A White Christmas

Christmas(ish) was amazing! Oh where to begin. So Christmas Eve Sister Howard and I decided to take caroling to the next level...at a night market that was hoppin. Holy there were oodles and oodles of peeps out at the night market. WE took along one of our favorite recent converts- Zhou Zhi Yi. She really is the most American Taiwanese person I have met and I love because guess what...she has a sense of sarcasm :) She is so great. Anywho she went with us and we went for about an hour. We basically would stand at one of the entrances and sing Christmas songs. Just the two of us and then Zhi Yi would pull people over to listen, or start talking to them about the church or take video/pics of us. Once we finished a song (mind you Sister howard can sing. like seriously she is good. so basically I just kind of sing along and do lots of smiling and sway my hips back and forth) we would start talking to the few people gathered around. Add 'em (set up to meet with them and give them a baptismal goal). and then move on to the next corner. It was SO fun. Bah! Seriously. I'm figuring out that being a missionary basically means you can do rad slash maybe ridiculous stuff and it works becuase people will talk to you. (plus with alll the asians around bunches of them just wanted to take pictures with us so there we were doing more add-ing). Very memorable christmas eve!

And and speaking of memories/memorable- so often I find myself thinking. Gosh! If only I could just take this little memory or moment bottle it up and save it forever. I just love it all and am a smidge worried I'm going to forget things...someday. poop.

So Christmas Day. We woke up at 5:40 in the AM to go to breakfast with a lady in our ward who treateded us to an "american" Christmas buffet at one of the hotels in Tainan. ha. Her husband turned out to be an American from Ohio who (huge cinncinati reds fan...shout out) is a none member. They were both great to us. Then we headed back to the apartment nice and early- had personal study and duhduhduh acted out the nativity for comp study. with pictures. I will send them sometime. two person nativity was pretty hilarious. I hope christmas day was lovely down there. tell the boys I missed them! The rest of the day was missionary mode.

The climax: White Christmas!! You Mei=Yummy got baptized. It was the most amazing experience of my mission thus far. I will try to describe why but I am sure I won't do it justice. So one more time, yummy is deaf. She can read english and chinese so all of our lessons have been a combination of both. We would write in english and her aunt, who is the member that reffered her, would write in Chinese. But becuase we were writing we taught her doctrine. The basic doctrines with lots of scriptures. She couldn't answer questions more then a yes or no nod or smile. She couldn't really ask questions becuase she signs in Japanese (she grew up in Japan). So we really didn't know if she was reading and praying everyday. We just prayed hard that she was understanding everything and that we were clearly explaining it all. She picked her own baptismal date - Christmas. The little meeting before her baptism was really neat. Her aunt (who is the institue teacher and really solid) spoke and tried to speak to Yummy with clear lip-reading ish (sorry I don't know if this is making sense). And then sister howard sang silent night and used american sign language to sign it. Yep its a miracle that she knew how to do that. Then yummy was baptized by her cousin. The coolest part was afterwards though. She had written down her testimony and her aunt read it. In her testimony she talked about principles of God and Jesus Christ and her relationship with them that we NEVER taught her. She talked about how she knew God lived and he helped her and knew her. She talked about how reading and praying everyday was so important. I promise we taught her the most basic of doctrine becuase we could only write so much in a 20/30 minute lesson. Both Sister Howard and I looked at each other as her aunt was reading her testimony and blinked back tears becuase oh my goodness the spirit taught her. The spirit taught her the the whole time. We didn't do anything. Like nothing. I feel so humbled to have been a small, tiney tiny part of whatever she learned. We really were blessed to just watch the miracle of Yummy getting baptized. And more than ever I know how important the spirit is in missionary work. We as missionaries really are nothing without the spirit. I will never forget this Christmas.

So that's about it. Oh at the beginning of the week we had sister exchanges. I went to Xi Tainan (East Tainan) with one of the native sisters, Sister Chen. She was great, like seriously awesome. It was kind of cool becuase she spoke Chinese the whole time and I had no problem understanding her. And I promise it wasn't me- the gift of interpretation is real. I can understand and follow way more than I should be able to. Another blessing. Man I love this life!

And the Mission Christmas Activity was cool. We had to wake up way early to catch a train up to Zhanghua where we checked out the big buddha and ate at the Taichung Steak House. All 150+ of us. Then we had a Christmas Devo and all the trainees were introduced to the mission. yep me, a trainee. It was great. But weird to not be a missionary for an entire day- didn't really love that.

Well I love this life! And I love you all and hope you are safe and loving every minute of the beach, ocean and sailing.

MEREEEEEE MEREEEE Happy Birthday!!! 19!! Oooo I just love you!!! like I said- check your provo mail box sometime next week. I hope it was a good one. I love you!!

Talk to you in 2011. weird. loves sister demordaunt.

Oh and Dean Family!! Thank You for the delicious granola! It is a treat to eat every morning!! Thank you!!