Hello from the other side...I mean MISSION.

Hello everybody, it has been an insane week filled with breaking mission records, amusement parks, leaving missions, seeing family friends, and getting a comp ready for her mission to England. 

     But first, just want to wish you a Happy Dragon Boat Festival. Since it's a four day weekend, we are going camping with the ward. We won't stay the night, just go up with them and have fun! :)

     Last week, we get a call from some members asking if we could eat breakfast with them, which was kind of unusual but we said yes. We ate with them and the elders after playing ultimate frisbee like we usually do. We found out later that night that Elder Olson, who is an elder who we share the ward with was called to be an office recorder and left a few hours after breakfast (the president asked him the day before).  He is pretty much the youngest recorder in history of the mission I think. His Chinese is sooo amazing, he has only been here for seven months. Office recorders are only for elders with amazing Chinese, which is usually later in the mission. They pretty much record baptism records, work with mission numbers and such. So Elder Olson left for Taipei with three weeks into the transfer, since it takes three weeks to train. His companion is Elder Jensen. 

     So now the new elder is none other than... ELDER HEATON! He's some distant relative from my Grandma Brinkerhoff's side, since her maiden name is Heaton. I swear, the Heaton's are taking over the church. I met him at last year's Christmas party, and he called me Relative ever since. Now he is the new elder here with us in Taoyuan.

Victoria Zhang/The fastest train in Taiwan

This is totally Gods hand in it all.  Last week, we got a call from the mission office that my companion, Sister Huang, will leave for England on Tuesday night instead of Wednesday, so we had to hurry and go to Kaoshiung, where she is from, to pack her suitcase (which means I will be the first young missionary ever to leave the mission boundaries! Needless to say, people in my district were jealous that I could go).  President wanted us to go there and back all in one day, but we were too late buying high speed train tickets on a Thursday (because it was a four-day holiday weekend). So we were able to get tickets, but it required us to leave on Friday afternoon and get back on Saturday night.

     Because we would be in Kaoshiung for two days, we were able to stop and visit Victoria Zhang, who lives in Kaoshiung. She was a friend to my Uncle Brent and Aunt Brenda. She is so cute, she gave me really nice gifts for Chinese New Year. Her family all passed away from sickness, so she's kind of lonely. She teaches English. It was

so great to see her for two hours, I love her and was glad to see her. She served a mission a long time ago when my current mission president was her assistant to the president in her mission in Taipei. She showed me a photo of him and of my Uncle Brent when they served missions. She told me she now lives in Uncle Brent's favorite area of the mission when he served in the Taichung mission many years ago. 

Staying at Huang Jm's house was really...different. Her parents are really nice. They took us to a nice restaurant, we got some shopping done for Huang jm then left the next day. We also met the Kaoshiung elders and ate shaved ice together.  Sis. Huang is leaving for England tomorrow night. The church released a new rule this year that members can't be companions with missionaries. The only exception is is there are too many appointments for a companionship to teach, then they can split with members. So I will be with the sister training Leaders for three weeks. It will be great learning from them, I am so excited. Definitely will be harder, since we will have to share area and have teaching appointments fit with our schedules, but we can do it. 

Love 

sorry, gotta go camping. love you all!

-Sister Brinkerhoff

Two Words - Elder Cook

     Well, it has been a very miracle-filled, magical weekend.  Gotta say, it was full of blue skies and sunshine. And why is that?  Because ELDER COOK VISITED TAIWAN! And I am not kidding, the two days he was in Taiwan, it was beautiful weather. Guessing it was because an apostle of the Lord came to Taiwan. Lately it's been kinda cloudy which is nice, but it was cool.

Last Pday

     Went hiking in Neihu. My companion was picking up geckos along the way, and at the end of the hike even picked up a huge frog and put it on her shoulder. Super crazy stuff. It was raining that day, and pretty much that whole hike, we were soaked. The hike was very...adventurous. We even climbed up one side of the slick mountain. Adam Jacobson who served a mission here last year came and visited Taiwan. The funny part was that he was in my 2nd and 3rd grade class in elementary school. I hadn't seen him in about 12 years. Last year, he was in my mission district. He came back last week to visit Taiwan and did fun stuff like surfing, snorkeling.

