Hello everyone!
Don't know where to start because I'm still not sure I remember everything that happened, but it was a good week!That night we taught Jade again, for the first time in a long time. It's difficult teaching 8 year old's especially when their parents don't particularly care about God. We're working on it. We also taught Alwin that night, he had some of the same questions but this time when we told him. ONLY our church has authority he finally seemed to hear what we were saying... we'll see if that had any impact on him this week.
So Tuesday we went to lunch at a members house and of course got so much good food! I'm so blessed here in Bayview! We then dropped by a bunch of less actives in the most poorly organized little town house block I've ever seen in my life. The Streets would change names half way through and the corners were all in the wrong places and I swear we spent more time just trying to figure out where was where then actually knocking on doors. Anyways, afterwords we went to go teach Faye and it went really well. It's actually her birthday today so we're excited for her! and then we had dinner, and Tony and Brother Wu and all was well!
Wednesday was March 1st February as usual turned out to go by super fast! But this time that meant that sister Chen and I forgot to buy our bus passes for March the day before and so March first we looked at each other, squared our shoulders, and planned the two hours of walking to the nearest subway station to buy a bus pass. God works with what ever we give him though so it turned out to be a very productive two hours of talking to people and we set up an appointment with a woman for the next day! After our long walk we dropped by a few more people. Both of us dead on our feet at this point but we kept walking and talking to people until 4 o'clock when we went to teach Sister Wei and Dennis with sister Lee. It was a good lesson, and then we had dinner with sister Ye afterwards. Just as we were leaving sister Tsui the relief society president invited us over to help her with a couple of things so we got a ride to her house and I helped take care of her grandson while sister Chen and she talked over logistics for the upcoming Relief society birthday party. Ha! I think I got the better deal! We went home with very tired feet!
Thursday we got to meet with the miracle lady from the day before at a McDonalds and I diligently ignored the music and only had a song stuck in my head for the next three hours so that was a win! Ha! But really the lesson was really good she hasn't heard a lot about religion before but as we taught about prayer and she said her first prayer she looked at us afterwards and told us. "That felt so peaceful." It was wonderful. We also taught Raymon the random guy we're preparing to pass to the Taiwan missionaries because he's leaving soon! But he is super prepared! At least he's going to Taiwan and not to China so he wont get lost! After his lesson we made a mad dash to get the Lee's house to meet with Iris and that was a great lesson even if we were 30 minutes late!
Friday was Zone Council! Yay! Love those meetings. It was very needed and I really enjoyed feeling the spirit that always comes when there's so many missionaries in one place refocusing ourselves on our purpose. Afterwards we weekly planned and had dinner and another mad dash to Cherry to teach the restoration and she just lit up! And then we had another mad dash to teach Mr. Liu who told me that I am far to expressive when I share my testimony! Ha! Well I'm sorry sir but this message is true whether I say it in a monotone or with the fire of heavenly passion, you are going to get the spirit either way! But then our member present shared his testimony and Mr. Liu got really thoughtful and even though he's going to china soon too he promised to contact the missionaries when he gets back. We're going to hold him to that.
Then we exchanged! So I spent Saturday with sister Allred who is going to french work next transfer! First sisters going to French work in the history of the CTM. Needless to say she was freaking out and we had a blast with our mixed. French and Mandarin Language study. We enjoyed the exchange and then met with our companions that night. Sister Allred committed me to celebrate the little victories and sister Keahr invited sister Chen to clean our apartment better (Sister Chen and I got a good laugh about that because that's the first time in either of our missions that someone has implied that we were messy.) but we went through and reorganized everything anyways, and enjoyed killing five or six cockroaches. (We're still waiting for the exterminator, but we think it's improving... maybe.)
Sister Chen and I needed the exchange though. We needed a day away from each other to really realize how grateful we are to be together. I am so grateful that we have this chance to work together and to be the best we can be.
Sunday was fabulous. But I was exhausted for some reason and was fighting sleep all day long. That's okay we got a lot done anyways!
So to finish off the things that I learned this week. We got the Ensign in this weeks zone council mail delivery. (Side Shout out to Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik and my wonderful MTC companion) But in this month's magazine there was an article titled "My Regrets, Her Forgiveness" It's a brief reflection from a man taking care of his dying wife. He wonders what regrets he will have about the way he treated her as their earthly time together draws to a close. But as he casts his mind back to what regrets he knows are there he can not find anything. He is surprised but in this moment the spirit whispers to him that his wife had forgiven him long ago for any misdeed he had done and that she loved him.
The same is true of Christ He loves us so perfectly that as we come to him even as imperfect as we are He'll forgive us. And because of His love we can make it through this life with no regrets. So many times on my mission I've felt lost because of mistakes that I knew that I was going to regret later. But as a read this talk I felt the same spirit speak to me just so clearly.
No regrets doesn't mean no mistakes it doesn't even mean being perfect at trying and wanting to be better. It means taking the sacrament every week and taking the moments where you do want to be better and working with them for as long as you can.
I haven't had a perfect mission. But as I read this talk I realized that as of now I don't have any regrets. That's a blessing I can not fully express in just this short amount of time but it means so much to me. The concept is fully based on love. As we love God, His love is poured out more fully. His love is always there but it's our part that we need to work on.
The same is true of Christ He loves us so perfectly that as we come to him even as imperfect as we are He'll forgive us. And because of His love we can make it through this life with no regrets. So many times on my mission I've felt lost because of mistakes that I knew that I was going to regret later. But as a read this talk I felt the same spirit speak to me just so clearly.
No regrets doesn't mean no mistakes it doesn't even mean being perfect at trying and wanting to be better. It means taking the sacrament every week and taking the moments where you do want to be better and working with them for as long as you can.
I haven't had a perfect mission. But as I read this talk I realized that as of now I don't have any regrets. That's a blessing I can not fully express in just this short amount of time but it means so much to me. The concept is fully based on love. As we love God, His love is poured out more fully. His love is always there but it's our part that we need to work on.
I love Him. That's is something I will never ever regret.
-Sister Skinner
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