Letter #18 - "Do you have anywhere we can get our picture taken, like a photo store? -Uncle Rico (Feb. 19, 2017)

Excuse the strange title. See photos for clarification.

If this is my last week in Yuanlin, then I'm so grateful that I was able to serve here. While it's not perfect by any means, Yuanlin has become a bit of a heaven on earth for me. I wish I had the language skills to express to these people how much I love them. They have put a handprint on my heart. We won't know til next week if I'm leaving or staying, but time has gone so fast. Sister reeve and I want to work super hard for our last week. We have so much work to do. 

Highlights from this week: Wednesday we took a train to Tianzhong, our secondary area. We found several new people who we set up with! Sister Reeve and I both needed the pick-me-up and it was an awesome day. We play contacting games when we talk to  people and our favorite is Quidditch, where we give ourselves points for every tract we give, lesson we teach, Book of Mormon we give, and number, setup, and new investigator we get. Our goal was 500 and we ended the day with 560 points! Being a missionary can be fun you guys :)

The elders had a baptism Friday night and they realized last minute they had no one to play the piano. Somehow I was called on to play (be proud of me, Mom). I played every song I knew in the hymnbook and was feeling pretty good, but then our ward mission leader said "and now we will sing I am a child of God" which I had never played before!! Uhh... I struggled through it and it was very off key, but everyone told me it was fine. Oh well.

Last thing- one of our english class students came to church on sunday. He's an older man and is a little strange. near the end of sacrament meeting, he turned around in his seat and handed Sister Reeve and I a couple of pictures he took in 1993 of him with his shirt off. We quickly got up and left the chapel because we couldn't hold in our laughter, then started laughing our heads off! It was so ridiculous! So included for your viewing pleasure....

Photos this week also include lots of food and heart shaped pancakes on Valentines Day :)

Also! Next week cuz of transfer changes my P day willl be on tuesday.

Much love!!! sister Daynes

Letter #17 - The Story of Hong Dixiong & other miracles (Feb. 12, 2017)

The story of Hong Dixiong.

This is a story that is very near and dear to my heart, and has been a long time in the making.

 Our second week in Yuanlin, we started working with a part-member family. The wife is a member and they have two adorable little kids. When we first started meeting, their dad (Brother Hong, also known as Hong Dixiong) just didn't seem interested and we were kind of nervous around him cuz he didn't seem to really like us. But then he started asking us questions about God and we realized he was actually curious. We spent something close to two hours planning his lessons because we were just so nervous.

But over time, he started to change. We invited him to read one verse of the Book of Mormon every day. He did. And every time we met with him after that, he was happier. His relationship with his wife was better. He laughed! He became a person rather than just a name with a face. This man who we were scared of has become someone who we love so much. We love the Hong family and I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to know them. Finally we invited Hong Dixiong to be baptized and he said yes! We set a date for February 18th. 

But things have just not really worked out. We haven't had much time to teach him all of the lessons and he's not entirely sure of his personal testimony yet. So we're postponing the baptism so that he and his wife can focus on their brand new baby, who will be born we think on February 19th!!! We are so excited for them. 

We have seen God's love working in the life of this man. He has become a whole new person and it's amazing. We won't see him be baptized, but we have seen how God's light has touched and changed his life. And for me, that's enough. (Plus, his wife is super awesome. We know she'll get him baptized sometime soon :)

In other news, this transfer is going to be 5 weeks instead of 6. When Sister Reeve and I heard the news, I kinda broke down and cried...a lot. I'm not ready to leave her or be done with training. I had a week of training stolen from me and that was hard. But I have to have faith that the Lord knows where I need to go. 

In other other news, this week we met with Kelvin, who is Taiwanese but speaks amazing English!!! We were able to teach him the Joseph Smith story in English which was so weird but I loved it. He is looking for a church that he likes and we let him know that through prayer he can absolutely know that this one is true! He's been reading the Book of Mormon and it's so awesome!!!

