Nativity pics, birthdays, earthquakes, and all that fun stuff

大家好！How are all of you? I hope everyone had the most lovely and fantastic week! Mine was good and busy. Let's get into it:

Last Monday we had a member dinner at this cute little European place, and I tried escargot! It wasn't bad, I'll take it over pig stomach :) after that we had another lesson too!

Tuesday we had district council and that's about it, and Wednesday we took the pictures for the Christmas concert! I played Mary, which was fun, we were there for a long time and then had a meeting about the Christmas concert songs afterward. Exciting! I can attach some pictures from it. Then we had our GECG! 

Thursday we had exchanges, I stayed in Jinhua with Zhang Jiemei and both my comps went to Danshui! It was a little stressful because I was leading the exchange and have been here for two weeks, but it was good! That evening we went to the library and put cards and flyers in a bunch of the books, which felt super illegal haha. It was fun though! 

Friday was my birthday! 20 now...so old! That morning we got a call from one of the elders not in our zone who said that they would be teaching a friend who would be going back to China in a few days, and they wanted her baptized tomorrow, and asked us to come help teach the last 3 lessons. So we went to the church, and then my comps who were still in Danshui called and were like "Hey one of our potentials wants a temple tour right now" and so we ended up calling the Xinan sisters to have them help with the lesson (which actually took 6 hours) and we did the temple tour. Luckily Zhang Jiemei used to serve in Jinhua haha. Then we also had a surprise lesson with an RC after which was fun! Then we had weekly planning, and the sisters in my apartment surprised me by taking me to a lasagna place for my birthday and also surprised me with a cake later! So that was super sweet of them. Then we had another temple tour and that was it for the day! 

Saturday we had lots of temple tours! I don't remember what else happened. Then Sunday we helped with an FHE activity which was fun! A speaker came and talked about organization and cleaning haha. Good times! 

Spiritual thought for the week: Isn't the temple just amazing? I was thinking about the temple and ordinances for the dead, and there is absolutely no way temples would exist if this church was not run by God himself. It just would not make sense, because doing ordinances for those who have passed away doesn't make any temporal difference for us. It would be pointless unless we believe what we do, that this is God's church and through His sealing power our relationships can last beyond this life. Through His priesthood we can offer an invitation of love and give others the choice to accept the grace of Jesus Christ. What a privilege, one that would not make sense if this is not His church.