     So now I have plans for visiting Taiwan after the mission. Adam said that if people don't visit Taiwan quick after the mission (at least a year), they probably never will come back for a long time if ever because of marriage and schooling. I'm gonna make sure that I can come back next summer, there's tons of stuff I still want to do. While I was with Adam, he Snapchatted me and gave it to my trainer, Sister Bain. She replied back, that she was driving home with her boyfriend. She was saying how she loved and missed me and at one point she said she was jealous of Adam...Honestly I would be very jealous too if I was her. I love and miss her.

     

     We are going back again to...LEOFOO WORLD! Yay, the fun amusement park I went to last September. We are going with a bunch of missionaries and members. It's gonna be great, my companion is like me and doesn't like rollercoasters. It's gonna be great!

In my brother's email, Elder Wong came to a stake conference there (Thailand). I remember last year he came to our stake conference in Taoyuan, he was funny. We had a role play competition, whoever did the best roleplay in teaching a family got these special toy tops from Hong Kong (he lives there); they were super cool. One set of elders won, and one of the Elders was so excited, he was looking everywhere to buy the tops on his mission. Elder Wong then gave one to him, and an extra "for his eternal companion." Haha.

Elder Cook

     Last Saturday, we as a mission went to Taipei to listen to Elder Cook. We as a mission got a picture with him, then he shook hands with every missionary.  They had a question and answer time. One elder asked the first question, which was to talk more about Key Indicators, which got Elder Cook and the other GAs fired up. Key indicators of conversion are the numbers we missionaries try to get every week. So every week, we try to get someone baptized (our goal is one baptism a month per companionship), six people on baptismal dates, three people at church and four new investigators every week. I felt like it was a question that impressed the general authorities, that we were a hard working mission. Other missionaries asked questions such as how to know when investigators have a broken heart and contrite spirit and how to gain people's trust in Asia.

Joseph Smith, Actor

     After Elder Cook left, we were still there in the room. You know the new First Vision movie? There's one that came out two years ago where they show it at the church Heritage Museum in Salt Lake City.

     The actor who played Joseph Smith for the video is actually in our mission.  He got up and told us the story of filming the project. He explained how he was chosen to play Joseph Smith, then we watched the video. It was interesting, in the video, it was different that the account written in the scriptures. After we watched the video, the actor explained how in the scriptures, Joseph said he sought for God because he wanted to know the true church. In the video, from a different account he gave, he said he went to God because he felt guilty for his sins and wanted to save his soul (sought for repentance), which made sense. The actor told us that at first it was hard to film, his acting seemed cheesy, but at one point when he took a break from filming, he realized he needed to follow the Spirit and act out the first vision instead of just Joseph Smith. He then had a powerful experience, and he actually felt like Joseph Smith, and it was captured on film. Like Joseph Smith, he was exhausted and slept in his trailer for three hours. Cool stuff!

Stake Conference

     Elder and Sister Soares are from Brazil. His wife has a thicker accent, and when she told everyone she was from Brazil, the crowd gasped. It was so cute, she was talking about how beautiful the music and flowers were (a bouquet of flowers on the pulpit). It was  she and her husband's first time in Taiwan.

Elder Soares kept on telling us how beautiful Taiwan is, the culture and language and everything. His accent wasn't as pronounced as his wife's, probably been spending more time with general authorities and have more of an American accent.  He talked about the Book of Mormon and how important it was to read it to be converted, which was perfect, it was what our investigator needed! she is such a miracle, she was having problems but now is back on track we are so happy! Elder Soares told how he was the youngest of four boys, and when he was little, his brothers met the missionaries and were baptized. Years later after he returned from a mission, his parents served a temple mission. While serving a few months into their mission, his dad had a heart attack and died. His mom showed faith in Heavenly Father despite trials and continued to serve by herself with other sisters for the rest of her mission. Months later, Elder Soares' second brother died, then his third brother, then two kids of his died during his wife's pregnancy. All of this happened in the space of two years. Everyone was in tears when he told us this story.  He was tearful as he was telling us. He then said we all will have trials in life, we need to have faith in Christ and be converted to Him to prepare us for trials. Ee told us over and over again he loved us, then at the end requested to shake everyone's hand.  It was awesome!

     Our phone got wet because of the rain and wasn't working, so we put it in rice for a day and then it worked! The elders kept joking that if we left it overnight, an Asian would come and fix our phone for us since the rice is there for payment. My comp thought it was funny. 