We had a very strange lesson this week...a member invited us over to her house to meet her nonmember husband, who just quit smoking and drinking and she said he was ready to be baptized. But we show up and he's bustling around the room in his long john underwear...and he only speaks Taiwanese. He gave us hot pumpkin juice (it tasted nothing close to Harry Potter's), then went back into the kitchen to get lemon tea. When he came back and saw I hadn't drank all the pumpkin juice yet he yelled "YOU HAVEN'T DRUNK IT ALL?" He also gave us vinegar lemon (which tastes EXACTLY how it sounds). So in between the very sour faces we were making Sister Reeve and I worked up the courage to say..."Mmm...hao chi..." He also had no interest in gospel so we won't be meeting with him anytime soon. XD

And to end this letter on a very strange note, this week an old man pulled us over to the side of the road to ask if we were American and then told me I looked like I was related to Trump. Great. We are not immune to American politics over here, apparently. 

As you can see things are going pretty darn great here in Yuanlin :) I never want to leave. Pray that I'll survive transfers!

Also, the BIGGEST miracle of this week is that my wonderful friend Holly Lesser is COMING TO TAICHUNG WITH ME!!!!! I thought such a thing was too good to be true, but God really has a perfect plan. He sure loves us a whole lot. I AM SO HAPPY.

Much love!

Sister Daynes

Letter #16 - Lots of Food! (Feb. 5, 2017)

Sister Daynes' Very Official Rules for Missionaries regarding Eating with Members: 

(Since we were fed 7 TIMES this past week, I consider myself an expert on this topic now).

1. TALK. This is the most important rule, so it's going first! This is an awesome opportunity to get to know your members. Even if you can't speak the language and barely know what's going on, try to speak up as much as you can in order to help your desperate companion who is struggling to carry the entire dinner conversation all by herself.

2. Be gracious. Tell them how awesome their food is every five minutes or so. Because it usually is fantastic.

3. Try even the weird food. If you don't like it, you will probably make a weird face and the members will laugh hysterically at you. It makes for a fun time. Also I think it's secretly one of the members' favorite forms of entertainment. So try it all just to say you've tried it once, even if it looks like a snozzcumber and tastes like hand sanitizer. (There is this thing called bittermelon).

4. Make sure you know exactly WHEN AND WHERE you will be meeting said members. Don't let them bully you into taking an hour long bus ride to their house, because that wastes a lot of time and makes for some very unhappy missionaries. If you have to travel a ways, make sure you have transport back, or you will be waiting at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere with no way to get home. Again, not very happy missionaries :(

5. Make sure to let them know (very kindly) before the appointment that you only have an hour of time. Meeting with members is so much fun and amazing that it's easy to get comfortable, but the rule is one hour only, so we need to follow that rule and then go out to serve others. There are others who need to hear the gospel! Also it's important to let them know beforehand, otherwise you could find yourself at someone's house for 2 hours or more because they don't start making the food until you get there.

6. If the nonmembers you're meeting with try to show you a movie, offer to show them Meet the Mormons instead :)

7. If the members take you to the same shabu shabu place for the third time, don't you dare tell them. Frantically whisper to the waiter (who has now seen you at the same restuarant 3 times) not to tell the member either. 

7. Above everything else, DO NOT allow your elders to drink 14 yogurt drinks at one lunch appointment. They will regret it later.

All of these things actually happened. It was a great week. :) Good luck to all missionaries out there who have lunch appointments, and good luck to the members who feed them! Sorry I don't have much more time, but I hope this was helpful.

Much love to you all,

Sister Daynes :)

A letter to my family on Week 13 (Jan. 22, 2017) "WE FOUND KYLE HARRISON!"

His name is Albert. He is from Virginia and teaches English to kids, he's been here for a bout 3 years! We ran into him on Christmas Eve and talked for a while. We've seen him out running around the places where we usually bike and we wave to him. Then when we left church on Sunday he was walking right by the church!

We stopped to talk to him and it was SOOOOOOO WEIRD AND AWESOME to talk to somebody in English!!!!!! He's going to Hong Kong for CNY, so even the white guy isn't free to meet for the next two weeks (nobody is). But we just talked and it was super chill! We asked if he had a specific religion, he said no, he's agnostic.

So I said, "Well you know, if you have interest we'd love to teach you about the church, this is what we do 24 hours a day!" He said, "You know, I'd actually like that. I'm actually really curious about this church building. It's just like a synagogue or something, it's interesting to learn about this stuff."

So we got his number!!!! He said it'd be great to meet after CNY. It was sooooooo weird and awesome!!! HE IS KYLE HARRISON! He's just a guy bumming around Asia, teaching English cuz he doesn't know what else to do with his life. Little did he know that he might've come to Asia just to find the restored gospel!!!!!!!!!!

