Happy Thanksgiving y'all!!

 rooftop pic

This was the Thanskgiving'y-est shirt I had...

I hope y'all enjoyed Thanksgiving weekend and found things you're thankful for.  I was reading in Psalms this week, and it seemed like all they did was give thanks! This week was so fun-- We actually kind of got to celebrate Thanksgiving, and not only because it was the coldest day so far since I've got to Beitou.  I had to break out the cardigans again... No one really knew it was Thanksgiving so we would remind everyone we talked to be thankful for their blessings.  It's crazy to think that last year at Thanksgiving, I ate three thanksgiving dinners with huge Christian families and almost had to force myself to puke from eating so much. This time, we got qing'd to the Royal Host, which is a semi-American place and we got to eat turkey (or chicken?) and potatoes.  Just as satisfying (:

                                                           Best Zhuabing place ever!

Happy Thanksgiving from my beautiful tongban!

I just wanted to say thank you to the Eliason's for sending me a little Thanksgiving card! Thank you for your love to our family and for thinking of me!

Sister Kunzler and I were in the MTC together, and now she's a temple sister.

She's also Sister Wright's old companion

Wow, where to even start?? This week was so awesome.  We started out with a mission conference with Elder Stevenson of the quorum of the 12! He might be a new apostle, but Heavenly Father has definitely qualified him.  We all got to shake his hand, and you just look into his eyes and he's just so loving.  He talked about obedience, and how the white handbook is just a book full of blessings.  It's so true! What other time in your life do you get blessed for getting up at 6:30, exercising, and leaving the house on time? This is the life and I'm loving it! He just broke it down so simply.  When we obey, we're blessed, and that makes us happy.  When we don't obey, we're not blessed (or punished) and we're not happy.  So we're helping our investigators understand that.  He also talked about the power of testimony, and I love how President Harding would always say that you summon the Holy Ghost down when you share your testimony.  Ahh, there's so much! Just look at my notes later (: 

We also had MLC (mission leadership conference.. or council?) and I have been spiritually fed this week.  Our main focus that we'll be teaching at zone meeting will be to be obedient unto faithfulness, having the faith to drop eternal investigators, and finding efficiently. This will be my first time doing the training so wish me luck tomorrow! I'm excited!

My building in Luodong is growing. I take that to mean

that I, as a missionary, am also growing. :)

We've made progress this week with the language, and someone actually told me that I don't have any accent! I couldn't believe it! That was the best compliment I've gotten! Haha but then I tried taking the phase 2 test, and failed.  No worries, I'm not even all the way through the 2 boxes of vocab, I just took it to see what it's like.  I also started learning how to text, and it's so hard and takes forever!! Luckily, one of the trainings we'll be giving is to text everyone you met that day to make quick contact with them.  So I'll be getting a lot of practice! 

Take 1 of Phase 2: fail.  mei guanxi. Xia yi ci!

 Exchanges with Sister LeFevre, and our first meeting with Theresa

okay, where else in the world can you find Rabbit Toast?? 

I love Taiwan and its random little shops

Happy Thanksgiving y'all! The elders' investigator with me and Sister Wright,

Liu Jeimei, and Elder Hawkes and Elder Boyce

We had a total miracle this week.  So last week during emails, this girl Theresa called us and said, " I don't have a phone, but can we meet on tuesday at 11 at the chapel?" but of course! Haha we figured we'd either get fang'd or she'd be totally awesome! Turns out she was totally awesome! She's been living in Utah doing a foreign exchange thing, and she's been going to church since July! She already knows the Book of Mormon is true, Joseph Smith was a prophet, and she committed to be baptized on Christmas!!  So we'll be having a white Christmas after all (: 

Theresa came to church yesterday!

We have a lot of people we're working with that are so close to setting a baptismal date, so stay tuned for next time! We got to go on exchanges this week with the Yilan sisters! So I was with Sister LeFevre (we stayed in Beitou though, darn it!) and Sister Wright got to go to Yilan.  I at least got to go there to switch back.  It's already changed so much! There's tons of construction there because they're building a night market, I've heard.  I'll definitely have to come back after the mission and check it out! I also exchanged with Sister Hadley, and we went to Neihu! I love getting to  go to other places, it's so fun! 

