but then we saw his older brother coming in. Turns out he was a less active from Taipei, he's probably been less active for a long time. I invited him to church, and he said right now he can't (his brother isn't a member) since he's down here visiting family for guonian, but he will probably try when he goes back to Taipei. I then told him that Christ remembers and misses him, then I left. His eyes were watering as I told him this. As I was leaving, I saw him grab a tissue out of his pocket and dab his eyes before he went back in. I got his number, I will try to contact the missionaries and ask to help try to get him reactivated.

     Met a former investigator family the missionaries taught two years ago. So prepared, they just had a family friend pass away, and they want to learn more about the gospel because of it. I hope we can get a family baptism, that is the ultimate missionary dream!

     At church, we had some people come! It was such a miracle. As a missionary, your heart just aches and worries, hoping people would come to church. I realized that church is a hard commitment, and I wished I would have been more selfless and tried harder to get others to come to church before my mission instead of just worrying about me getting to church. I really appreciate church now. It is not an easy thing to get people to come to church. 

     Challenge: Bring a friend or less active to church. You will really appreciate church a lot more, how much of a blessing and sacrifice it is. I promise you, you will have more empathy and love. 

Also, visit someone in a nursing home. 60% of Americans in nursing homes are never visited by anyone. Super sad. I remember feeling so happy when I visited the veterans in the nursing home in my senior year of high school. I loved going with my grandpa to visit them, it made me happy to make them happy, especially the lonely ones that nobody ever visited. I can't ever imagine growing up and being placed in a nursing home and nobody ever visiting me, that would be super sad. I guess it's the golden rule. I would like people to visit me when I'm older, so I will do the same for people right now. 

     I guess it's one reason why President Monson's

daughter said that he went to church a lot in nursing homes. He just loved going there and visiting the people since they are so close to the veil. It seems like there are a bunch of stories about him visiting someone in a nursing home. Shout out to him who took care of 88 widows in his ward and attended every single one of their funerals as a general authority. 

     Love you all! have a great week!

-Sister Brinkerhoff