     God really lives and has blessed me a ton on my mission. We saw a huge miracles!  Gotta go have fun at an amusement park.  

Love y'all,

Sister Brinkerhoff

Pday, Mother's Day

     It has been a good week! 

     Transfers came, and I am still in Taoyuan (translates to Peach Garden, which is weird cause it is not like a garden and I don't see any peaches). Trainers and their trainees have to stay together for at least two transfers, and most of the time they stay in their area for another transfer. 

     

     Last Pday we went up by Taipei called Danshui. In Taiwan, there are a lot of old streets, kind of like boardwalks. They are so fun to go, I bought some tiny lantern souvenirs.

     Today we will try to go to Pingxi, where they have the lanterns kind of like the ones in Tangled. I'm so excited! 

     They celebrate Mother's Day here in Taiwan usually by going out to eat with moms like we do for our Mother's Day.

Father's Day in Taiwan is on August 8th, not June, because the word for August is ba yue, which means "eighth month," and ba hao which is "eighth day." Put it together, ba ba, also means dad, which is why Fathers Day is August 8th. Wa la! That's Chinese for ya! 

     My comp told me that the Taiwanese don't like going to each other's houses because they have to clean, get food ready and stuff. It's not like in America where we just invite people over. The Taiwanese usually just eat out or shop together, which explains why there are tons of places to eat.

     I gotta go I will be back later this evening to write more hopefully. Love ya!

-Sister Brinkerhoff

May Day

     

     May Day!

     Happy May Day everyone!  It's been a great week, missionary work is a bit slow right now, please pray for me and my companion to find new investigators, as well as being able to teach the members to do their own missionary work. Thank you! We have seen a lot of miracles this week and the Lord's hand in everything. 

     Temple day was the best thing ever! It seemed like forever ago since I last went, I felt pretty rusty. We had Heavenly Father's help, getting there barely on time. I loved the temple; it's a great place to be.

     For Spiritual Shares, I would have everyone go around in the room and share their favorite thing about their mother. It was so fun to see them share their favorite things, A lot of them shared how they are grateful their mothers were selfless and did everything to make them happy. I agree, I am so grateful for my selfless mom and everything she has done for me.  I like how my mom is so funny. She is also really cool, a ton of my friends told me growing up that I had a cool mom. I really love her and my dad's example of faithfully fulfilling church callings, endless church members they have served have told me what amazing parents I have. I am so grateful for their great example and faithfulness to the Lord. It's harder and harder to see a whole gospel family nowadays, and I realize more and more how blessed I am to have them. Thanks mom, you are the best!

Bei

貝

My friend, Julie, has asked me about my name Bei. I can clarify a bit.  My companion sometimes has a hard time saying my entire last name so she calls me by my Chinese name, which is a close translation to Sister Brinkerhoff. bei means shell (and it's cool that my mom, Michelle's nickname is "shelly").  In ancient China, shells were used as currency. That's why for many Chinese words relating to money, price, or value, the Bei character is used. Even in the word Shu, which means to Redeem. 

贖罪   

Shuzui, redeem sins, Atonement.  There are two two bei characters in it. 

     I really like Chinese, especially when I know the meaning and stories behind the characters. They are pictures.

     Another cool one: Holy Ghost:

聖靈

Sheng Ling, which means Holy Spirit. The Spirit one is cool, because he pictures show three boxes which represent mouths, and two  people

人

     It's three mouths but only two people. So it's like the Godhead, three mouths (Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost), but only two bodies. There's some thing like that for the Chinese character for boat, which ties back to Noah's ark. There's a book I want to read after my mission about how some Chinese characters tie back to the Bible. 

     I've heard constantly that on missions, the sisters are the ones that have nicer apartments than the elders.  It's complete opposite in our mission. it's the elders that have the nice apartments and the sisters that have the older, grosser ones. 

     We just moved in into our new apartments. It's nice, clean and roomy, and a lot closer to our area (yeah, no more 25- min bike rides to our area). I have been soo blessed with good apartments on my mission, I've seen so many sister apartments that have problems. 

     For the 1st hour of church (we do relief society, gospel principles class for new members and investigators, then Sacrament) it was combined. The bishop showed a moving video about a lady who lives in the stake. She is 80 years old, blind and goes to the temple pretty much every day and wants to continue doing so for the rest of her life, probably for the next 16 years or so (The Taiwanese have a pretty healthy lifestyle, I have meet so many healthy old people). 