 Exchanges with Sister Hadley in Neihu

 A cute little LA that we visited, fang jiemei

We've continued to see miracles every day, and I'm so excited to see what miracles December will bring with the spirit of Christ in the air.  Thank you for your prayers, they are helping!

Love, Feng Jiemei

                                                              We love the Jergensen's!

Yeah!

Just Opening Our Mouths

Have this free porsche with your moermenjing!

Good morning! 

We just spent a few minutes at a member's house so we could take 3 loaves of fresh, homemade bread home (: our members are the best! This week really was just a fun week.  Well, okay, half the time, Sister Wright was sick so I was stuck at home making calls and stuff, but it wasn't terrible.  I got really good at looking up names in the dictionary so I could actually know who I'm talking to. 

Sick tongban :( hahah--she's so Taiwanese with her kouzhao 

This is what happens when my tongban

is sick and I'm stuck inside all day...

Hahah well, that's Sister Wright (:

This week, we focused a lot on inviting people to church on the street, and we had 6 people come to church! Why was that so simple? Well, I'm not complaining! We're going to keep that up this week.

Just spent a nice lunch at a zhuabing store

our zhuabing!  Probably one of my favorites

Our awesome investigator, Resa

We found another awesome miracle while we were looking for some LA's.  We were just walking along the street and Sister Wright says hello to this dad and his son up on their balcony.  He's like.. "Who are you?" and we said we're the missionaries! Then he immediately invited us up to his home.  He met with missionaries 15 years ago (He had the old version of the BOM) and he said he's still been reading it and praying how the missionaries taught him to do it! Wow! His wife is also Christian, but he doesn't like their church because they believe in the trinity and pray to Jesus. His name is Chen Chong Yang, by the way.  And he came to church yesterday! We're meeting with him tonight, and when we first met him, he agreed to be baptized on Christmas! What a miracle (: 

This week was Tia's year mark for being baptized (from Georgia)! They moved back to Michigan a while back, so I have no idea how their family is doing, if Keegen ever got baptized, or what.  But I keep praying for them.

We met some Mormons that are here in Taiwan for 3 days

The elders revealed this week that they have a soccer ball in their apartment, so we got to play soccer in the mornings with them. Haha I'm way out of shape, but it felt so good to play around again! 

stinky tofu!  Really stinky, but actually not bad tasting

So, good news! I don't know if I already said this, but the new apostle, Elder Stevenson is visiting our mission tomorrow! We'll get to spend the whole morning with him.  I'm so excited! 

We went classy for once! Best banana and nutella toast I've ever had!

We're also singing in a missionary Christmas choir, which entails a lot of performances ba.  I'll tell you about them as they come. We saw the first few traces of Christmas this week, that was crazy! I can't believe it's already that time of year again!

Guess what we're doing for our English class party :)

For this weeks ponderizing scripture, I chose 2 Nephi 9:21, talking about the Savior and how he was sent to the earth to perform the atonement.  We've encountered a lot of people recently who have no idea who Jesus Christ is, and I really think that scriptures outlines his mudi perfectly.  So I'm going to look for opportunities to share that on the street.  

Well sorry I don't have so much time but I love you! Thank you for your love, your emails, and your prayers! The gospel is so true!

Love, Feng Jiemei (:​

Having Faith in Miracles

Aww (: Qiu JM made me breakfast! Zhuabing and QQ dongxi

                                           COOKIES!! Thank you, Sister Wright's mom!!

What a beautiful week this has been! Today, the sun is shining through the window of the wanka and I'm dying to go outside! But first of all, mom and dad, Happy 33rd anniversary on Sunday! Thanks for spending 20 years of it helping me become the person who I am today.  I love you!

 I didn't think they celebrated Halloween here...

