October 25, 2010‏

Dear Fmaily and Friends,

Hello again from paradise! A little weather update - except for raining a couple days, Taidong was not affected at all by last weeks typhoon. We are on the farthest south easy part of the island and the typhoon conveniently passed us by. I am really grateful because this weekend was awesome.

First off, we had five people at church! (Seven if you count small children)! Apparently all you really have to do to get people to church is beat the issue over the head with a metal mallet, grind it to powder and the burn it in blue flames. ;) Really, we put our every effort into getting people to church this week. We called our investigators almost every day and reminded them, we sent postcards on which we wrote the blessings of church in broken Chinese. We had members talk to the people,and even arranged for members to take a few people to chruch, and finally we had a breakthrough!!! It was seriously a miracle. Getting people to come experience the blessings of chruch is harder than convincing them to have optional invasive surgery, but this week the spirit blessed our efforts, and they came!

So we did have a little adventure this week. One morning after our alarm had just woken us up and we merrily hopped out of bed to go to the bathroom to prepare for exercise, there was suddenly a very loud crash in the front room. I tough my companion had something terrible happen to her. I shouted and sped out of the bathroom, well, my companion was safe in her bathroom at the time. She though something had happened to me! WE both walked to the front room to see what made the aweful noise, and out six foot something bookshelf had collapsed and everything on it was spread across the apartment. It was a disaster! On top of that, we have been preparing to paint our apartment, so the furniture is already everywhere and really, it looks like a tornado had been through there! Luckily, today we will get the painting done and clean it. The only thing we are not sure is what ot do with the demolished bookshelf. Somehow, trying to take six foot boards that snapped in some places with screws sticking out everywhere to the dump on our bicycles doesn't seem really probable. :) For now we will see!

On Saturday was a branch member - Wang Yi Shu's - Wedding reception. It was fantastic! The two branches relief societies worked together to decorate and cook and it was truly a sight to behold! I have never seen such a beautiful sight! And the place was packed with members and non members and it was a great experience. The program was great and really focused on eternal families and misisonary work and It was a great place for people to introduce their friends to the gospel. I love the branches down here! Any event at all becomes a missionary activity!

I also LOVE the children here. This little girl is Chen WeiTing's child. Che is a ward member who got baptized last year and I just adore her children so much! A lot of the time I get to help keep them quiet in sacrament meeting and I love it. I just love children so much!

Last night we went to the Lin Family's for dinner and it was so wonderful. We took our investigator Tracy with us and it was the best enviromnment ever. There is so much peace and happiness in a gospel centered home that the spirit is so strong. As we ate and afterwards discussed the gospel and sang hymns, I couln't help but think, "This is the message we are sharing! This is the peace we are bringing! This is the feeling God wants us to all have!" Please, offer your homes to have the missionaries to teach in. It was the most amazing experience and nothing me or my companion could have ever done would have had the same impact as simply being in a members home and feeling that peace.

That is about it for the week! I lov eyou all and hope all is well!

Love,
Sister Collyer