     She had a goal of doing endowments for 1,000 people. After she surpassed that goal, she set the goal for 3,000, surpassed it, now she is trying to achieve her goal for 5,000 people. She blew my mind as well as everyone who watched the video. It's definitely not an easy thing to do. She lives in our stake, and to get to the temple it takes maybe an hour or two to use the train and the metro system. The bishop remarked even people who could see would get lost. It's amazing how she has someone help her or I think she can do it by herself too. 

     It was moving and inspired me and the members to do more temple work. If a blind, old lady does it pretty much everyday and has helped more than 3,000 deceased people get their endowments, we can too.  

     Our investigator sometimes had a hard time paying attention to what the speakers were saying, so I would take notes on what the speakers said and act enthusiastically to what they said by nodding and whispering comments to my investigator. I'm glad I did so, I was able to pay attention to the talks and got some really good stuff out of it. I remember before my mission I would just doodle on paper while listening to the speakers, but now I take notes and it's really effective cause I'm paying attention a lot more. It's even more powerful to go back and read what I wrote. I invite you all to do the same. 

     Love you all and write notes to your moms for Mother's Day!

     I know that God lives and Loves us. We need to hang on to Him at all times, even in times of doubt, fear and darkness. No matter what, just hang on to Him and never let Him go. You will be eternally safer if you do so. 

Have a great week!

-Sister Brinkerhoff

Temple Day, Emergency, Spider

     HEYYYY EVERYONE!

     Sorry I wasn't able to email last monday, because today is TEMPLE DAY!

     I am so happy to live closer to Taipei again, it's so great. It's so weird, I swear I am the only missionary (other than Sister Bernhardt, my previous companion) who has never served in Taipei. I've served everywhere BUT Taipei (west and south coast), which is really weird since half the mission is like up in Taipei. The mission seems like it's split up in three areas -West Coast, South Coast, and Taipei. I think I will finish my mission where I started, in Taoyuan, since my comp will leave and I will only have six more weeks after that. Crazy, crazy stuff, time is flying far too fast. It's great thought, Heavenly Father knows exactly where I need to be.

     My comp, Sister Huang, is doing great, her English is so good. It's so funny, the other missionaries have been teaching her the weirdest things in English, like threats. For example, she will say to the sister training leaders, " I will be very mean to you, I will kill you, I will be very angry (which they don't take seriously because it's cute)," and Elder Olsen in our ward taught her the word strangle. Sigh.

     For example, she asked me, "What is the difference between sassy and sexy?" (Me inwardly slapping my hand on my forehead in exasperation at the sisters teaching her these things). She was wondering how to know which is which, since the pronunciation sounds the same. There's no word in Chinese for sassy, so it's been hard to kind of explain it. So many times she has been called cute as well as sassy. She lived in Russia for a year, and it somehow changed her accent, so I am not kidding, everyone she meets asks where she is from. Some even asked if she's from Hong Kong. She acts Taiwanese, but her accent says otherwise, it's pretty funny. It's gonna get worse when she acquires a British accent in England. 

     Exciting news! I got the call last Monday from my companion, Sister Bernhardt, in Yuli that our investigator Sister Pong got baptized! She is such a cute mom, I'm so excited! 

     So this is what happened this week:

Emergency Room

     It was 11 and I was in the middle of my prayers, and my comp was like, "Sister Bei, I don't feel good." She was having sharp pains in her side to the point where she wasn't able to move, crying and breathing heavily. I gave her advil (they don't have it in Taiwan), then we called the mission nurse, and she suggested we go to the emergency room because it could be appendicitis. So the other sisters we room with called an ambulance and  I got stuff ready, the ambulance came and got me and her. It was a dream come true! I got to ride in an ambulance (with someone not seriously injured), it was fun! :) Then we get to the emergency room, and she's like, "I don't have the pain anymore." Turns out, the pain went away while on the ambulance because the advil kicked in after taking it for 30 min. The ER's in taiwan are the worst at night, it's pretty much one open room with beds and just curtains to pull around, no privacy other than the curtains around the bed. The lights were on and doctors were just right there, it would be hard to sleep. Not to mention the loved ones with the patients in the er only have a chair to sit on, it' s not very comfortable and harder to sleep. It was funny, brought back memories of going to the ER with my companion sister Scharman in Yuli.

