Sister Samantha Haacke: General Conference Challenges

Family and Friends!

What a great week this has been! I LOVED General Conference--so uplifting and I learned so much from each speaker! What a blessing it is that we have a living prophet and apostles to lead and guide our church. How neat it is we now have three new ordained apostles to also teach, lead, and guide us.

As for this week, our investigators we are really focusing on are continuing to progress. We visit a less active who is almost fully back to activity and her nonmember daughter-in-law quite frequently and they are both really progressing. 巴永, the daughter in law, is slowly progressing and has a baptismal date for the end of this month. She has the desire but for her to read and pray on her own is really hard. She feels like it is something she can only do when the missionaries are in a lesson with her. :( As we continue to teach her and help her come to know Christ, I hope and pray she can learn the importance of personal communication with our Heavenly Father.

We also had a great lesson with 王志文 this week. We are now teaching him the commandments and taught Word of Wisdom this week. In Taiwan, it is pretty common for everyone to drink tea and coffee--especially tea--there is so many different varieties here--and so that is his only concern. At first, he was really nervous about having to give up tea but towards the end of the lesson he said something really neat. He said, "Since this is a commandment from Heavenly Father, I know I need to obey it." What a wonderful man of faith. He has still yet to come to church--mostly concerning his work. He drives a car for a man who lives up in one of the mountainous tribes--ZhuoXi--were we go pretty frequently--and his schedule is never set in stone. :(

冒姐妹 is someone we are also working really close towards. This last week she brought up a big concern here--regarding worshiping. She asked what the conflict was between being baptized and continuing to worship other Gods. During this lesson with her, I could feel the Spirit really strong. I know that through the Spirit, Sister Coleman and I were able to bear powerful testimony and promise her that as she would continue to pray daily, read daily, and attend church every Sunday that this concern of hers would diminish and she would not have the desire to worship other Gods anymore. I know the Spirit bore powerful testimony to her.
冒姐妹 is like my Taiwanese mom. We get along so great and I can laugh so hard with her! I love her to death and I am so grateful for this opportunity Heavenly Father has given me to help her come unto Christ.

On Friday, we were up in the mountains doing some finding and visiting some investigators in ZhuoXi--the ZhongZheng Tribe. (Dad, this is one of the mountainous tribes--and you were right, these people up here are absolutely amazing--so humble, so loving). We were walking up this pretty steep hill to see if there were any homes up there. We were up it a few minutes and we could see NO homes. We were about to go back but decided to continue walking, just a few moments later we saw a few homes and went and and talked to them. We saw two miracles right in a row! The first man, was visiting home from doing his military service up in Taipei and was only going to be home for a few days. We had a wonderful short lesson with him, gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon, and recorded his information to give to the respective missionaries. As we were walking to the next home, some trees separated and we were able to see the beautiful view of all the town of YuLi. We stopped to take a picture and next thing we knew, this man came driving up on his motor-scooter and tried to speak to us in some broken English.

Us and the view.

We walked to his home together and we were able to teach him about Heavenly Father and he became a new investigator!! First of all, we were pretty excited to meet this new investigator, Secondly, the VIEW was beautiful!! This man's home was on the top of the mountain and it overlooked the WHOLE valley. The pictures we got definitely do not capture the magnificence of it but it was beautiful. How grateful I am for the beauties of the earth!

Our new investigator we met on the top of the mountain.

We ended this week with the wonderful opportunity to listen to General Conference! We watched it with our branch and we used our Branch President's phone to listen to it in English. So, in one ear we had English and the other ear we were listening to it in Chinese. It was so great. Sadly, I forgot all my notes I was going to send home sitting on my desk in our apartment, but I learned SO SO much.

I loved how so many talks were on the Sabbath Day. This Holy Day is truly so important. We are given this day to REST, to spend TIME with family, to STUDY the gospel, and most importantly to ATTEND church. The three hours we spend at church each week are the most three important hours of our week. I invite you all to ponder how you can make this time a more sacred time. Whether it be putting your phone on silent and not using it or even leaving it at home or in the car, starting to take notes as to what the Spirit teaches you, or not falling asleep. I know as we focus more intently and learn more at church our weeks will be filled with more happiness, our work, homework, and other activities will go more smoothly, and blessings will fall like rain from Heaven.

I also loved D. Todd Christofferson's Talk. We go to church to anchor ourselves in Christ. Our calling on earth is to learn and grow. This life is NOT easy. We are faced with challenges, trials and temptations of ALL sorts. But, we are promised from the scriptures we will NEVER be tempted more than we can bear. Keep working your best, focus on the important things, and work towards receiving the gift of exaltation and Salvation!!

Also, mom, you are AMAZING! I LOVE you. This conference made me so grateful for my mom. Mom, your incredible. LOVE YOU

Lastly, what is your scripture you are going to 'ponderize' this week? (Devin G. Durrant's Talk from Sunday Afternoon's Session) I want to hear back from y'all!!

I LOVE you all!! HAVE A GREAT WEEK!!!!!!

Love,

Sister Haacke

Last P-day, we went to SanXianTai again! IT was BEAUTIFUL!