Annie is on her way to Taiwan! She is leaving Atlanta Tuesday morning and then to Houston, TX for a short layover and then to San Francisco before going all the way to Taiwan! We're so excited an happy that she gets to come back to Texas, even if it's just for a little while.

Week 8 down in GA and... I FINALLY HAVE SOLID VISA NEWS!!!

Well I can't put it any better than President Day did in his email this week:

"For those who have not yet heard, Taiwan’s Bureau of Consular Affairs has issued 10 visas for our visa-waiting missionaries.  On February 25, we anticipate welcoming the following missionaries to our mission:

Sister Wing Kei Dindi Chan

Sister Natalie Tate

Sister Zoe Hendricks

Sister Kess Kirkham                   

Sister Karisa Lindsay                  

Sister Annie Oviatt                     

Elder Adam Pack

Elder Andrew Sessions

Elder Spencer Smith

Elder Dexter Tan  

Continue to pray that the other visa-waiting missionaries will get their visas granted before Guonian.  While these 10 coming in are a welcomed blessing, we still have 15 going home, which means unless some additional missionaries arrive,  our missionary may still have to close or consolidate 3 more proselyting areas this coming transfer.

Don’t stop praying for our visa-waiters."

I AM SO STOKED!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!

The waiting is over!!!... except only for 10 of us. :( There's 3 other missionaries from my district in the MTC that still don't have theirs. That seriously breaks my heart! I'm so sad for them. I really hope they're just a few days/weeks later than us. I hope they don't have to wait too much longer. This wait is SO HARD. I especially feel bad for Sister Facer. She's been serving in this mission waiting for her visa since the end of October. Next Wednesday will be her 3 transfer mark out here! I've been able to practice Chinese with her 2 times a week over the phone though, so I know her Mandarin is AWESOME. I feel like she hasn't lost anything since the MTC! Every time we talk about visas she's so faithful and strong. She has faith that she's still supposed to be here and that this is where the Lord needs here. She's really been an inspiration for us other 4 visa waiters in the mission. I know she'll continue to be a great missionary out here in Georgia. :)

Well I've kinda been freaking out about my visa and not managing my email time too wisely today. ;) So this email might be kinda short! I had quite a week here. Just a few quick miracles.

First off we had a GREAT impromptu meeting with Virginia on Saturday. She's had 2 of her close friends in DC die this week. So we challenged her to read Alma 40, even though she can't read well. We followed up with her on Saturday and she'd read most of the chapter! AND not only that, but she remembered what it was about! This was a HUGE miracle for her, because she has some issues with memory and comprehension. We've taught Pre-Earth life to her about 5 times now. ;) So the fact that she read it and remembered that it talks about resurrection and what happens to our bodies and spirits after we die was HUGE. She told us it brought a lot of peace to her heart when she read it. We're trying to help her recognize that this is the spirit testifying to her that what she's reading is true.

Then a little later she told us, "Well I want to get baptized, but I'm afraid it will be too cold!" That was the first time she's said straight up that she wants to get baptized. She's been baptized twice in different churches already, so that's been her main hang up. So for her to finally say that outright was amazing! She's been getting a lot of WONDERFUL support from the women in our ward. That's made a big difference for her. It does make us a little nervous though. We don't want her to convert just for the people. The member we had with us at the lesson told her that. She said, "The gospel is perfect. The organization is perfect. Christ's church is perfect. The people absolutely are not. The members of the church are imperfect people trying to become better and more like Christ." We're really going to stress that to her this week. We need to make sure she's getting baptized because she truly believes that's what Heavenly Father wants her to do. So that she can receive remission of sins, and enter into the gate that leads to eternal life with our Father. She has to join for the right reasons, or else it won't matter. Wow. That was a great meeting. If I had time I'd tell you how much of a miracle it was that that meeting even happened. As I said before, It was completely impromptu! I know we needed to visit her that day! It really helped brighten our day as well.

Next miracle real quick. A few weeks ago I wrote about Miss Margaret, who'd had cancer, and we prayed with her. Well we decided on Friday to stop back by and see how she was doing. She told us about how much she appreciated that prayer on that day. Then she kind of bore her testimony of Jesus Christ. She told us, "I don't care what denomination you are or what church you go to, I think the most important thing is to know that Christ is your personal Savior and Redeemer." Then she stopped and looked right at me and said, "I could tell from your prayer that you do." That hit me so hard. I don't really remember what else she said after that. But I started tearing up. All I could do was nod my head and say, "I do." 

I KNOW that's why I'm on a mission. Because I do have a personal testimony and relationship with Jesus Christ. I KNOW He is MY Savior. HE makes me whole. Because I know this, I want to help others come unto Him. I KNOW it is only through Him that we can be together with our families forever, be clean from sin, and have the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. I want to help others receive these 3 great gifts that Heavenly Father has for us. I know that we can only receive these gifts through Faith in Him, Repentance, Baptism, Receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End. Heavenly Father loves us and has a plan for each of His children. He wants us to take advantage of His Son's Atonement so that we can return to Him.