     The doctors took a blood test. My comp, Huang JM, like me doesn't like needles or getting blood drawn. I told her to count to 10 in Russian for me to help her not think about it. The nurse didn't do a good job, so it took longer, so I had to tell my comp to count to 10 in Russian over and over again. She misses Russia, and really wants to ice skate cause she did it there. she doesn't understand why Americans don't really like Russians.

     After a few tests, she was declared fine and we went home. Thankfully, with God's grace, we were there for only two hours. We took the taxi home, and at 1:20 am, I found myself at home saying prayers again. My comp is fine. It was God's blessing, my comp said she was praying that she would be okay so we could go to the temple, since I haven't gone since last July. 

A Huge Spider

     We were about to teach our investigator, Guan Cheng, Feng (meaning Successful Phoenix, which is why I gave her the English name Phoenix) at the church, when we got a call from her. She said she couldn't come to the lesson because of a spider at the door entrance. So my comp, the member helping with the lesson (called a peike) Hong Jie Mei, and I went to her house. Long story short Guan JM threw the keys over her balcony, we opened up the door and went in (she lives on the second floor). We couldn't see the spider anywhere. In my mind I thought it was a small spider. We were looking for it, and finally my companion hit some curtains and a huge spider came running out! I am seriously not kidding, it was probably as big as my hand. My companion grabbed a broom and just hit it a few times.  Our investigator then came with us to the church for the lesson.

     Yesterday, not even before getting off my bike at the park, some 40ish year old guy rides up to me and says in English, "Do you have a boyfriend?" I said no, he was like, "Can I buy you coffee?" I said no thank you, but invited him to English class. He didn't say a word and just drove away on his motorscooter. Don't know if he's doing that to a lot of people. The funny thing was that it didn't faze me, guess I'm so used to it on my mission. We then joked how women always talk to elders as we see the 40-year-old women talk to two sets of elders nearby. We even made a deal with our Tao1 elders that whoever gives the other the most investigators has to buy the other companionship steak dinner (it's only about 5 bucks, really great price), because guys on the street always talk to us, and women on the street always talk to elders. I even overheard a funny story from Sister Cullen the other night about one of the elders in our district. He was talking to three amahs (grandmas) and trying to get them interested in the gospel. Afterwards he said that he has never flirted so much in his life, it was so funny! He was jokingly calling them his girlfriends and just being a charming young man. The other day I showed my companion a flashcard for the word charming. The example given was that the Taiwanese find white people charming. My companion laughed and took a picture. 

     We finally moved apartments yesterday. We now live closer to our area, it doesn't take us 25 min to bike to our area anymore, now its just 5-7 min, so much nicer. I will miss living with Sisters Cullen and Armstrong, they are so funny. But like Preach My Gospel says, be will to make any sacrifices for your investigators, and we really need to be closer to our area. 

     Miracle!  The moving company called two days ago and said they might come at 8 or 9 am. I wanted more time to get stuff ready to move so I prayed that they could come at 9, but if it's God's will, I'm fine with 8. Sure enough, right after exercises, they came at 8. Everything turned out fine, and it was a blessing they came earlier honestly. They got our stuff, we met at our new apartment, and put stuff in. By the time they left, it was about 10. We needed to leave our apartment by 10:30 to start proselyting or studies. If they had come at nine instead, we wouldn't have been able to get out the door on time. God really helped us when we moved out and helped us be obedient. 

Spiritual Share

     We are preparing for a really spiritual sacrament meeting on Mother's day! I have been inspired to do it based off of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's October 2015 General Conference Talk called "Behold, Thy Mother." The goal of this is to have a spiritual sacrament meeting where members can invite family members and friends to learn about Christ. 

     We watched the video with the bishop. The Spirit definitely filled the room. It was a really different talk, because it's more of a sacred topic. Elder Holland's eyes were teary throughout the entire talk. The bishop's wife said afterwards that Elder Holland knows more about motherhood than most mothers do. She (as well as all of us) almost cried a few times. Even Elder Jensen who is one the Tao1 Elders (We are the Taoyuan 1st ward missionaries, or Tao1) said that he thought of his mom in the talk. I did too and was reminded of my mom's selfless sacrifice for me and our family. She is the most selfless person I know, and I am so grateful for her and her example. 

Gotta go to the temple love you all!

Sister Brinkerhoff