And thus, I became a father.

And thus, I became a father.

So this week were move calls. I must be incredibly in tune with the spirit, because I saw them coming a mile off. There was only one sister coming on this transfer, and she happened to be a bundi ren (native) from Taidong, my area before Zhongli. Sister Wynder and I both knew her and were excited for her to come to our mission. We both had told her in Taidong, "Maybe someday we will get to be companions". the night before move calls come, trainer calls come. There are some 20 or so sisters in the mission and the odds were that Wang yi hui (the sister coming on) would not be trained by us. But I felt it in my bones, Sister Wynder was training. Everyone thought it was impossible, no way president would place a Sister Wang in Sister Wynder's care. Sister Wynder and I were both really hoping for me to stay another transfer. Really really hoping. But I knew I was out of ZhongLi. Thursday night rolls around and the assistants called. We were headed to Taipei on Friday so we could pick up Sister Wang, Sister Wynder was training. But I didn't know where I was going, I wouldn't know until that night.

On a mission the trainee arrives ahead of the start of the new transfer by a couple of days, so the trainee, the trainer, and the trainer's previous companion are in a tri-panionship. Thus the Trainer becomes the Mother (for sisters) or Father (for elders) and the other companion becomes the other respective parent. And so, thus I have fathered a child.

Friday night I found out I was headed to Banqiao, a city in the Taipei area. My 5th transfer, my 5th area, my 5th companion. Very very unusual. I've asked all the older missionaries and they say in this mission at least most of them have never heard of someone moving so many times, especially in a row! Its a continuation of my life per norm. I've seen a lot of Taiwan by now at least. There was one sister I have deduced who still hast me by a few moves, a long time ago, but she is the only other mover I have heard of.

I left Zhongli with a bit of regret. I really liked that area, the investigators and the members there. As soon as I start developing relationships with people in an area they move me. There were people there that I think were actually sad to see me go.

My new companion is my second Bundi ren (native) a sister Wu. I am her first weiguo ren (foreigner) companion. She is pretty cool so far, very out going. I think we will get along very well. I think being companions will help both of our desired languages grow. So far we have been speaking mostly in Chinese though haha. It feels great to do that.

Moving so much can be a blessing. I get so many chances at a new start.

I get to call home tonight! Or try. Yay!

I love you all. SEND ME MAIL! because I haven't gotten any in a while :'(
Sister Thiessen

melissa.thiessen@myldsmail.net

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

OH MY GOODNESS!

In only a couple of weeks my mission will be half over! I will have 9 months left but half over?! Wow. I just realized that while I was looking at the calendar this week. Shocking.

This week was a little crazy, but really good. We had something unusual everyday. We went to Taipei on Monday for P-day, then back again on Tues for temple tours (Love them!) and then Wednesday was district meeting and English class, Thurs 4 hours were taken up by weekly planning, then Friday (Sister Wynder's Birthday!) we had a zone conference. Which was absolutely amazing.

I feel like we have been running around all over the country side. But its been a good one.

On Thursday night we had an experience with an investigator that I would like to relate. This investigator is a member referral, and so this member is with us every class we have. This woman, Fu Jiemei (sister Fu) is from a family of three sisters. The other sisters right now are all taking lessons with the missionaries in different places (imagine that!) and so that day Fu Jiemei had been visiting her sister when the missionaries came over. She loved the lesson and baptism was briefly mentioned, but she didn't know what it was, and she didn't have a chance to ask. That day on the drive home she was thinking about it a lot and her curiosity was piqued. Per the ways of the Lord, that day Sister Wynder and I shared about baptism. After the lesson she related to us that she had been wondering about that very topic all day and she was so glad that w shared it. She really believed it was the "arrangement of God." A little miracle. I really hop she can work her way to baptism. She comes to church every Sunday. :)

We had an amazing special meeting today given by the Church's President of records from SLC. It was soo good. It really pounded in the importance of keeping a record. A clear record filled with important things. Really people, appreciate it. That is why we have this gospel today, if some person wasn't wise enough to listen when the Lord said, Hey, Write that down ok? We wouldn't have the scriptures, and so we would have nothing. I am so grateful. Get a journal. Write in it, write you experiences, write your thoughts and your spiritual impressions. And seek for things to write!

