Typhoon

P day again, though this one took a more interesting turn of events. We have known for about the last week that there has been storms a-brewin' in the waters around this little island and we received word that it might hit Taiwan. Then it sounded like it was going to blow right past. Yesterday in church the president called, the typhoon had hit the island in the east and was blowing hard, we were to head home right after church and not leave the apartment. This is called a "typhoon day" and I was really excited to see one. But unfortunately it was hitting on a Sunday, the next day, today, is our P-day. That meant if a typhoon day landed on p-day, there was no going out to play. Which was really not ok. Last night it was looking as if we were going to have to stay in doors, and a great groan arose within the mission. This morning we prepared for a day of letter writing, and craziness within the walls of confinement. But a miracle occurred, about 10:30, just as studies were closing the phone rang. I answered and the Zone leader, Elder Xu, spoke the words of freedom. That was it and we were out emailing.

The typhoon is not gone, it is only in the east part of the island so far, and if it doesn't blow out then the typhoon day may be reinstated later tonight and we may have to go indoors for tomorrow too. But as of right now we (in the west of the island) and Taibei (in the north) are not really feeling too much of it, there has been some rain and some good winds, but nothing extreme. I told my companion Sister Choi that if we don't see more I will be utterly disappointing and have to say something to whomever arranges the weather here. She told me, "welcome to Zhubei" because this area because of its location never gets anything much more than strong winds. *sigh*

Anyway, nothing too exciting has happened since I last wrote, besides that we will have a baptism on Saturday! Yay! Zeng XinMei is getting baptized. We met her the first week I was here, she was a referral from an awesome new member in a neighboring city. She is a trooper, she has to drive her scooter 25 minutes to get here (ok, that is a lot for Taiwan alright. People here are all about convenience) and she meets with us twice a week. She took all the commandments with out a problem and she wants baptism so bad. She loves the church and she is very willing to commit and keep her commitments. (she saw the announcement about cleaning the church on Saturdays and then asked me how she could get involved haha) She is the first investigator I will have had were I could count as "their Missionary" Because of my frequent moving I haven't really been able to coach someone all the way through to baptism. I've always shown up at the end or left in the beginning. She is a special one. We are excited to get her in the water, though she will leave immediately the next week to the south of the island to go to college.

We also had a special meeting on Friday. We had the President of the Church Sunday School program come here and talk to us. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about teaching. We also had about an hour before hand where they wanted us in the church to wait and we all got to hang around and talk. Its always a lot of fun when missionaries get to gather. I got to see a bunch of my friends from other areas because we had two Zones together. It was a good day. I also got a surprise bag of brownie mix (like precious gold) magically sent from my roommate Lexi. It was much appreciated Lexi! I unfortunately didn't get to see her :( But that's ok, I feel the love through chocolate goodness.

Well that's about all I have to report as of now. I love you all, and I appreciate your continued support. The first on Thursday marks my year mark. I will have been on a mission for a whole year already. Its been like a lifetime. But its also seemed to go by very fast. I only have 6 months left. Its all down hill from here...

Sister Melissa Thiessen

Temple Day

Today we are going to the temple! Yay! the last time before it will be closed until November for renovations. That means that my time to write is going to be very short. But I will type as very fast as I possibly can so I can get a couple of good paragraphs in.

This last week and a half has been both really long and really fast. We had Zone conference last week which was really good. We had it with the Zone next door as well, so I got to see several of my favorite elders from previous areas. It was nice to be able to talk to them after such a long time of moving and moving and moving. Its more or less a mission joke, the number of times that I move.

Besides that nothing really exciting has happened. We also had exchanges, and I got to go with my "meimei" (or little sister), that's mission speak for the other sister that my trainer trained. It was a really good exchange and I really like Sister Holm (previously mentioned meimei) she is only on her 2nd transfer and already she is helping teach and such. Her Chinese is pretty good for a second transfer missionary.Next exchange I will be with my beloved Sister Wynder! Yaaay. It will be a good one. We landed in neighboring areas this transfer haha.

