Hello all! I've returned back to lovely Ping Dong! I say returned, because Chao Zhou, my first area, is actually in Ping Dong county. My new area is centered in Ping Dong city, which, unsurprisingly, is also in Ping Dong county. I'm here with Sister Chen, who was born in Kaohsiung and then moved to Taipei when she was 10. This is her 5th move as a missionary (I almost wrote "on island," which works for foreign missionaries, but not so well for those who have been "on island" their whole lives). Of course, saying goodbye is always a bit sad, but I feel really good about being here. I'm so glad I got to be in Yongkang for four months of my mission; the people I met and miracles I witnessed there will always be very dear to me, and I feel like I gave my best there. But it's exciting to move, and to know that being in Ping Dong with Sister Chen is exactly what I need to be doing right now.
On Saturday, our investigator Sister Huang got baptized. It was so wonderful to be there. I think it is a special tender mercy for a missionary to get to see an investigator from her first time meeting with missionaries until her baptism. Before people ever meet with the missionaries, they are prepared to receive the gospel, and learning/growth continue long after baptism, but the missionary's primary responsibility comes in for that first step of learning the basic gospel principles and determining to live by them. So to be allowed to witness someone develop and recognize her own testimony to the point of being willing to commit to live it forever is pretty amazing. Conversion really is a change that comes from the inside out. As Sister Huang said when we met with her the day before her baptism, when you have faith in God, you want to obey. If you ever think about disobeying, you can just remember Him, and then you won't want to anymore. The obedient acts spring out of that internal conviction and belief. There are still leaps of faith to be made. For example, the first time we invite someone to pray, she may have never prayed before, and have absolutely no experience to tell her it will do anything at all for her. But if she has hope that the blessings we describe could be real, she'll go try something she's never done before, and create an opportunity for her own spiritual experience. After the trial of faith comes the blessing of an answered prayer, which would never be possible without praying in the first place. Suffice it to say, I think I've learned a lot about the conversion process. I've thought a lot about the scripture (which I may have quoted before) that says, ". . . he meaneth that it shall come by way of the Gentiles, that the Lord may show his power unto the Gentiles. . ." (Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 15:17). As the Lord works through people, a significant part of His purpose is to show those people, His instruments, His power. I know that as a missionary, I have been an instrument of the Lord, and as the instrument I can tell that the real power or driving force has very little to do with my own abilities.
