May 16, 2014

Happy Saturday... or Friday, depending where you're reading this from. 

What a blessing it was to see my family on Sunday! For some, it's hard to Skype back home because it seems to distract them from missionary work and makes them pretty homesick... but I'm happy to know that each and every one of you support me in all that I'm doing out here. It strengthens my motivation to work harder and do more! Thank you for being so great and making my Mother's Day the best ever!

Right now, at this very moment, I'm in the middle of uploading over 130 pictures... so no need to wait any longer!! I'll share them with you on Dropbox as soon as they are done uploading... ok, you might need to wait a little bit longer. :)

This week was incredible although, it was not without a few down moments. Let's just take it day by day, shall we?

Monday:

Typed a bunch of documents up on a computer for a little while... That's what we did all day, but at night we had some real fun! We went out and visited a family and had a Family Home Evening with them. It was so great! We shared a nice little Spiritual Share, had some fruit as we all talked together, and then played a really fun game! It was a total blast! 

Tuesday:

We drove quite a bit today! In the morning we had to drive to Yuanlin to get a bike, drove back to Taichung and worked on some office stuff, then had a fun DTM (District Training Meeting) and then finished up the work in the office. We went up to Daya for a bit and then came back into the city to meet with a new investigator! He was pretty cool, but doesn't have a whole lot of interest! No problem, we'll keep working with him! To end the day, we went over to Xihu to grab yet another bike for another missionary! I just realized that I named about 3 or 4 different places and you probably don't know where a single one is! haha, find a map I guess! :)

Wednesday:

SO AWESOME... we went up to the Temple!!! I had the special experience of driving the car up to Taibei with Sister B and Elder H... Dad, I'll never refuse to drive again when we're on rode trips in California. I thought the roads were bad over there, but I have absolutely no way to describe how ridiculous the roads were over in Taibei! It was madness... but eventually we got to the Temple and the outside world was soon forgotten! I'll share more about that in just a bit...

Elder L and I had to go over to the Tabei Mission Office to meet with some of the Office missionaries over there and I saw some familiar faces! I ran into a bunch of missionaries that I was in the MTC with! So that was kind of fun to run into all of those people and chat with them for a few minutes.

Thursday:

Thursday was a sad one. We had to take Elder H and another missionary up to the airport so that they could hop on a plane back to America. It was rough to send poor Elder H off. He has such a desire to do the work, yet he's unable to do so right now. He'll be back within 2 months, and I believe he'll be even stronger than before! The one upside of that trip was that we were able to go with the W's, one of the senior couples in the office. They're so awesome! 

Friday:

And here's the travel day! We took our weekly trip to Gaoxiong yesterday and made it home by nighttime! It was quite the adventure! Lots of fun, lots of fun!

That was basically the whole week! I apologize for the lack of fun stories this week! I'll see what I can do and pay better attention to details next week! I'll end with a spiritual thought for the week...

As I attended the Temple this week, I learned quite a bit, but the most obvious thing that I learned was the principle of self accountability. I think of the Bible story of Adam and Eve. We read in the Bible that God asked: "Adam, where art thou?" Why would God need to ask that question? Didn't He know exactly where Adam was? He goes on to ask what Adam did... He knew full well what Adam did. Why did he ask these questions? I feel that we can learn from these small details. We are to be accountable for all things that we do in this life. God knows everything that we do, and He knows where we are at every waking moment, but we are required to report to Him morning and night and update Him on what and how we are doing. I believe that this principle of Accountability is designed to help us see ourselves more clearly, thus enabling us to change into what we are destined to become! Isn't that an exciting blessing?? Doesn't it make you want to pull out a mirror and take a good look?? I promise that when we prayerfully do these things, God will reveal unto us our weakness. Ether 12: 27

I love ya! Have an awesome Week!!

Elder Noll