Monday May 17, 2010

Dear family,

Sister Dewyea and I are beat. We barely made it through our study time (8-10:30) before we went back to bed and slept for two hours this morning. We have been working crazy hard, seeing a lot of miracles. We had an amazing 6 week B's this last week...none of which have currently rolled over but we will hopefully drop some back in. Just know it was amazing. They all live really far apart though. One day we started riding our bikes at 1:30 in the afternoon, and except for 4 45 minute lessons we didn't stop riding until 9 PM. We didn't have time to stop for dinner - we stopped and had hamburgers for 5 minutes somewhere. It was crazy. We really have been working like crazy. Yesterday we had 4 peike's (more than sometimes I've had in the week in the past).

Remember how on the phone we said we were riding to Tianzhong - over an hour away? Well, that night we were looking for a former investigator whose house we couldn't find. I asked some lady who was walking on the street and invited her to church. She couldn't help us with directions, but she did come to church yesterday. That is great except that means we have to keep going to Tianzhong to meet with her haha. I found out the train does in fact go to Tianzhong though!

Funny story. It was sister's exchanges this week. We always meet at the station in Zhanghua which is just a 13 minute train ride north of Yuanlin. I got my new companion, got on a train headed south, which happened to be there about 3 minutes early, but it said our train on the electric board so we got on. We were chatting away when my instincts started telling me something was wrong. Out the window we were closer to the mountains that I remember the train being and I felt like we should have been there already... I started looking around and saw a sign that said next stop Douliu.

Douliu, my first area?! But that is a significant distance south of Yuanlin...! Somehow we got onto a fast train that doesn't stop at every station and didn't stop in Yuanlin. So we accidently left our zone, which is not allowed. I called my zone leaders and groaned when Elder Blackham answered. Elder Blackham is a very very diligent missionary that I have heard is kind of hard on the Elders. I thought he may maul me.
"Elder Blackham...I have to tell you something I don't want to tell you."
"What?"
"Umm, we got on the wrong train and are going to be in um, Douliu in a minute."
"What? Well, I guess we all make mistakes. Just get off in Douliu and come back and get back in Yuanlin as soon as possible."

So my companion and I got off in Douliu but there wasn't another train for an hour. I made my companion look out all the big windows of the station with me while I remininced about my first area and probably bored her to tears. "You see that corner?! That is a great corner for contacting. And other there is the best juabing stand in all of Taiwan. The juabing guy would English proselyte for us. And at that convenience store Sister Pickering and I added some Chinese people." It was a nice trip down memory lane. I kept hoping someone I knew would show up, but no one did. It made me miss my first area, good old Douliu where I was trained. We did run into the Douliu Elders* ( which was a bit embarrassing as we weren't supposed to be there) and I told them about an old investigator I wanted them to find. So maybe they will find and baptise her and it will be a miracle.

Alright, time is up.

I love you all so much!

FML
Sister Johnson

* On a random note, one of whom is Elder Evans, President Uchtdorf's grandson