April 11, 2011

Dear Friends and Family,

I just can't explain how full of MIRACLES every day is here in Taidong! I love it here! I love my companion! I love the Members! I just love it all. Mostly, I think I just love being a missionary!

This week on Friday we had one of the members here go out with us all day and work and teach and it was absolutely awesome! Wang Yihui is going into the MTC nest week. Guess which mission she is going to? TAIWAN TAIPEI MISSION! Yep, she put in her papers in her college ward, which is over in the Taizhong mission boundries, so she is off to her home mission to serve the lord! She is already fantastic. WE saw a lot of miracles with her, and I am so grateful. Usually if we have an entire day of lessons set up, about 2 or three will stand us up, but on friday we had every single lesson meet with us and all of them are seriously fantastic! It was amazing! A MIRACLE! I am so grateful for Yihui's faith. She is going to be the best missionary in the Taipei mission!

Also, may I just say that conference was amazing! Wow, I learned so much and I loved it. And talk about hading God's hand guiding what happened - seriously our investigators and new members that came literally came to the perfect sessions to answer their prayers and questions! It was a miracle!

I especially liked Elder Christopherson and Elder Holland's talk in conference. I have really come to notice how much happier life is when we learn to take correction from those who are wiser than us - the most wise, of course, being our heavenly father. I know thta heavenly father has a plan for each of us and he is shaping us into the kind of person we need to be, but if we deny his guiding hand we wil never grow to be the person he needs us to become. When we receive correction, it is godd becasue it means that God cares enough about us to bother to correct us. This means a lot to me lately because my new companion is a native to taiwan, and I told her that she should always correct my Chinese if she hears me say somehting wrong. Well, these past two weeks I have really come to find out how bad my chinese really is!!! I can't spak two sentences without being corrected. I am so grateful and also a little sad that no one corrected me earlier. Imagine how much better I could have been if people had corrected me this much from the beginning! That is the same with spiritual guidance and correction. The earlier we learn to take correction from those more wise than us, the faster we will grow in faith and wisdom that the lord needs us to have. Imagine how much better we could have been if we learned these things earlier in life! Why have we wasted so much time?! It is simply becasue we are too prideful to take the lords correction. I learned a lot about this principle, and I am so excited to start applying what I ealrned from conference!

Also, I loved one thing that Elder Holland said: Conference is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. It is true that we will really hear the things we need to hear. If our soul needs comfort, we will hear comforting words. If we need to be corrected, God will tell us that too. In the end, it is up to us to take what we learned and apply it in our lives to make ourselves better. Are we willing to do it? (See Mark 5:3).

Also, I learned a lot about setting prayerful goals this week. We set a goal that we wanted to find five new people so teach this week, and by sunday night we were still short one and we had to go in for a meeting. WE prayed before we headed out for the meeting that we would be able to find someone tonight becasue it was our goal, and Heavenly Father Literally placed someone in the parking lot of the chruch for us! At first it was two little girls, so we talked to them and asked them where they live and if we could go visit their family later in the evening. They said yes. So we were in our meeting and it was about to finish when we saw their mother come to look for them in the parking lot. We immediately booked it out to talk to her, and when all was said and done, the two girls, the mom, and the mom's brother all met with us that night and agreed to hear more. WOW! Talk about MIRACLES! I know that Heavenl Father heard our prayers and becasue we set righteous goals He helped us achieve them. I am so grateful and humbled how God's hand is truly guiding the work.

Today we went up to Chulu cow ranch with one of the members - Sister Chen Guan Shiting and Wang Yihui. It was a lto of fun. We got to feed cow and goats and a cow even licked my hand. We have some good pictures, but unfortunatly I cannot find my camera cord so for now I cannot send them to you. Sorry!

I lov eyou all and hope all is well!

Love,

Sister Collyer