We have several great investigators that are quickly progressing towards baptism here and I am really excited about a couple of them. One of them is so golden its beautiful. We had a lesson with her yesterday and learned about repentance. She got very thoughtful and quiet and said "This weekend I had a fight with my mom, and I had a bad attitude about it. I am going to go home and repent" It was the coolest thing. She is getting baptized on the 3rd provided her family doesn't oppose *fingers crossed*

Besides that, zhubei is good, good and hot! Eesh! But I'm getting good amounts of exorcise in under all the sweat because we are routinely biking up massive hills to visit our investigators. And I'm loving it. My legs are loving it too. They need something to whip them back into shape.

That's all the time I have friends. I love you all, I will be writing again in a couple of days, on Monday! Jia you, and don't forget to write your missionaries!

Melissa Thiessen
melissa.thiessen@myldsmail.net

Taiwan, Taipei Mission
Sister Melissa Thiessen
F4, No.24, Lane 183, Chin Hua St.
106-42 Taipei, TAIWAN

Week of Challenges

Well this week has been both really slow, and really challenging. My companion and I have to work really hard to get along sometimes, which really can stress the unity that affects missionary work so much. Several times this week we have had confrontations, nothing really big, but still makes it hard to work together. In the more recent past few days we have been trying to talk it out a lot and I think the situation has improved. I know that the Lord is trying to teach me patience this transfer. But we are doing better as of the last couple of days.

This week we did however see some miracles, the Lord is providing for us in his small ways. We saw a few new investigators come through miraculously. Well everyone stopping to listen or giving out their number is miraculous after 3 hours of contacting or tracting.

Saturday was a very good day. We started the morning by heading to the house of an American family in our ward, the Larsons, from Austin TX. They have been in Taiwan for a year and are actually heading back home today, so it was like a last good bye party, for the young women. Their apartment complex is very swanky, and expensive (Bro Larson's company graciously funded their living quarters) and in the downstairs of the complex is a very big very nice theater room. We all watched Johnny Lingo together. The newer movie. It was really really good and I great experience. And it was one that I needed, just some good old fashion fun. Afterwords we went upstairs to their apartment and had Hawaiian hay stacks, and got to know the family a little better. There was even Costco ice cream for dessert!

We ended up getting back to the church at 3 and had some lessons then an investigator took us out to dinner at a very expensive sushi restaurant. We came back and met up with some other investigators to attend a very beautiful musical...concert...presentation? Activity. Jenny Phillips, a church musical artist, was touring Taiwan and doing concerts in a few locations. Our chapel (being one of the biggest in Taiwan) was one of those locations and all the missionaries in our zone brought people so they could come. There were probably over 600 people in attendance to see her. It was beautiful. She sang and sometimes was backed up the a choir composed of the youth of the stake. She even sang some parts of her songs in Chinese! It was moving. The themes ran along the lines of encouraging the youth and especially young women, also mother hood. There were some lovely movies that went along with the music and translations in Chinese subtitles. It was probably one of the most memorable days on my mission so far. I am so glad that I got the opportunity to attend.

Well my time is pretty much up. I didn't have much today, we are going to a theme park for P day today with the rest of our zone and its kinda far away.

I love you all! Write to me please!!

melissa.thiessen@myldsmail.net

$0.98 to mail a card or letter to:

Sister Melissa Thiessen
Taiwan, Taipei Mission
F4, No.24, Lane 183 Chin Hua St.
106-42 Taipei, TAIWAN

Smaller Numbers

29 weeks left of the clock, and week by week the number gets smaller.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm watching the numbers and I will be happy return to my family and to my life. But I am learning a lot here in Zhubei. Its going to be a challenging transfer of growth, I can tell. I am doing a lot of praying for strength these days.

I'm making a focused effort on talking to our investigators and the members here. By that I mean being out going and friendly. Its my natural instinctive reaction to be the quiet one and let my companion really small talk or chat it up with our investigators or the members. But its a habit that I am trying to break, and its trying to break me right back. Its a really draining change, but I'm giving it my best. Its working, much God given blessings to my own failings. I teach a great portion of the lessons here in this area, and because my companion is a timid type person I am trying to be the friendly one that helps the investigators feel welcomed and loved. It takes a lot of effort. But I think that it will help me a lot in the long run.