On Sunday I had sort of an epiphany. Our Sundays are really long because Zhongli has two wards and we attend both sets of meetings, so we are at the chapel from 8:30 to 5 every Sunday. But in the second sacrament meeting (I have two so if I don't repent thoroughly for the first I have another chance) I received revelation. We have a lot of investigators right now that are dealing with varying levels of depression. I was thinking about a few in particular and how the cause was the self images the world tries to impose on us. Mainly their weight. I remembered over my past experiences with this issue, and my struggles and trials. I've heard that our experiences, like spiritual gifts, are given to us to be used to help others, especially for missionaries. I realized how precious all of those trials were for m and how much I need to rely on them to understand and help pull others through their own hard times. I realized that may be the very purpose the Lord called me here to Zhongli to help these very people right now. I also thought about the power of keeping positive, because it is so easy, almost natural o sink into that pit of despair and just give up, accepting the lie that there is no way out. But we cant to that. We Must Press On. Whatever our hardships are. I have resolved to change my outlook this week. I will develop a positive attitude in all that I do, and develop my own faith in the matter. You cannot convert anyone past you own conversion. And I am here to help that conversion.

Well that's all I have time for. I love you all so much, and miss you too. Carry on!

Melissa Thiessen

Conference

Blog,

Another Conference come and gone in the field.

Since we are in a foreign country where conference must be gone over and translated conference was a week later here. So we watched it this weekend. We got to watch it in English thankfully, it would have been pointless to try in Chinese. Ha. Though my MTC teacher was the translator from English to Chinese, which made my heart swell with a special kind of pride. :p

It was pretty sweet, the missionaries got their own private room with our own tv to watch it in English. And it was amazing. I don't know how I didn't appreciate these things when I was younger...okay maybe I do understand how a child would think sitting and watching old men talk about religion for 4 hours two days in a row is a little..."unprefferable." But I am so glad that I now understand that they are men (and women!!) of God and their words are from God. It was like the best kind of spiritual refreshment. The topic seemed to run a lot along marriage this time around. Young men received a repentance call to get married and then how about Elder Scott's talk about his wife and their marriage? That was the most precious thing. Who wouldn't want a marriage like that. If you haven't seen it, go online and look it up on LDS.org. It will inspire you to serve your spouse and build your marriage up under God. Watch it!

We also had 5 investigators at conference this week! That to me is amazing, its the biggest struggle of the mission to get people to come to church, and I pray that they payed attention and didn't fall asleep because the spirit was there. Saturday's sessions especially where an answer to my prayers. I received another conformation, like a engulfing flame causing my heart to burn that the words these men spoke where truth. Pure an directly inspired by God. There is nothing and no person on this earth that inspires me and gives me the desire to become a better person, to serve others, and love the people around me like this gospel does. Nothing that is so driving, so motivating and so imbued with the power to so wholly change a persons life can come anywhere from a loving God, one who Fathered our Souls and cares about us each individually.

Funny story of the week. Sister Wynder and I were unlocking our bikes in front of the train station on Friday and I heard a group of guys laughing and joking behind me. I didn't pay any attention to them until I hear numbers being thrown about. I listened in as one of them said "180, she's 180 cm." And another said, "No, she's taller than that." Then another said, "Go ask her," and the first said "No! I don't speak English, you ask her!" So I turned around and looked at them all with my hands on my hips and said, "I speak Chinese. And I'm 188 cm." They all stood shocked for a few seconds then burst out laughing at each other. Sister Wynder and I laughed about it the rest of the day too.

Well that's all the time I have. I love you all! And I hope you are doing well on the other half of the world.

Sister Melissa Thiessen
melissa.thiessen@myldsmail.net

snail mail- (costs $0.98 for a card/letter)
106-42 Taiwan, Taipei Mission
F4, No.24, Land 183
Chin Hua Street
Taipei, TAIWAN

Sweet Rain is my name!

Reporting from Zhong Li.

This week went by wicked fast. Its been great though. Sister Wynder and I are tearing it up here in Zhong Li, and its like we go out to play every day. Its been too much fun.

Zhong Li is very different from Taidong and I have to say that I appreciate the beat that pulses through the city up here in the north of this island. The pace is fast, the people are busy, and the rejection rate is high. Its great. We have a lot of investigators and we juggle them all trying to fit them all in. We are busy all the time but its good busy.