We do have a small problem tho. All the church services are in Chinese....

I seriously feel more like Elder Calhoun every day. I actually asked one of our investigators if he wanted to be baptized tomorrow. (I was kidding tho, and he knew that and we all had a good laugh over it!) But seriously. I am him.

Letter #15 - Guo Nian Yihou (Jan. 22, 2017)

"Guo nian yihou."

My companion and I have come to fear those words. Next week is Chinese New Year (Guo nian), which is just the biggest shindig in the whole country. We're really excited to see what it will be like, but also nervous. For one thing, everyone either leaves to go be with family, holds big family gatherings at their home, or is too busy cleaning their houses, getting work out of the way, and doing other stuff to get ready for Guo Nian. This is why the words "After Guo Nian" as in, we'll be free to meet after Guo Nian, have become our worst nightmare. 

In addition to that, from what I can tell, Guo Nian is a time when people eat a lot. of. food. Well, the Bishop wants us to help strengthen the ward, so he's arranged for them to feed us LUNCH AND DINNER EVERY DAY FOR THE NEXT 20 DAYS. Sister Reeve and I are scared. We are going to get fat. Especially since the diet here consists of a lot of rice, noodles and dumplings. So yeah, pray that we'll be able to find people to teach and that they won't all say GNYihou. And that we will not get too fat. Thanks.

As for this past week....oh, how my companion and I had high hopes. We wanted to be able to meet with all our investigators before Guo Nian. We had so many lessons planned for the week- we were flying high and super excited!!

Then one by one, our lessons began dropping like flies, our hopes popping like bubbles. We found ourselves wondering why this had happened? We had tried extra extra hard to be obedient this week. We were wroking as hard as we could. And yet everything fell through. Why had this happened?

After a while I realized this wasn't the question we should be asking. Instead, we started paying attention to what HAD happened. Our lesson count for the week still ended super high, mostly from lessons we had when we would talk to people on the streets. We got to meet with the most important people, helped strengthen some of the recent converts, and experienced some very BIG miracles. Most importantly, our investigator Hong Dixiong has a baptismal date for Feb 18th!!!!!!!! Pray that he will make it. We are so excited for him! It's been amazing to see the changes the gospel has worked in his life.

I know God is watching out for me all the way out here in Taiwan! Much love to all of you :)

Sister Daynes

Letter #14 - "Because I'm Happy"

It was so great to go contacting this week after a week of mostly staying inside! It taught me how to count my blessings. This week was amazing!! Miracles happen when we get out the door!

First miracle: CHEN JIE MEI DIDN'T DROP US!! We went to meet with her one more time at the church, and she said every time she met with us she would have a really good feeling and it would make her so happy...but then she would go home and think "I shouldn't meet with them, I'm Buddhist." Plus her brother tells her a lot of anti-mormon stuff which is just really sad...so every time she would come to meet with us her plan was to drop us. But as soon as we started talking to her she would feel so good and happy inside, and she didn't know what it was. We told her, "That feeling is the Holy Ghost. It's God telling you that this is true and that He wants you to keep meeting with us." That made her soooo excited!!! We explained what the Holy Ghost, and that lesson was so crazy because I couldn't really follow what was going on, she was talking so fast, but I kept opening my mouth anyway. I would just say whatever came into my head, and it seemed to really help her. The Holy Ghost really led that entire lesson. I had no idea what was happening, but at the end Sister Reeve said, "Can we choose a time to meet with you again?" and Chen Jie Mei said YES!!!! The Spirit was so strong that there was no way for her to deny it. She knes she had to meet again. Oh, my dear friends. This gospel is so true. <3

Second miracle: Ok this was awesome: So Saturday night we had planned to go tracting in Fairlyand (which is what Sister Reeve and I call a neighborhood where somebody always talks to us. We've found two investigators there already!) We were excited because the place is just magical and we love to go there. But as we were riding, we were passing a lot of busy streets where there were people walking around, and I thought "Fairyland is pretty far away...should we be talking to these people instead?" We stopped at a red light and I asked Sister Reeve what she thought. We quickly pulled over to a spot outside a 7/11 and decided to say a prayer right there, still straddling our bikes. While I was saying the prayer I had a distinct feeling: "Yes, you need to stay in that area." We finished the prayer and opened our eyes, and there was a family standing RIGHT NEXT TO US just looking at us. We said "Hallo!" and started talking to them. We ended up talking to them for something like 30 minutes! They're called the Wang family, there's a mom and dad and two boys. We asked if they believe in God and the mom said "Of course! If you and I exist, why wouldn't God?" They loved the idea of a restored gospel and we gave them a Book of Mormon! They were super interested and said we could meet again after Chinese New Year! Because we got that prompting, we were able to find that golden family!! The Holy Ghost is just great :)