My companion Sister Choi is from Korea. She is a very very white personality on the surface but has very sudden red uprisings. We've butted heads a lot this week and I really have had to go very outside my own personality and be the peace maker. Which is also probably good fore me in the long run. It is a relationship with effort, and I hope that this transfer goes smoothly. Its gonna be an interesting ride.

I had a good experience following the spirit last night. We always hear stories as missionaries about other missionaries who were tr-acting or contacting and the followed the spirit and found an amazingly prepared person or had a miracle. Well I decided to try that last night. As we were riding our bikes to an area to go tract I saw a road and had a feeling. At the next stop light I told Sister Choi and we turned around. We headed down the road and then said a prayer for more specific guidance. We both felt like we should go straight. I saw a specific house up ahead and I said we should knock on that door. So we parked our bikes, said another prayer and then knocked. A woman opened the door to the balcony on the second floor then hollered at someone to answer the door. It was an older man, and I thought he was probably going to reject us right off the bat as older people usually do because of the Buddhist tradition. But he said h was christian, and then he was willing to listen to us for 10 minutes. We talked about the blessings of the gospel on families, and about the book of Mormon and briefly about the restoration. We had no idea where we were going, we were just following the spirit. He listened with an almost closed but polite expression on his face, but when we talked about families I thought I saw a flicker of something. He didn't welcome us inside with waving arms or anything, but he was willing to give us his phone number. It was an interesting and unusual experience. I'm not sure I've had one quite like it before on this mission. I don't know if he will accept the gospel from us, but I'm sure he was the reason we were lead down that road.

Anyway, that's my report for the week. I hope that you all are well, in good health and remembering to read your BOM and pray every day. I love you!

Sister Melissa Thiessen
Taiwan Taipei Mission
F4, No.24, Lane 183, Shin Hua St.
106-42 Taipei, TAIWAN

melissa.thiessen@myldsmail.net

Transfer #7

The beginning of my 7th transfer has dawned on me, and I have once again been called to move. And once again it is quite a good distance too. I am now located in the farthest west point of my mission, in a city called Zhubei. Its more rural than the Taibei inner city of Baqiao, my last area, and more like my last last area Zhong Li. I have now spanned the entire perimeter of my mission, and covered the inner area too. I've seen north, east and west parts of Taiwan, I just need to visit the south part of Taiwan (In the other Taiwan mission boundaries) and I'll have seen the whole island. Yeah I move a lot.

My new companion is from Korea, her name is Sister Choi. She is a lovely little sister though I haven't gotten to know her really well yet. She studied at BYUI and BYU so her English is very good, though thus far we have mostly been speaking in Chinese. We will probably be doing a lot of Chinglish (chinese-english) this transfer. Which is ok. Recently I have been very grateful to reach a more or less comfortable point in the language. I understand most if not all of normal conversation and can more or less express what I want to say intelligibly. I have to be careful not to get complacent.

One shocking surprise this move call, it came as a heavy blow to my every expectation. I did not go senior companion. The call never came, for whatever the reason, and I am still junior. The oldest Junior companion. It was a very disheartening blow, and I questioned a lot of things in consequence. But who can say why it happened. Carry on through all our greatest disappointments I guess.

One highlight of the end of last transfer, We had two baptisms after two transfers of work. We now have two very new members in the Banqiao ward and I have great hopes for those two. They will fit right in, Wei Fan is a very congenial woman we have been teaching my two transfers in Banqiao, and NiuNiu is a young college age girl with a sparkling testimony and a friendly personality. They are both very sweet and I was sad to go and leave them, but I know they will be fine. They are both really steady. Since Banqiao was my first area where I remained longer than 1 transfer, it will always have a special place in my heart. And so will the members and people that I got to know there.

7th transfer, 6th area. I have a feeling I will be here for a while. It is the farthest from the mission home I can go outside of my previous zone of Hualian-Taidong.

Write me! I love you!

Sister Thiessen