Here are a few of the fun things that happened this week: Sister Robinson took us out to eat last p-day and let us come over and do laundry and play with little Zoey, who is one of Sister Luk’s very favorite little kids. (Sister Luk LOVES kids — she always gives them her cute Chinese stickers before we leave.) Sister Luk had her first experience using a crow bar as we helped someone tear up some sub flooring — she said it was “super fun” — like the lawn mower. 🙂 We had a Relief Society activity this Thursday. I was a little bit confused about it at first — it sounded like we were just going on a walk. But we met at the church together to start, and we had a neat little spiritual thought on pioneers, so then the walk made a little more sense. It was really fun to walk and talk with the women in the ward — I love these ladies!
There’s a lady we’ve been visiting who has lots of hard things to overcome. We invited her to read 2 Nephi 2 from The Book of Mormon and watch the talk Tomorrow the Lord Will Do Wonders Among You. When we came back, she had inspirational quoted posted around her house inspired by the talk, and she had read the entire chapter and had pages of notes and insights. She said, “I hope it’s okay, I sort of put myself in these promises and applied it to me.” Yes!! That’s exactly what we are supposed to do with scriptures–“liken” them to ourselves!! (1 Ne. 19:23) We shared with her one of my favorite quotes by President Benson, which I have a strong testimony of:
“It is not just that the Book of Mormon teaches us truth, though it indeed does that. It is not just that the Book of Mormon bears testimony of Christ, though it indeed does that, too. But there is something more. There is a power in the book which will begin to flow into your lives the moment you begin a serious study of the book. You will find greater power to resist temptation. You will find the power to avoid deception. You will find the power to stay on the strait and narrow path. The scriptures are called ‘the words of life’ (D&C 84:85), and nowhere is that more true than it is of the Book of Mormon. When you begin to hunger and thirst after those words, you will find life in greater and greater abundance.”
This woman said she’s already seen aspects of this promise be true in her life. 🙂
We had exchanges this week. I stayed in our area and Sister Luk went to the Roch 3 Hermana’s area. That ended up being a tiny bit problematic, because we got an email from a Chinese mom who wanted to take her son to the 11-year-old scout activity at the church. Right now, she has her mom and a friend staying with her from China who speak no English. So we went to her house– yeah! of course! you can totally come! we’re so excited! And then got back in our car, and, as she drove behind us, following us to the church, we panicked, trying to call everyone we knew who speaks Chinese because the two women who speak only Chinese were coming to the church, too, and we wanted to be able to talk to them and give them a tour of the building. As we’re frantically trying to call people (our list of Chinese speakers really isn’t very long), and I’m trying to drive and not lose the Chinese family following me, we totally got lost and took a super long, weird way to the building. It was crazy. When we got there, Brother Ebert, the 11-year-old scout leader (who we’d texted about the situation) was waiting in the foyer with Wesley, the only other 11-year-old scout who came that day. That day, the scouts were working on a public speaking merit badge, and Wesley had prepared a presentation on scurvy. (Yes, he chose his own topic.) So we sat and listened to the scurvy speech — it was hilarious — and then Brother Ebert found out that ZiQi, the Chinese boy, likes basketball, and we played some lightning. Probably the highlight of the whole crazy situation was one of the cute Chinese ladies coming into the gym, all dressed up, and shooting the basketball.
We are super excited that a Chinese man and a woman who served her mission in Taiwan recently moved into our ward — we invited them to joint teach with us this week, and they are awesome!!
Sunday (yesterday) was pretty fantastic — we had nine investigators come to sacrament meeting — including the Chinese family from the crazy exchange day! Poor Sister Luk was struggling to try and translate the meeting from English to Mandarin — neither one of which is her native language (Cantonese). We also went out to the Kasson branch, where we’d been asked to speak. That was the most unprepared I’ve ever been for a Sacrament meeting talk, but we were supposed to speak on repentance, which is something we think and talk and teach about a lot, so I guess we were prepared with things we’ve been thinking about throughout our missions (and lives). One of the things that I’ve learned about repentance recently is that it is really synonymous with conversion. In my talk, I talked a little about the role the Sacrament plays in repentance. There is a fantastic talk I read this week on the Sacrament. It’s called “This Do in Remembrance of Me,” by Elder Holland in a 1995 Conference address. There is a Mormon Message based on that talk that is one of my favorites — you should definitely watch it. It will help you appreciate and understand the significance of the Sacrament even more! It’s called Always Remember Him.
We just got done waxing our cars. The zone leaders made us do it. We were pretty salty about it, but the zone leaders did buy the wax and help us, and in their defense, they were just trying to avoid the wrath of the new vehicle coordinator who apparently has been coming down hard on these things. (I’m pretty sure no one in the mission has hand-waxed one of the mission cars before — that’s okay, we’re repenting now!) It wasn’t so bad.
Love you! Hope you have a great week at the Hansen reunion!!
p.s. Sister Luk and I are doing a musical number in Sacrament meeting next week — the day before Pioneer Day! We’re really excited. Our song is called Prayer of the Walking Child, and it’s beautiful. 🙂
Sister Winters 