Hello Beautiful Family Dear,
I love you all! You are all the best! Collectively and individually, consecutively, concurrently and irregularly and all!
Thank
you for your continued care and love and support. It has really helped
me throughout my whole mission. And here's the weird thing I just
realized this morning: I only email like this about 8 more times or
something. Good Heavens. Sad and yet not sad. Strange, I suppose. I am
working hard to make the most of this last part of my mission. As
President Uchtodorf says, we're always in the middle of our missions
anyways. True!
I was just thinking though, there is no other time
where I will have such a clear direction, such a purpose, and such
support to do it. Mission work is hard, but you get to labor with the
Lord of the vineyard, as it says in Jacob 5 and D&C 88, and there is
nothing better. It's very happy. This past year (and more) of my life
has been the best. I feel like the Lord has taught me a lot. And has yet
to teach me many things....
But yes, what has happened this week? Well, nothing
much and yet LOTS! Oh, the miracles never cease. Sister Palmer (who is a
quick learner) and I have noticed that we seem to have themes of
different weeks. The week before was Finding week. This week was
Referrals week. Unfortunately, we can't seem to combine the two yet, but
maybe we can find a balance in our work soon.
So, this week our ward had a huge day trip (they love
those here in Hong Kong) and our members brought TONS of friends. We
spent the day going from place to place, kind of like a field trip. We
started off picking strawberries at a farm, then we went to go eat
vegetarian food at this Buddhist monastary thing, then we went to go eat
this special tofu at this middle-of-no-where shop, then we went to a
noodle factory. Yep, the whole thing was based around food. It was the
best. Just my kind of field trip, I tell you. Everyone thoroughly
enjoyed themselves, and we got to meet lots of non-members.
In fact, we got 8 referrals in total this week! Wow!
That's crazy right? But in our own efforts finding this week, we
only got 1 person's phone number. Pretty big difference, no? These
referrals (mostly from this day trip) are mostly interested in our free
English class right now (they are all parents of young kids who are
learning English), but 5 of them came to this class this week! SO, what I
mean to say is, things are bulding up and are starting to get really
exciting. Yay!
As for our investigators, this week's been pretty
exciting too. So, Lulu, who was in Mainland over the holiday came back
to town. And we missionaries were astounded once again with how prepared
she is. She accepted a baptismal date for Feb 10, and she said she will
pray and read every day till then! She is very sensitive to the Spirit,
and there were several points in the lesson that we taught where we
could see her just "get it". WOw. She is coming to the ward's FHE with
us tonight! Yay!
Also, Ammon's had an exciting week. We found out that
AMay's family, the one's who just got baptized, lives practically next
door to Ammon! They live on the same floor of one of these high rises.
Crazy! So we've started having lessons at their home as well as at the
church. It's such a big help. Amay, the mother, even lent him her triple
combination one day. What a huge blessing! In other news, Ammon had
committed to come to church this Sunday with us, but he called us on Sat
evening saying that he didnt' feel prepared. Sigh. So we talked with
him for a long time, and he just basically feels that, since he's been
going to his church for such a long time, that it's right for him. But
he was willing to see us yesterday afternoon. It was one of those
lessons where they're different at the end than when we started. We went
over the restoration again, focusing on the priesthood, and had a
member, Freddy, there, who had just gotten the Melkizedek priesthood
that day. It was powerful. Ammon agrees that he's not quite done his
part to get an answer and will read 10 min of BoM everyday this week.
And come to church on the 20th! Yay! I think he's just afraid to change,
is all.
Well, it's really a privilege to get to teach all of
these people. They are good examples to me, and much stronger people
that I think I've ever been. We love them a lot. And we're excited to
keep finding more people.
I know that this work is God's work, and that He loves us.
I love you all too!
Love,
Sister Nielsen
Here are some photos of the view out of our apartment of Tai Po and Tolo Harbour. There are lots of very steep mountains here, and it's very lovely.
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