Chapters 37 and 38: All Shook Up (special double feature)

(letter from LAST week that she forgot to send)

First off quick apology to my Mom about the following. I'm safe, and everything is good.

BUT there have been so many earthquakes lately!! There was one on Sunday morning (at like 3:30). I was asleep and for some reason my bed just kinda started to shake pretty bad and i was really confused... and then I realized it was an earthquake haha. And then last night there was a 5.8 magnitude on the east coast, and apparently it shook things up pretty bad. We were riding the bus back from Taipei so what we felt we probably just thought was us going over bumps in the road, but the Elders said they're apartment was shaking like crazy. There were also 3 more smaller ones in the last 2 weeks too. So. Lets hope the earthquakes are just about done. it's a weird feeling having everything just kind start to shake around you haha.

This week was super awesome!! It was like the coldest I've ever been on my mission because the temperatures just dropped this week, but the good news is that no matter how cold or how rainy it is, the work goes on!! We taught a lot of awesome people this week and had a lot of cool experiences. One thing that is super exciting is that Zhuang JieMei is getting baptized on Saturday!! She is so golden and so awesome. It's been amazing to see how much the gospel has changed her in so little time. When I moved to Yilan, the first time I met her we taught the plan of salvation, and now she is getting baptized!! One thing that has been the biggest help in her change is the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon has serious power. It literally changes lives. I know it changed mine, and I have seen it change other people's too. I love President Monson's last general conference talk. In it, he promises us if we read the Book of Mormon everyday, "we will be in a position to hear the voice of the Spirit, to resist temptation, to overcome doubt and fear, and to receive heaven’s help in our lives." Like WHAT. Those are like the coolest promised blessings ever. Maybe that's why there's so many earthquakes, Taiwan is still shook from that talk, almost a year later. But seriously, the Book of Mormon is so important! I hope we are reading it everyday like President Monson invited us to. It's never too late to start!!

Quick last miracle story!! On Saturday we were teaching Zhuang JieMei at her house, and afterwards we had to go catch a train to Su'ao (a town farther south on the coast, way too far to bike to). Well we ended up getting out of the lesson late, our train was leaving in 15 minutes, and she lives like a 20 minute (comfortable speed) bike ride away from the station. It was also the last train we could take our bikes on for 2 hours, so we HAD to catch this train. We started biking as fast as we could, but there was a BRIDGE. And it was big. Biking over bridges is a little rough haha. But we kept biking and as we were biking I was just praying the whole time that the train would be late so that we could make it to our appointment. We got to the train station one minute before the train was supposed to leave, and we still had to buy tickets. We ran up the stairs (carrying our bikes, there was no time to wait for the elevator) and to my great surprise, our train was delayed 4 minutes!! It was such a tender mercy. By the time we bought our tickets and hurried down to the platform, the train pulled up and we were able to make it to our appointment! It was like the greatest miracle ever, and this experience taught me a lesson too, about grace. When we try our hardest and do our very best, there is still no possible way to become perfect. We may be biking as fast as we can, but no matter what, we still aren't going to make the train. But that's where Christ's grace comes in. There's no way we could have made the train late or wait for us, and there's no way we personally can become perfect on our own. We need Christ. 2 Nephi 25:23 says "it is by grace that we are saved after all we can do." We need to do everything we can to be able to become like Christ, and then He will finish the rest. If we wouldn't have biked as fast as we could, we still wouldn't have made the delayed train. But because we put our whole effort into trying to make the train, we were able to make it! Basically the moral of this story is Christ's grace is enough for everybody. We all need it. We also all need to do our own part, we need to do all that we possibly can to become like Christ, and then is His grace sufficient for us. Then He will make up the rest.

Hopefully that made sense.

I love you all!! Have a wonderful week!!

Love,

Sister Larson

林姐妹

(letter from THIS week)

新年快樂!!
This week Chinese New Year is starting and things are getting super busy. For everyone else haha. Because everyone is super busy, no one wants to meet with us, no one is going to be home, and nothing will be open. So this is going to be a super fun week! I'm actually super excited because the members are feeding us lunch and dinner every single day from this Tuesday to next Tuesday. They have been passing around a sign up sheet for the last couple of weeks at church. I don't know how it is in other missions, but here we are lucky if we get invited to dinner once during the week. Most of the time nobody feeds us dinner. Except for this week!! It's going to be so awesome.
Also ps sorry I forgot to send my email last week. I had it all typed out and then I guess I forgot to hit send? Haha #oops
But also last week's email is kind of outdated talking about earthquakes because on Tuesday night there was a huge earthquake in Hualian, just south of us here in Yilan. It shook us up a bit, but it wasn't as bad here as it was in Hualian. Honestly I was already asleep and was just kind of super confused, so we just waited for it to be over and then went back to sleep haha. There have been a few aftershocks since then, but nothing too big. Parts of the paint on our ceiling always falls down when there's an earthquake though, so when we wake up and there's dried paint on the floor, we know there was an earthquake that we didn't wake up to haha.
In other news this week, Zhuang JieMei got baptized!! It was a super awesome baptism and her testimony was so great. She bore testimony of how the Book of Mormon has helped her a lot and how she has felt the Savior's love through repentance. As she was bearing testimony, a good feeling came over me and I just knew that what she was saying was true. Her testimony helped strengthen mine. It's moments like these, watching people totally change their lives, becoming happier people, welcoming Christ into their lives, that makes everything that I do here worth it. All the praying, studying, biking in the rain, it's all worth it to just see one person come unto Christ and be baptized. Ah I love this work so much.
Other highlights from the week:
Sister Tu made curry for breakfast one day (She makes breakfast everyday) and then for lunch we also ate curry. It was like the best day ever.
We biked 15 km to Su'ao yesterday, and then biked back. It was actually super pretty!!
Last P day we all went to the church and watched 17 Miracles. We really related to the pioneers in the movie because the chapel was like 10 degrees and we were so cold haha.
We had a cool activity last night where the missionaries taught the members how to use technology to share the gospel with their friends. It was super cool and we got everyone to share something with someone else! I don't think we realized it's not that they aren't willing to share the gospel, it's just that they don't know how! It was super cool to teach them how easy it is to share the gospel with their friends.
That's about it for this week! Hope you have a great week! Celebrate Chinese New Year by eating some Chinese food or something haha.
Love,
Sister Larson
林姐妹

0. I got to see my favorite friends from SongShan last night!!