Sister Mack
MTC July 24, 2012
Dajia hao!
Ok I literally will be
leaving this country 2 weeks from today. Is anyone else freaking out??? Or as
we say in Chinese: shenme dong dong? (What thing?) Hahaha.
Alright. I've had a
lot of incredibly awesome experiences this week but I will probably only get to
share a couple of them with you. Let's dive right in....
On Wednesday night we
had a really unique opportunity. Every Wednesday when the new missionaries come
in they get to teach 3 investigators in big groups. It's kind of crazy and
intimidating but also really humbling and cool. For each investigator, they
have missionaries who have been here for a while come in to start the lesson.
Well it just so happens that our teachers recommended me and my companion to be
those missionaries that go in and start the lesson. It was a little
intimidating but we were so excited to do it. We had a workshop for it on
Monday night and basically just talked the whole time about how important it is
to love people and to really care about them and listening to what they are
saying . . . it was so uplifting. So on
Wednesday we had an especially sweet experience with our second investigator.
We later found out that he's actually a member but the things that transpired
in the 8 minutes we spent with him were really really powerful. When he first
let us in to the room he couldn't stop talking about how young and cute we were
and how we couldn't possibly be missionaries because we were not 40 or 50 but
in fact looked like we were 15! He told us his friend told him he'd be sending
2 cute sister missionaries to come and sing for him. We laughed at that one and
brushed it off at first. We even joked about how maybe he could sing for us. He
was very persistent though. We finally sat down in his "living room"
and said we had a great message to share with him and he said "Great, I
would love to hear it if you sing for me first." At this point Jin JieMei
and I realized that we probably weren't going to get anywhere if we didn't
comply with his wish. With about 50 new missionaries watching us and both of us
speaking into microphones I panicked for a moment. Thankfully Jin JieMei was
thinking clearly and said we would be happy to sing but we would rather have
our mics turned off and have all the missionaries sing with us. For some reason
I felt like we should sing "I Am a Child of God". I later found out
that that was what Jin JieMei felt impressed to sing too. It was such a clear
and obvious choice and I know that it was a prompting from the Spirit. We all
sang the first verse together and I smiled the whole time just cause I couldn't
help but laugh a little at my situation and at the same time just felt so
happy. He looked at us very intently with his bright little eyes and was
grinning the whole time.
When it was over he
thanked us so sincerely. He then proceeded to explain what a wonderful feeling
was inside him as we sang. He said he felt so happy and he was grateful because
he felt like it really helped him to know who we were. Even though he didn't
remember all the lyrics, he said he was very impressed by what he felt. Jin
JieMei, once again totally on the ball, told him we'd be happy to write down
the words for him. My heart was so full of love for this man I had only known
for 5 minutes. I was so happy and absorbed in the moment and suddenly we were
being cut off by the workshop leader who was turning the time over to the new
missionaries!! We sat in the back of the room and wrote out the lyrics of the first
verse of "I Am a Child of God", our testimonies, and a couple of
scriptures we felt impressed to share that would strengthen him and help him
with his concerns. We gave it to him afterwards and he reiterated the great
feelings he felt while we sang and graciously praised our voices which
embarrassed us both. Then he said that he knows that singing like that, in a
sense bearing our testimonies through music, will really resonate with Asian
people (he is from Japan) and that we should look for opportunities to do so
when we get to Taiwan.
I know he felt the
Spirit of God. I know even though all 3 of us are members of the Church, that
experience helped us all come closer to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.
I also know that it
wasn't a coincidence that I lost my voice the next day instead of on Wednesday.
All things happen for a reason. May I be brave and wise enough to always heed
the promptings of the Spirit and to always do good as I sing out the good news
of the gospel to the people of Taiwan!
On Saturday in the TRC
we had a very interesting experience which I will endeavor to describe in about
6 minutes. We had a really awesome lesson plan, I have to say it. But
unfortunately it was a lesson plan that really only would have worked had we
taught a member of the Church cause it was very much a discussion based in
their experiences with the gospel. Well this week at the TRC we had 3 actual
investigators come in as volunteers! And our teacher assigned one of them to
us!!! I was really excited at first and eager to throw myself into a more
realistic situation than what I have been used to, but things quickly went
further south than I would have liked. I don't know what it was, but we just
couldn't get our point across. We were trying to teach our investigator, a
Chinese woman, about how we can receive revelation through reading the Book of
Mormon. Jin JieMei and I both shared really personal experiences and I almost
started crying cause I could feel the Spirit so strongly, but it just wasn't
there for this woman. I felt like we hadn't really succeeded and I'm sorry to
admit that I was a whiney little pengke (punk) afterwards. But Heavenly
Father didn't let me stay that way for long! The rest of that day I had a lot
of really strengthening experiences and it mostly came from my interactions
with other people. An Elder in my district gave us a little pep talk, and one
of our teachers showed us a paragraph in Preach My Gospel that said no effort
in missionary work goes wasted. If we sincerely seek to have positive
interactions with people, and do our best to share our message and witness,
then we have done something good. I also had a really great talk with two of
the new sisters. One of them was feeling kind of down and suddenly I was
speaking all these encouraging words that definitely weren't coming from me. I
didn't know how much they touched her until a few days later when she showed me
she wrote them down.
I hate it when I let
the hard things about missionary work get to me and I let myself
temporarily forget my purpose. But I feel that God is all around me--in the
scriptures and in His children who bless me and love me and lift me up
each day. Missionary work is kind of a roller coaster ride because you
can experience the highest highs and the lowest lows in the same day. I'm
trying really hard this week to focus on my faith in Jesus Christ and to let
that guide me through each experience. I don't ever want to forget why I am
here. I am here to spread the joyous news of the gospel to God's children, to love
them and lift them and befriend them. What a tremendous honor and blessing.
I love you all. Keep
smiling and pressing forward in faith. I pray for you every day.
Love
Ke JieMei
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