This week was great! On Wednesday the
sisters here all went to Hong Kong to go to the temple, which is the
first time we've gone since October, so that was really great. We had to
leave Macau b/c our visas ran out. The way the visas work here is that
your first time in they give you 30 days, then we take a boat to Hong
Kong and back, and then they're supposed to give you 20 more days, then
you exit and come back again, and then they send you to immigration,
where they give you 10 days to leave. So Wednesday was our exit day, and
the first time I've been back in my first area since leaving it at the
beginning of December, so that was fun. When I was there, I found out
that TOM GOT BAPTIZED!!! YAY!!!! I knew his baptismal date was for last
Sunday, but we can only call Hong Kong for special purposes b/c it's
expensive, so I had to wait to find out. I'm so excited!! He's the first
baptism I've played any significant part in. Yay Tom!!!
Then we went back to Macau to re-enter, which is
always kind of scary because we don't know how many days they'd give
us. I got 30 days when I originally got here, and then they gave me
another 30 when we left on Christmas Eve, since I'd only been there 10
days. But after looking over my last 2 visa stamps multiple times, the
guy at immigrations gave me another 30 days! It was crazy. It just tells
me that Heavenly Father really wants me here. Sister Cook also got
another 20 days, even though she's been here since the beginning of
November, and now has 30-30-20-30-20. But they told her she can't come
back after this 20 days is over, so she'll probably leave when we have
Zone Conference in Kowloon Tong next week. We've just felt so much
though that Heavenly Father really wants us here and really has been
rewarding our faithful prayers and hard work.
We also have this long-time investigator Bobo, who's
like the coolest person ever, but for personal reasons is hesitant to
be baptized, but has been going to church for the last 6 months. Her mom
has started developing interest in the church, so she came with Bobo
yesterday, and we taught them together. We taught their mom about
prayer, and thought the lesson went OK, but when her mom said the
closing prayer she thanked Heavenly Father for helping her feel so
comfortable at church ('comfortable' is a really common way of
describing the Spirit here, b/c the connotations are pretty homey, warm,
etc), and when she said 'Amen,' I opened my eyes and looked up at Bobo
and found that she was crying! I've never seen Bobo cry, and she tries
to push off the feelings of the Spirit most of the time, so it was so
neat. We really feel like she's getting closer and closer to her crucial
decision point, and when she does, we're confident she'll get baptized.
We've been praying so hard for her, and it was such an unexpected way
of answering our prayers, which just proved to us yet again that
Heavenly Father is way smarter than us, and that our thoughts are
definitely not His thoughts. Love Bobo!!
We also a new-ish investigator, Sister Pong, who I
met at the ferry pier when I first arrived in Macau with Sister Law and
we were waiting for our companions. She's 60-something and works as a
cleaning lady there, and turned out to be a golden find! She reacted
really strongly to the Restoration lesson, and was asking us right off
the bat to teach her commandments, because she wants to keep them. She's
so great! It really shows to me that the times we try to find people
when we don't have scheduled finding times are the times when Heavenly
Father rewards us most for going the extra mile.
On Saturday the branch asked the missionaries to
prepare a musical number for a fireside they were having, and it was so
Chinese-- I loved it! One of the elders plays the yiwu (I think is what
it's called), which is played sort of like a cello and is super
Chinese-y, and so he accompanied our singing Nearer My God to Thee. It
was so funny because if it were America, it would've been a violin, but
since it's China, it's gonna be way cooler. Some of the branch members
we could tell thought it was really weird that he was playing it, but
they warmed up to it when it actually sounded pretty nice. It was
awesome.
I'm so excited to hear about Shelley's mission
call!! Uncle Rico's family really is a Japan family! Way to represent!
Love you all! Remember, specific prayers is how we get specific answers.
Sister Heaton
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