Sister Samantha Haacke: Thanks For Your Prayers

What a week full of tender mercies. I Don't even know where to begin. If you haven't noticed, the last few weeks have been some of the hardest weeks of my mission for me. I have been hit with some hard challenges. I have been praying so hard and Heavenly Father really answered my prayers this week. I am so blessed. Heavenly Father loves me! I am also so grateful for my challenges. I'm telling you, challenges are SO hard but when we continue to endure, and continue to show our effort, Heavenly Father will deliver us. I am so grateful.

There are so many tender mercies and miracles I can share about this week. So, I will try and use my time as best as I can and share as much as I can.

Saturday: It was Sister Wong and my turn to head up to Taipei and do temple tours for the day. Temple Tours always bring so many miracles. We started the day off nice and early with a group of 10 little kids. Yep, there was a ward up from TaiZhong who brought several of their friends who are non members and we split, the adults and the kids up and had two separate tours, so while one companionship of sisters was giving a tour to the adults, Sister Wong and I were able to give a 'tour' to the kids. We played picture bingo with all the pictures in the chapel and did a fun little biyu with them with orange juice and dirt...that baptism can clear us of all the dirt :)

The Taoyuan stake was also in Taipei for their temple day. As I was helping a group take a picture, I looked outside and GUESS WHO I SAW?!?! Sister Cardon and the Han Family! I starting freaking out! Hurry and helped the group take the picture and ran outside to meet them! The Han family is the family that I worked with in NanKan. Han DiXiong got baptized the day after I got transferred from that area. It was so good to see him. They came up and did baptisms as a family, Lily (daughter) and Han JieMei and Han DiXiong and Lily brought her cute little son. It was seriously the best thing ever. They ended up doing a tour with us and it was the best thing ever. Lily has all the pictures so when she sends them to me, I will be sure to send them on. And, I love sister Cardon. she finishes her mission this week. Absolutely insane. Time literally flies.

Then, the elders from our area brought up the front desk lady from our apartment. Over the last few weeks, we have become really good friends with her. Aundria is 20 years old but is literally the most mature person I have ever met. And she speaks perfect English. She is currently working full time, going to college, and trying to live a fun life. We had a great tour with her and talked mostly about the temple. She is also willing to allow the missionaries to contact her in the area where she lives! I am so excited to see what happens!

We had a few other tours in between and then our investigator, Joy (Chen Qiao Pei) came and did a tour and she brought a friend--Nancy!! We talked about the life of Christ and about the Temple! I am so grateful we are able to work with Joy! She is so adorable. She did find a job and starts it today so she can only meet with us on the weekends now but she is still progressing great! And her friend, became a potential investigator!

During their tour, another of our new investigators, Bruce, called us and said that he was at the church and wanting to do a tour. We had our first lesson with him on Friday (I'll explain more in a minute) and just invited him if he wanted to come up and do a tour. Well, he did. So we asked him to wait for a few minutes and when we were finished with Joy and Nancy, we gave Bruce a tour. We met him through English class. On Wednesday when new people come to English class, they fill out a simple paper about themselves and then at the very bottom it asks if they have interest in learning more about the church. Well, English class was crazy on Wednesday--we had so many new students and at the end, we didn't have a chance to talk to all of them-including him. Thursday, as we were going through and organizing the English papers, we noticed that he marked that he had interest, so we gave him a call on Thursday and set up for Friday. Our lesson on Friday was so good. He has SO many questions and has so much interest. He set a baptismal date goal and committed to church (which in the end, he accidentally slept in and texted us during second hour saying he was so sorry and would come next week). Well, we gave him a tour mostly about the temple and why we have them. Bruce has so many good questions. They really make me think. They are so good though. I can't wait to continue meeting with him!

Then, Saturday night 10:15 PM, I am getting ready for bed and we got a call from an unknown number. Someone named Gao JieMei. I couldn't figure out who it was although she said that I had called her before. I looked through all the former records, potential records and couldn't figure out who she was. Well, on the phone, she said that she has a friend named Zhou JieMei who wants to go to church tomorrow and bring her two sons. I was really confused but super excited at the same time. Well, this Zhou JM ended up coming the last hour. We were just about to sit down in Relief Society and a member comes in saying there is a lady looking for me. I run out and say, "Are you Zhou JM ma?" Yes, it was. Well, she came the last hour and we met with her after church. She told us the full name of the lady who referred her and I still couldn't put a name to a face. We gave her a Book of Mormon and set up a time next Sunday to share more. She has two really active, crazy sons who are 9 and 10 years old! I love them already so much. After looking through the ward list and asking our ward mission leader and a few other people about this Gao JM, I figured out that she is a Less Active! Yep, this less active who has been less active for about 10 years or so referred her friend to the church. This Zhou JieMei is really worried about her boys. She fills like they are not growing up in a good lifestyle so she fills like she needs a change and church is the answer! I am so excited to meet with her!!

And then to add on top of that, Sister Lindsay (my MTC companion) called us Sunday night and gave us a member referral of a girl who attended church in their ward on Sunday with her friend. Sister Lindsay and Xiao JieMei met with her after church, set a baptismal date with her and then learned that she lives in SanChong. So, they called us last night and gave us this golden referral. What a tender mercy and miracle.

It was so crazy because Sunday afternoon, we met with a man who we met last week on the street and set a baptismal goal with him and then found out he lives in LuZhou. So, we are going to have to give him over and then the Lord blesses us with someone just like the referral we sent. So crazy!

We also had exchanges with our Sister Training Leaders on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was fun being in their area and serving with Sister Juarez. I absolutely love her! We had Zone Meeting on Tuesday and talked about working better with ward members and receiving referrals from them.

While finding this week, we met this super cute grandma, Zhao JM. She is 61 years old and introduced herself by saying she only has 3 1/2 teeth. She is so sarcastic and made me laugh SO hard! She said she was going to come to church with us and when we called her Saturday night she remembered but she never showed up. So we will see about this next week. I love Zhao JM.

Quick fun fact: Last Monday was Leap Day right? Well, everyone in Taiwan has the day off from work on Leap Day...so it was so busy. We met up with some other sister missionaries and had some plans to go see this cute Frozen Exhibit but the line was a few hours wait and we didn't have time for that...so we just took a picture with Elsa.

Here a just a few of the tender mercies from this last week. I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father. Honestly, thank you so much for all the prayers in my behalf. I could really fill them this week. I know all those prayers are being answered!

Thank you all so much!!

Have a great week!!

Love,

Sister Haacke

PS..Sorry for picture overload...are you ready!?!