Sister Wynder and I have great unity in lessons. I moved up here and something changed. Suddenly I am talking to people. My Chinese still sucks horribly, but I am comfortable with Sister Wynder and we talk and joke and share the gospel with all of our investigators. On Wednesday night at English class I didn't teach, I was the desk person, but I had an hour and a half long talk with the father of a little girl attending class. In solid Chinese. It was by no means perfect but we actually had a conversation, for an hour and a half. It was amazing...a miracle you could say. I have soooo far to go. I still bu dong (don't understand) a lot but its getting better. When the subject is about the gospel I can talk and people understand what I say through the gaps and bad grammar. I'm so thankful. I hope with Sister Wynder my Chinese will improve much faster.

Oh, I also got a full Chinese name this week from some of our member and investigators.

Sun Tian Yu. It means sweet rain. hah. :p

Well that's all I have time to write...sorry its so short! But I do love you all.

Write me?!

Sister Melissa Thiessen

Transfer #4!

Transfer 4 Area 4

Wow. Its been a week of miracles and I have a lot to be thankful for this week. I am going to start by relating a miracle:

On Wednesday my companion and I went to visit a recent convert a little farther off and on the way back we took a short cut to get to the church faster for a lesson and to see another recently baptized convert of Sister Collyer's. She has all the people she baptizes sign her Book of Mormon cover with their info and such and since she knew she was moving she wanted to get it done before she wouldn't see this dear woman again. But we got to the church and her scriptures weren't there. We called the house we had just been at and they weren't there either. We were very perplexed, and upon more fruitless searching it turned quickly into distress.

We went home that night and said a prayer of faith that she would find these priceless scriptures. She woke up that morning and as she said it, she'd had a vision of where the scriptures were, she'd seen exactly where they were. "They are on that dirt road." she told me as we were getting dressed for exercise. "Your sure?" I asked her. "The Lord told me they were there." She said. "Ok," I replied, "Lets go get them."

As we booked it out there and arrived on the scene we spotted them laying to the side of the dirt path. I have no idea how they fell out of her bag, the path wasn't even bumpy, but there they lay, untouched, un-rained on and un-ran over. It was a miracle. The Lord loves his children indeed.

The night of move calls also came this last week. Sister Collyer was up in anxiety all day. She'd been in Taidong almost a year, that's an absurdly long time to be in one place and she was definitely going to leave and it was paining her greatly to leave the people she had given her heart to. "You are not leaving," She told me seriously, "Get yourself used to the fact. No one has ever left Taidong in less than 2 transfers." She answered the phone when it rang bouncing up and down nervously on the balls of her feet. "Noo." She said in shock and thrust me the phone, "Sister Thiessen," my district leader Elder Sessions said, "You are moving. To Zhong Li, with Sister Wynder."

What a shock indeed! I'd resigned myself for a long haul in the beautiful Taidong but the Lord had other plans. No one has ever moved in one transfer that anyone can remember, except for me. But you know me, I don't live by other people's 'usual' haha. Oh beautiful paradise Taidong, I will miss you so. I will miss the wonderful members there. They were all shocked that I was leaving too, "Name de Quai!" (how fast!) they all told me.

Oh, but do you remember that friend of mine from school that decided to come on a mission then got called to the same mission? The one that was in the MTC with me? The one that is half Asian so already speaks perfect Chinese? Sister Esther...Wynder? Yes! She is my companion! What are the odds? I didn't think so good so soon in my mission. See the Lord does love me. And Zhong Li, do you remember my first area, Taoyuan? Well its the area right below it. I'm back in the Taoyuan city limits. Wow, never thought I'd be back here ha. I have the same Zone Leader.

Speaking of soon, I'm already on my 4th transfer on Island, I only have 6 left. I am no longer a new missionary, just an average one...oh the pressure. But a miracle occurred the last few days in Taidong. Suddenly its as if my ears opened and I can understand so much more of what people say! And I can compose a fairly understandable answer! Its amazing. Its like the Lord pressed an entire transfer of growth into three days. I still can't really communicate brilliantly, but its at least understandable.

Well That is all I have time for. I love you all. Thanks for the Snt. Patties cards! I love them! I also love the Letters Grandma! Keep sending mail!
Sister Thiessen

Tsunami

This week blew by me like a bullet train. I don't know where the time went, but it passed me right by all sneaky like. We seemed to have spend a lot of this week in Hualian. Hualian if you remember from my other emails is a city up the coast from us about 3 hours or so by train and is a out doors paradise of mountains and ocean and forest. But the headquarters for our zone is there.