I hope y'all have a great week!

Please keep praying for the Taiwan Visa waiters! :)

-Ou Jiemei

Week 7 in Georgia...but who's counting

Well unfortunately, just like last week we didn't get any news from President Day in his weekly email. We all feel like it's coming close and that our visas are in the final stages. We've been waiting for hmmm... 11 weeks now for them? I don't know anymore. Anyways. We've heard that we'll leave whenever they come in, and we won't have to wait for the Feb. 25th transfer to leave. So that's a blessing! That's really all the update I have for visas at this point... :/

Alright well. I think the funniest story of the week was when we went to dinner Saturday night.

A sister in our ward cooked us steaks for dinner. Earlier that day, she asked how we wanted them done, so I said medium rare. I think Sister Smith said well done. We get there and she didn't know which of us asked for which steak. She looks at me and says, 'Oh. You're from Texas. You wanted the medium rare ones right? I figured that, and went a little bit more on the rare side for you." I was laughing so hard! She'd seen my planner cover and my BoM case with Texas duct tape on them earlier that week. I was like yeah... I'm kind of a fake though! I only lived there for 2 years! She thought that was hilarious! I guess you could say I'm converted to being a Texan! I miss it! :)

Next for the miracle/spiritual story of the week. It's not too, too big this week. But still a testimony strengthener for me. :) SO Friday afternoon, I was feeling a little discouraged and homesick and just wanting to go to Taiwan. I'd just seen my Visa Waiter sistas at the New Missionary Training that morning, and it just made me miss them lots and want to go to Taiwan! But we had a lesson with Virginia that day and Sister Smith has recently been giving me bigger parts of the lessons to teach, so I knew I needed to be better intune with the spirit than I was. So at the beginning of the lesson I said a quick silent prayer and asked Heavenly Father to help me to have his spirit as I taught, and to have the words put in my mouth that I should say. (Sidenote: The gift of tongues is not just for foreign languages!) I asked to know what I needed to say and to have confidence as I followed the promptings of the spirit. Well my turns came to teach and I told her about why Heavenly Father sent us to earth. It totally blew her mind when we told her it was because He loves us, not because he wants to punish us. She has been through a lot of rough times in the last 10 years and, rightfully so, thinks this earth is Hell and she can't wait to get back to heaven. So when she heard that she's here because Heavenly Father loves her she was just shocked! 

Anyways. Later in the lesson when I was my turn I felt like I needed to invite her to be baptized for the 400th time with her. Well usually Sister Smith has done the baptismal invites and it was the middle of the lesson so I we really confused at why I should do that. But I just went with it and let the spirit talk. I asked her, if, as she continued to learn these things, and pray to know if they are true, and then God told her they were true, if she'd follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding God's authority. I didn't know why I said that at all! It seemed like such a weird time in the lesson to do it! She declined the invitation and said, "Well I don't know.. I just think the water will be so cold!" We all tried to not laugh and reassure her that the water would be warm and we'd be inside for the baptism. She still didn't really believe us. What a cute old lady. :) Then seconds later her phone rang, and it was her realtor. She was there to drop off some papers for selling her house. The realtor ended up talking to her for 15 minutes, then we had to leave! So if I didn't act on that prompting right then and just invited her to be baptized, we never would've had time to do it later on. Heavenly Father knew that that was the real end of the lesson, even if I thought it was still the middle.

The rest of the day I felt so much better and so much more full of peace and optimism. I knew that I'd followed the spirit and done exactly what Heavenly Father needed me to do at that time. I was sad that she didn't commit to be baptized, but we'll keep working on her and helping her understand why baptism is SO important. I've loved being able to feel and follow the promptings of the spirit, to help people receive the blessings of the gospel in their lives. It always takes some amount of a leap of faith, but it always pays off. :)

Thank you so much for all of the support, letters, emails, and postcards. :) I genuinely appreciate them all and I wish I had time to respond to them all individually! They always come on the perfect days when I need them most. :)

Thanks again for everything!

Keep praying for all of our Taiwan visa waiters(:

-Sister Oviatt

-Ou Jiemei

6 weeks in Georgia (18 weeks total)

Wow! I've been here for a whole transfer now! I can't believe it!

Yesterday I hit my 4 month mark on the mission! ...and I'm still in America. Kinda weird! I submitted my papers 9 months ago and I'm still in America. Sister Call, who I live with put in her papers in October, left for the MTC mid-November, and has been on the mission for a little over 2 months! Everyone's got a different story. My story's theme seems to just be WAIT. wait. wait. wait. Patience. hehe Well I've got a lot to learn about that apparently!

