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