Hi Everyone,
I have a million things running through my mind and many things I know I wanted to share this week.
Hmmm...well, this week Sister Slade and I traveled to Eastwood, about 40 minutes from our area, to spend time with the sisters there serving in the only Mandarin Ward in NSW. Almost everyone in Eastwood is from China and they are generally older, meaning they usually hardly speak any English. I was a bit nervous, not sure how I would do being thrown into the deep end, but it was a really good experience, I loved it. We taught a 72 year old man, who recently got baptized. Let me just say I have a testimony of the gift of tongues. He only speaks Chinese and he's been reading the Book of Mormon. He had some questions about the Isaiah chapters and I was able to understand everything and helped him to understand. Of course, when he asked about Moroni's trumpet I had no idea how to explain what a trumpet is but that's besides the point. I was so thankful to Heavenly Father for helping me. We taught English class Wednesday night so I'm used to teaching university students but in Eastwood, they were all 50 and older, old Asians are the cutest! I loved teaching them, they were great!
Sister Slade and I got back to our area and were feeling some pressure and stress trying to catch up on the time we were out of our area. We had a few miracles. One afternoon, we were waiting for an appointment to come when two people walked in and said they wanted to learn about our church. GREAT! So we asked them to come back in an hour and they did. We taught them about God and Jesus Christ and how to pray, it went really well. We saw one of them again a few days later and taught him more. He said he looked up "Mormons" on the Internet (I'm thinking....oh no, here we go...) and he said, "I saw that there are a lot of rules that you live by to be in this church, one of them is no smoking. But I know this church is probably the true one so I stopped smoking a week ago".........WHAT!? haha He stopped smoking before he even met us. He has so much faith, he has done his research and already feels this is the true church. He continues to grow as we teach him. He came to church on Sunday and loved it. He's planning to be baptized in a few weeks! We also found 5 other new investigators this week, we've been very blessed.
Once a month there is a Leadership Council Meeting that the zone leaders and assistants attend. Last night was our first time. It was pretty intense, we all have to account for our own areas. We accounted for the sisters in the mission: I'll just mention that the sisters attributed to HALF of the baptisms in the mission this month. SISTER POWER! haha, it was an honor to represent the sisters at the meeting. President Howes then gave a great training on the power of women and how precious and great we are...haha...being the only women in the room, we felt pretty good, though slightly awkward.
Today was meant to be Pday, but they asked all the Mandarin missionaries to come work at Maquarie University because it's orientation week. So we got to set up a booth and everything! It felt weird being on a college campus not being a student, but it was a fun day. We just returned and I'm exhausted. We leave tomorrow morning at 6am to drive 10 hours north to visit the sisters there and do some trainings, it will be quite the roadtrip, I'll know everything and anything about Sister Slade, if anyone is curious haha.
Well, my time is about finished for today but I love you all, have a great week!
Love,
Sister Raitt
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