This weekend we had Stake Conference. So that means I got to see some of my favorite people! Sister Kirkham, Lindsay, and Facer (who's been here since the end of October) are all in my stake! Yay Taiwan Visa Waiter party! haha well. I think I told y'all last week about how we just had to send in our Ministerial Certificates and then we'd be in the final stages of the visa process. Last week we also got an email from President Day that said 15/19 visa waiters had all their paperwork in and were in the final stages. We were all pretty sure we were in the group of 15, not the 4 that were behind. Well. Sister Lindsay told me right before the Adult session on Saturday night, that we were the 4 missionaries without all the paperwork in.  Yeah we had a little freak out...if you can imagine. I signed my Ministerial certificate like 3 weeks ago, but our Senior couple office assistant wanted to wait til all of us got that signed to send them in to SLC. That day was last Friday, Jan. 23rd. So apparently we're a bit behind all the other Visa Waiters now. I have no idea what that means though! Yesterday we did a fast for all of our visas. Also we didn't hear anything new from President Day today about them, so that was kinda sad. It looks like another 2-3 weeks here! Chinese New Year is coming up on the 19th, so we're all hoping and praying that we'll be able to be there for that! So there's your little update on my visa situation. Not much has changed on it in the last... oh 9 weeks. We still don't have them is all you need to know. :P

So now for some little miracles and tender mercies of the week! 

We were able to do a lot of service this week so that was fun! and we also worked on our My Family booklets to help us teach better about Family History work. That was really good too! But because of that our numbers suffered a little. We did get to teach a lot of members this week though! That's always good. This ward is so willing to help and serve the missionaries. It's great!

Thursday nights in our ward we have a thing called "Miracle Night" which is where we meet up with ward missionaries and members and go on splits with them. We will go out to teaching appointments, go visit less-actives, do visiting teaching, and even just tract sometimes! It's a really great tradition! Well this week Sister Smith went to teach Virginia and I got to go visit a few less-actives with Sister Campbell. Well the first 2 we visited weren't home. Then Sister Campbell looked at the last one and got nervous about going there, because she wasn't sure if this guy had a very good relationship with the church anymore. So we both mustered up all the courage we had and knocked on the door. A younger looking lady, mid-30's, answered the door and said that she was the girlfriend of the guy we were looking for. She told us he was really sick, but we could come in and talk to her. Over the time of our visit we found out that she wasn't a member, was in the middle of a divorce, her boyfriend, our less-active, had been really sick for 3 days, has 3 girls and the oldest, 14, wasn't making very good choices and needed Jesus in her life. We were able to tell her a little bit about our church and it's Young Women's and Activity Days programs. Sister Campbell has 4 girls from ages 14-23 so it was really perfect that she came with me that night! We taught Crystal a brief Restoration overview lesson and she really liked it. She said it all made sense and that her boyfriend had told her a little bit about it in the past. We aren't sure on his story yet, but we'll meet with them again this week and finally meet him! We gave her a Book of Mormon and she said she'll read it. I know that we were supposed to go visit Crystal that exact night with Sister Campbell. She really needs the Gospel in her life right now and she is really thirsting for it. They've been going to a baptist church for a few months, but they don't really like how their preacher talks bad about other churches. She wants to find the truth! I'm so grateful I got to meet Crystal and her daughters. I hope we can keep meeting with them and help them find the truth and light that they all desperately need right now!

Earlier that day we were out tracting and saw a small miracle. We came to this house and a lady in about her 60's answered. She didn't seem too interested, but she did let us say a prayer with her. She asked us to pray for her and her husband's health. Let me tell you, the spirit comes in so strong through prayer! When we finished I had started tearing up and Miss Margaret had too! She then told us that she'd had cancer and was in remission. Her husband had been sick as well. She said they really appreciated and needed that prayer that day. I love praying with people so much.

I just love seeing the light and happiness that the spirit brings to them after we finish those prayers. We've been planting lots of seeds through these doorstep blessings. Sometimes we'll just give them a mormon.org card. Other times we'll set up a return appointment, but they don't come. Just knowing the fact that I was able to brighten someone's day and bring them closer to Christ makes it all okay for me. Unless I'm having a day where I'm impatient and say to myself as Elder Bednar says, "I WANT BAPTISMS NOW." Faith in the Lord's timing and then doing ALL you can to fulfill your purpose is everything, as I've said like every week. I don't know what will happen with Miss Margaret or Crystal. But I know Heavenly Father LOVES each of His children and has a specific PERFECT plan for each of them. He even has a plan for my visa(; I know this gospel is true and that our church is directed by Jesus Christ. Jesus is our Savior and Redeemer. He wants to help us. His Atonement is REAL.

-Sister Oviatt

-Ou JieMei