Sister Samantha Haacke: Baptism

My dear family and friends!

Family, I loved reading through all the emails sent since you are all all over the world right now..mom and dad--Europe is BEAUTIFUL! I am so grateful you are enjoying your time there and being able to travel and visit all sorts of countries--you lucky ducks! Continue taking lots of pictures and send them our way! Lachlan and Alexa--thanks for the emails you sent and for telling me all about your week with grandma and grandpa! It sounds like you have been really busy and had tons of fun! I am glad you were able to go up to the Conference Center in Salt Lake and take a tour and also swimming, bowling, and everything else! Marissa--I can't believe you are old enough to be home! haha I know you are responsible though! Glad you made it to church :) and your keeping down the house for the family.

BRYAN: HAPPY 19th BIRTHDAY!!!! Here goes the 20 days we are the same age :) haha :). But I love you! I hope you have a great day tomorrow and miracles come your way!

Since I emailed just on Wednesday (due to temple day), there aren't too many days to write about...but I continue to love what I do and love what I am learning everyday of my mission!!

Wednesday after the temple, eating brownies with President Jergensen and his family, and emailing home, we went to an underground mall in Taipei with Sister Fisher, Sister Jenkins, Sister Beeston, and Sister Fan. It was so fun to have a little time to be with them buy some new clothes :)

Thursday--Thursday was an extremely fast day! After studies, we had a quick lunch and started our WPS. We had to stop half way through to go to interviews with President Jergensen. We had a small group discussion--Sister Cardon and I, The Zone leaders, and another set of Elders with Pres. Jergensen. We discussed how each part of missionary work needs to be equal--strengthening members, working with less actives, and teaching new investigators--they all are essential to missionary work and fulfill our purpose. In each section, we are invited others to made sacred covenants with our Heavenly Father-Active members attending the temple and taking out their Endowments, Less actives returning to church to partake of the Sacrament, and Investigators preparing to be baptized. My personal interview with President was also super neat. I know he and his family is supposed to be in Taiwan right now. He is so inspired!

Thursday night, our investigator, LIAO PEI RU GOT BAPTIZED!!!! It was such a Spiritual Experience. She brought her dad and her son with her and it was honestly the best service ever. Elder Merrell was asked to baptize her. When she bore her testimony, she shared how she has been preparing for the last year for this day and how Heavenly Father has been very patient with her. She also got super teary eyed (very rare here in Taiwan) and expressed how she hopes and prays in a couple years, her 5 year old son will also make the decision to be baptized and that hopefully her dad will also make the decision to believe in Christ. Is was very moving and really invited the Spirit. Liao JieMei has taught me so much. It honestly has been her teaching me instead of me teaching her. Her relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ is so strong. It is so so neat.

Friday we had a normal day of missionary work. We did service in the early afternoon for Zhang JieMei and after the Elders asked if we could help them with another new investigator, Mia. She is also one of Cai JieMei friends but she lives in the Elders area. She previously attended the Presbyterian Church until her older brother forced her to stop going. She now lives far away from her brother and wants to start attending church again! We also invited her to baptism and she has a goal for September 5th! I am excited the Elders will have the opportunity to help her prepare for that date! Friday night we did some stop-bys and had dinner with the Scheese family.

Saturday, we did some Less-active finding, met with Gan JieMei, Akin, and had lots of finding time!

I love our lessons with Gan JieMei. Her lessons are definitely the hardest for me to understand because she uses really advanced Chinese but the Spirit is always invited so quickly when we are with her. Hong JieMei helped us peike. We spent pretty much our entire time with her today following up on her prayer whether the Book of Mormon is true or not. She said every time she prays about it, she either falls asleep during her prayer or all the criticism she has heard about our church comes rushing into her head. As we explained how those thoughts are from Satan she completely agreed and Hong JieMei also told her she believes Gan JM is afraid of the answer she is going to get and that when she does get the answer, she is going to have to change churches which will be really hard. Gan JM agreed. She believes she isn't ready to receive the answer yet but that Heavenly Father is slowly preparing her. She is so so ready--she just doesn't realize it yet!

Our night time was filled with finding. We were able to share a little bit with 2 people and one person asked us to come back on another day. We didn't get any new investigators Saturday night but planting seeds are also really important right?!

Sunday afternoon, we went back and visited Huang JM, the lady that asked us to come back another day and as soon as she saw that it was us, she was so excited and invited us in quickly. We explained why there were so many Christian churches and why ours is different than everyone else. She was super interested and we are going back on Wednesday afternoon!! Sunday, we also found a new less active we are going to start working with! When she saw us, she was like, "My name is still on the Church records?" We were like yes..haha How long ago did you get baptized?" She told us about three years ago and she attended church for about a year and then stopped going. She works everyday except for on Sunday (which is super great) and we believe she just got lazy and out of the habit of going. She still prays but doesn't read very often. After all our Less-active search, we found some success!

We also invited Li JieMei to baptism tonight, she was really excited and said yes until we invited her to September 12th and she declined and doesn't feel like she can join a church right now.

That was pretty much the rest of our week. I continue to LOVE what I do. The time goes by so so fast. Today, we are starting our 5th week of this transfer. It is crazy! We are going with our Zone today to the ZhuNan beach and playing some games on the sand.

I am grateful you are all having a great time at home! I love hearing from you every week! Thanks so much for the emails every week! I LOVE YOU ALL!!

Sister Haacke