We had a special training meeting (or otherwise known as a zone conference) on Friday and it was amazing. We had a member of the 70 in attendance, President Perkins, the Asia area authority. I was excited to meet him because his son was my tutor in the MTC and I'd heard a lot about the fellow. He is definitely an inspired man I learned so much from that day of spiritual refreshment. It was sort of like a a monsoon in a desert. I had to put my sponge under the rain and see what it soaked up. I'm still wringing that sponge out. I took a whole chapter worth of notes...ha. It was insightful on listening to the spirit, the importance of the spirit and also the importance of faith. I would urge each of you to look up the spirit/ Holy Ghost in the bible dictionary, true to the faith (if you don't have that book, go buy it) and the topical guide and then study it in the scriptures. Understand why we need him and how to get him and it will change the face of your faith. It is the Most Important gift mortal man can receive from Heaven or Earth.

It was especially cool because our zone is so far away and secluded that we couldn't join with any other zones so we were very few in number. Instead of 60-90 missionaries there were about 18-20. So we all got some personal time and got to ask questions. A blessing ha.

The tsunami and the earth quake! We were just ending this meeting when all the phones in the room started to vibrate with this news, of course they were all on silent. Everyone went to the phones as soon as the prayer was said (by me...) and President Perkins got the news of the tsunami warning first. the missionaries that were in the Hualian area were to stay in the chapel all night but the Taidong missionaries, my district still had to try to catch the train home. It was a three hour train ride and the tsunami was supposed to hit right in the middle. Taidong and Hualian are right on the coast, the vulnerable side of Taiwan. They let the trains go though, and we didn't even see much evidence of the tsunami. Taidong is really right on the coast and we saw nothing big. A little disappointing really. I hear the US and other places got hammered much worse, but we don't really get to hear much at all about the news. Any news would be appreciated.

SO, to sum up. I am just fine. But thank you all for your concern! I was touching.
My time is up. I love you all
Sister Thiessen

EMAIL: melissa.thiessen@myldsmail.net

ADDRESS: (a regular size letter/card is .98 to mail and takes 1-1.5 weeks to get there.)

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

Off My Feet...

This week is gonna have to be a short entry, I'm not real long on time.

We focused all of our missionary efforts this week on getting people to church and helping our investigators really progress that way. Unfortunately only two showed up on the day of reckoning so we will probably have to drop more of them than I'd like.

We went to Haulian, a beautiful touristy town up the coast about three hours by train for president interviews this last weekend. Hualian is the only other city in our zone and since its closer to Taipei the president usually goes there. While we were there we went on exchanges with the sisters there. They are the only other sisters this far down in Taiwan so exchanges are special. Usually on exchanges we would split and cover two different areas for a 24 hour period, but since Huallian and Taidong are so far apart we all just cover the same area and live in the same apartment for a day. Its a lot of fun. Unless you are bedridden.

Monday I was bitten or stung by some manner of creepy crawly. Through the week it was red and really sore but I thought it was just a mosquito bite, they can be bad in Taiwan. But about Thursday it got very swollen. We went to see a dermatologist. Medicine here in Taiwan functions in a funny way. The doctor looked at it for about 39 seconds, asked me if it was itchy then gave me a package of pre-packaged pills of 5 different varieties and sent me on my way. Friday we headed to Hualian and by Friday night my foot was very very swollen. We were advised to take it to the Buddhist hospital in Hualian, a semi-famous medical location. So that took a large chunk out of my Saturday. They stuck a needle in me, hooked me up to an IV and shot me full of penicillin.

First they had to do a penicillin allergy test though. They shot the medicine right under the skin to make a little bubble sort of like a TB test. As the nurse was prepping me she was talking to another nurse in Chinese, and she said something about this test being very painful. I asked her if it was going to hurt. She looked at me in surprise and asked if I spoke Chinese, I said yes, and she kinda sheepishly nodded. "Yeah," she told me, "this is really going to hurt." And it really, really did. She was surprised. She said "You didn't scream. Most people scream" haha.

So now my foot is doing better, but I am instructed to still take it easy. It puts a bit of a damper on missionary work, which is all done on your feet.

Well that is all I have time for today. I love you all. I pray for you every day!

Love Melissa