frogs in the rice paddies, what we do to get recent converts to church, and the chinese mrs. bennett- March 4, 2013

dajia hao.


so sorry my time is short. this morning we went to an amusement park called fancy land. it wasn't quite bambi's father-level fancy (as afton once remarked) but it was still pretty grand. i didn't get dizzy till the swing ride which was probably totally karma for a couple years ago when we went to liberty park for my birthday and mom got dizzy on the swing ride and i laughed. oops. sorry mom.


i just sent you a bunch of pictures of me and sister l in fields of flowers. they compliment the pictures i mailed last week when we are standing in a field. one of our members sister hi was driving by us one day and was like "follow me i want to show you something!" and then took a ton of pictures for us. those fields of flowers used to be everywhere but recently they all got ripped up, flooded and are now replanted with what i think is rice. at night the frogs croak loudly from the rice paddies as we pedal home.


this sunday we had an extremely huge tender mercy......two of our recent converts haven't been to church in months. the ge sisters are 10 and 11 and their parents are non-members. a while ago their mom stopped driving them to church on sunday and it's way too far for them to walk. sister l has been trying to get them to church since december and this week we finally did it. they are pretty hard to track down but through a serious of miracles we found their parents' new beetlenut shop and bar and arranged to give them a "morning call" on sunday which would entail us riding our bikes to their house early in the morning because they always sleep through our phone calls. we left our house early and biked up the big hill where sisters yi, huang, guo, and li all live.


we knocked and called out their names in the still gray morning. finally they came down but we woke up everyone in the house. thankfully her parents were really nice. and it was almost 9 o’clock so really i didn't feel THAT bad. we had arranged for a woman in our ward to come and get them but she wanted to meet at this park that turned out to be really far away and then didn't answer our phone calls when we wanted to change plans. we were panicking a little bit and praying non-stop. after a few more phone calls we got a hold of brother yang who came and got all of us in his car even though he was already almost to the church. we were about 20 minutes late for church and got there right as they were serving the water. still it was such a glorious feeling to get them there and they were so happy. to try to keep them happy during the first hour i gave them some pens and paper to draw. they both wrote me little notes saying thank you for coming to get us and take us to church. then they were starving so i got them some food another member gave us (sister yang brings us lunch every sunday) and they ate rolls in between classes. everyone in the ward was so welcoming to them and it was just a beautiful beautiful thing.


i didn't explain that as well as i wanted....but it really meant to much to us that those little girls could make it to church. we just feel the urgency to help them keep the church in their lives which will give them so much protection and help as they continue to grow.


God hears us. He answers. sometimes it isn't in our time table, but He answers!!!!!! it's all important to Him. each of you is so precious in His sight :)
love love love

coco


PS next week is movecall!!!! keeping my fingers crossed that i get to stay here in this marvelous place!!!!!!!!