The Book of Mormon is BEAUTIFUL.

Happy leap day! We had a pretty decent week this week. I feel like it had a good balance between finding, teaching, and teaching our RC's and LA's. I think the miracle of the week was finding 6 new investigators.

On Tuesday we were out finding and ran into this neighborhood where every door we knocked was greeted by an amah(grandma) or an agong(grandpa) saying, "No. We're Buddhist." "We don't have time." "Our beliefs are a little bit different." and other things like that. We even met one amah that said, "I don't believe in your church. I believe in the 4 children." Then we were like, "Oh you have 4 kids? Cute!" Then she responded, "No. I don't. But the 1,000元 bill does." 
​We laughed, then told her that there is more to life than money, and went on our way. It was just a neighborhood full of Buddhist, greedy, grandmas, and grandpas. Earlier in the mission I would've been a little dejected by this, but we kept going with faith and didn't get distracted.

Sister Tan then felt like we should walk up an apartment building and start knocking it. I was thinking, No. My hips hurt. My back hurts. There is no elevator. No. But we went up anyways. Guess what? The first door we knocked let us in! Her name is Fan JM. She is an aborigine, and has been a Christian her whole life. She just hasn't really gone to church much in the last few years because her family life has gotten really busy and hard. She is divorced and has 2 boys. From what we understood one of her sons lives with her husband in the town over and the other boy has ran away from home and she doesn't know where he is. When we prayed for her she asked that we just pray that he was safe and had peace. She said I don't care if he doesn't want to come home, I just want him to be save and have peace. Sister Tan and I both started to tear up when she said that. She has so much pure love for her children! She was willing to sacrifice her seeing them, for them to be happy.  It reminded us of the love that each of our mothers have for us. 

We were then able to talk about how our church is different from other churches and give her a Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is beautiful. The spirit is beautiful. I wanted to share with her a scripture about how God loves His children no matter where they are or what land they're in, but I couldn't think of it. So I got out the Book of Mormon and said, "Can we share a scripture with you?" But I had no idea what scripture to share. Later I found out that Sister Tan was trying to figure out what scripture to share, too. We started explaining what the Book of Mormon was, how it's the same as the Bible, how it's different. Then the words, Alma 26:37, came into my mind. It's been one of my favorite verses of my mission. I'll share it again, in case you forgot. "Now my brethren, we see that God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth. Now this is my joy, and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever. Amen." She was really touched by that scripture, and Sister Tan and I were shocked at how well it related to her situation. Thank you, Holy Ghost! Her work is really hard, and the schedule isn't very set, but she was still willing to set up with us again. We haven't seen her since then, but we know that the Lord will put the prepared in our path. When she needs us again God will make it happen.

Other than that cool miracle, we met some other cool people on the street, had a pretty good English Class, miraculously met with some LA's, and got dropped by a few baptismal date investigators.

There's your week in Zhudong! This next week is Sister Tan's last full week as a missionary. It's been really hard & weird to say the least. Killing a companion, then dying the next transfer will be a challenge. I feel like I'm dying twice. But we've really gotta stay focused this week and build up this area! Pray for us!

His work never ends.

-Sister Oviatt