This week I was looking back at some of my old journal entries from the MTC, and wow. I was so stressed. Worried about the language, worried about everything. But now that I've been here for five weeks (!!!) all of that stress has just flown away. Going out every day to talk to people and to try and serve them, and to talk about Christ and the joy he brings us, just fills me with a whole lot of joy.

I am so happy. I am so glad to be a missionary. Every day I wake up excited for what's going to happen that day. I feel as if my life is full of sunshine (even though it's actually freezing. What the heck, Taiwan). and I know it's God's light shining through me. I am so blessed that I get to share it with others.

Much love!

Sister Daynes

鄧 姐 妹 (Deng Jie Mei)

Pictures:

1) The YSA had a birthday party for one of the members at FHE and they started smearing cake on each others' faces. Twas a lot of fun :)

2) The wonderful Sister Reeve and I 

3) Arm wrestling. Sister Reeve beat everyone.

Letter #13 - Zhege Libai

I can write something cool in Mandarin in the title and suddenly I have all of your interests. That's pretty awesome. doesn't even matter that it only means "this week." It's still cool >.<

Not much happened this week as poor Sister Reeve was sick with an ear infection. The freaky thing is that her boyfriend on his mission in California also had an ear infection this week. It's super creepy/(awesome?) Health care in Asia is actually pretty awesome, there's a hospital just down the road from our apartment and we were in and out pretty fast. The members smothered us with love when they heard she was sick, our bishop gave her a bottle of juice that's apprently super healthy and called us several times to make sure she was drinking it. Another member offered to stick a leaf down her ear that would cure her. We passed on that one.

We also couldn't ride bikes either because her balance was off due to the ear infection, so we mostly stayed inside. It was ok at first but after like 4 days of that we were both longing to get back outside. You really miss long days of nothing but contacting when suddenly you can't have those days anymore. But she's on the mend! We rode bikes again this morning. Last night we did some tracting and I was super nervous because I hadnt in a couple of days and I kind of felt like I'd forgotten how to contact. But as always God is on our side and we can get back in the swing of things soon!

The miracle this week is that we were still able to teach a good number of lessons, mostly from before when Sister reeve got sick. We taught 4 lessons in one day!  I think it was to make up for us not being able to teach much the rest of the week. Enci can get baptized anytime...just as soon as she comes to church. She's suuuuuper nervous to talk to her boss. She is so amazing tho and her best friends are all in the ward. They are so great and we're hoping they'll help her find the courage to come to church!

Our golden investigator Chen Jie Mei, who we met in the 7 a few weeks ago, dropped us the other night, her older brother used to be in the church and just has been telling her a lot of stuff that is totally not true and it really stresses her out. It broke our hearts. She told us that she does know the church is true and she thinks she'll contact missionaries again in a few years.

People. This gospel is so TRUE!!! It changed Chen Jie Mei's life for the short time she chose to meet with us. Every time we talked to her, her eyes got bright and she was just so excited!! She said she felt like God was talking to her every time she read the Book of Mormon. She received a personal witness of its truth. But Satan is also real and he works so hard to make life miserable for us. When we follow Christ, we will have peace in our lives and power to overcome all things. I testify that the Book of Mormon is true and that it can change lives. One of the best things about being on a mission is that I've been able to see that happen. People's lives really change for the better when they read it! If you haven't read it, go to mormon.org and they will send you a free one :) If you have one in your home, open it! It is so good and brings so much joy.

Much love to all of you! You are in my prayers.

Love,

Sister Daynes

(Deng Jie Mei)

1-2) We went to a cool market called Lugang last P day

3) This is Jamie Wu!!!! gah I love her. She's a mamber and she translates for me when I don't know the language. She's spectacular.

4) We went to Subway. It was SUUUPER weird. What is this American food?!?

5) View from our apartment <3