Happy New Year! This weekend was the start of Chinese New Year! There have been CRAZY fireworks all weekend. Saturday night the Buddhist temple next to our house was doing fireworks the whole night. It was SO LOUD.
Also there was a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in the southern part of Taiwan. Pray for the people in Tainan!! This is basically the Chinese people's Christmas today, and some people have to spend it mourning. :( YES, We felt it all they way up here! It was super early in the morning and it felt like it lasted for a while. It was kinda freaky! ...mostly cuz it was so early. A few nights before I felt a little one while I was brushing my teeth. Pretty crazy living on an island! :) I love it.
Last week we went to XinZhu to get a charger for my camera and they threw in a card reader for free! YES. But when we were getting off the bus, the heels of my boots broke off because the glue got wet from the rain. Ratchet shoes. SO. I had to go drop $60 to buy new boots for the cold Zhudong winter. :/ It was a weird PDay. But today we are gonna have a good pday cuz we're going to get cheese stuffed crust pizza from Pizza Hut. HAPPY NEW YEAR. It's gonna be a good p(izza)day. (that was all Sister Tan. I promise.)
We had a surprisingly good week, despite the crazy guonian(new year) activities and the fact that we're the oldest companionship in the mission with breaking bodies. We were able to use whatever healthy time we had to our advantage. This week we're going to be healthy ALL week and use every single minute. We don't have any time to waste! The hardest part of this week was probably getting a call from our MM leader on Wednesday night. He said that he'd been talking with the bishop and were going to postpone our investigators baptism 2 weeks later than we'd planned. They said because this weekend is the start of guonian no one would be in Zhudong for her baptism and that next week would be the same. So Wen Jing's new date is for the 20th of February.
I was so sad and frustrated when I got of the phone with him, because we've been working so hard with her to get her ready for that date. She was also planning on going to the temple with her Mom on the 20th to do baptisms for her Grandma. But as Sister Tan and I have been talking about it more, we know that it was actually according to God's plan for her. We've been helping her through her repentance process. We found this week that for her to really be converted and have a "full baptism" she needed to completely finish her repentance process. She has some things she needs to confess and talk over with her mom in order for her to be completely forgiven. We'd told her to pray about making restitution with her mom a few weeks ago, but she decided she didn't want to. Then this week whenever we've asked how she feels about repentance she just says it's really painful and hard. She obviously hadn't fully repented or "felt to sing the song of redeeming love". (Alma 5:26) Now we're grateful that we have an extra 2 weeks to make sure that Wen Jing really understands the Atonement and repentance. I don't want to baptize just anyone who has finished all 5 missionary lessons and says they love Jesus. I want to Baptize Converts!
Have a good week! Don't forget to REMEMBER! (Helaman 5:12; Alma 5:26)
-Sister Oviatt
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