 And also, to answer some questions: Sadly, we're not really teaching anyone solid right now. They've just had a few awesome baptisms as I got here, so we're just starting from scratch.  We've literally been finding all week, but with no luck.  We counted, and we got fang'd (not sure what the literal translation is.. they didn't come) 15 times! We're hoping to improve that this next week. 

 Pizza is not a normal thing here.  Taipei is the greatest!

 We got Zhuabing and douhua after our exchange

 with the Shilin sisters! Me and Sister Wright, 

Qiu JM, Zheng Yi Ting (our RC!) and Sister Howell

As an STL, we'll actually be working with all the sisters I already know! I stayed in the same zone (East Taipei) so I'll even get to go back to Yilan, which makes me so happy. We had two exchanges this week, and they went really well! They're not as stressful as they were back in Georgia, I'm not sure what's different.  Our first exchange, I was with Sister Qiu, who's waiting for her visa to serve at temple square, and she's just awesome.  Our second one, I got to be in a trio with sister Fisher, from the MTC (in Sister Strong's district) and Sister Hu, who just left this morning to Utah.  She'll also be at temple square. Fun stuff. Be sure and try to find them if you go to Temple Square! 

Hu JM and me.  Look for her at Temple Square!

 Qiu JM, Zheng Yi Ting and I on the MRT to end our exchange

 Exchanges with Hu JM and Sister Fisher

 We gave in this week...Sister Wright loves chocolate!

I'm still working on Phase 2 of Chinese, and it's coming along pretty well! I just started on box 2 at the beginning of the transfer, which is the second 1000 words.  man man lai. Take it easy haha. 

This week I got to see the primary program in our ward! There were only about 10 kids, and they were so well behaved and great singers.  I was impressed! It made me think of back in Georgia, they would ask me to play the piano in primary so I got to hear all of their songs. It's soo cute to hear them in Chinese! I can't believe I was in Georgia at the beginning of this year.  Time is seriously going by way too fast! But I think it's awesome that for every single day of 2015 I get to represent Jesus Christ and spread His gospel!

 Taiwan has some odd things...

 We went to the new Danshui chapel for district meeting.

                                                    It looks like a temple, doesn't it?

I ate some cool food this week: I had papaya, eggplant, and something else that isn't coming to me right now.  Man, I love Taiwanese food.  They have soo many more fruits and just interesting food.  I love it!

 Eggplant.  I do enjoy this stuff.

Coconut--that was a fun one!

We got qing'd by an ama! 

                                This random little Christian lady bought us noodles for lunch (:

Just satisfying our craves...

This whole week, even though were were fang'd multiple times a day, I just knew that we would find a miracle at the end.  I like to call them "Sabbath miracles" and that's just what we found.  We were led completely by the spirit to find an LA of 50 years that we had just ran into earlier in the week! Right after that, we ran into an LA's wife, and a few minutes later, we met the LA, prayed with him, and got his number for different missionaries.  Right after that, we had a feeling to start walking up this huge mountain, where we found a man walking down the mountain with his dog.  He's Atheist, and he was so moved by our simple testimony of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  I'm so grateful that we were tested this week, only to find miracles at the end! Another cool experience we had was when we were finding at a park, and we talked with these two friends who were sitting on a curb.  We knelt/sat down to talk to them, and I just felt like the Savior ministering to his people.  We prayed with them, and I thought of 3 Nephi 11 maybe? where He prays for the little children.  I love those tender mercies where you remember the sacredness of your calling.  

 Aww, I found him at the jin hua jie chapel! 

He's from Yilan ward.  Literally ALWAYS smiles.

 Relief Society activity this week.  Beitou ward is wonderful (:

My ponderizing scripture for this week is... not coming to my mind at the moment.  Haha no worries, I've got a whole week to memorize it, and I swear it's written down at home on my desk! But it just simply testifies of Jesus Christ as our Savior and his power of the atonement.  I'm going to start using my ponderizing scriptures on the street with people to bring more power to our contacts.  I know that Christ is my Savior, and I can't express how thankful I am for the sacrifice He made for me personally.  I love His gospel, and I love sharing it with these people in Taiwan.  

Love, Feng Jiemei

Love y'all (: