40 day fast ✌️

 大家好！

I hope you all had the most lovely week in the history of weeks and that they only keep getting better from here! Email me back and let me know how things are going.  Monday, we didn't have my bike yet so we ended up walking like 20 minutes to a park for P-day! So, most of P-day was spent walking, but it was good to get outside :)Tuesday, we had district council and lunch with our district which was fun! Afterward we had a lesson with our friend 阿偉 and were able to make him a new friend! 

Wednesday morning, we went to the doctor and then did our studies and such. Afterward we stopped by our friend 老張's house. Please pray for him! He is just kind of old and sad, but hopefully our visit brightened his day a little! Afterward we had our English Group! It had a good turnout, but everyone was SO quiet. Like at the beginning they wouldn't even introduce themselves. In Chinese. It was a rough start, but a family came with two energetic little boys which I think lightened the mood, and we played Categories with them after, which they seemed to like! Very different from the parent child class that I used to lead, which is full of very energetic children, but hopefully they enjoyed it! 

Thursday morning, we met with a less active family and read scriptures with them! It ended up being way too long, but now we know haha. Afterward we did our studies, and then we were going to go to 新竹 for a district finding activity, but we missed our train, so we biked! It was fun! It's like 10 km one-way haha. I had a good time, my poor companion :) we did balloon finding and English challenge there! Tons of kids wanted to try, so they could get a balloon animal and we got a lot of flyers handed out! Also, President was on exchanges with the ZL's at the time so he went finding with us haha.

Friday was kind of crazy, we had interviews and zone council which was good! Afterward we had a board game activity with a bunch of members, and they all committed to bringing a friend next time so we'll hold them to it! I'm excited to see the results of the member work we have been doing! Heavenly Father has already been blessing us with referrals!!

Saturday was also crazy, that morning we met with a member and her parents who are potentials and got to know them! We basically just did a photo shoot with them with the flowers haha. I believe we will be able to start teaching them soon! Since that was part of our exercise time we went back and hurried and got ready and then were like "shoot we have a member lunch" and had a qingke and then went back, did our weekly planning, and then had a member dinner that night! When personal study has to happen after hours… it was a good time though! Also also! My boy 阿翔got baptized WHOOOO!!!! I'm so proud of him, he has come so far! And I got permission to watch over zoom but when I asked for the zoom link the baptism had already passed, my bad! I didn't realize it was the 11th that day! It's all good though! 

Sunday, we went to church and did our studies and such, and then had a member dinner that night! One goal that our zone has is to do a "40 day fast." This means that we would fast and write down things that we could change to become more pure and obedient, things that the spirit prompted us to start or stop doing. Then for 40 days we would make an effort to do or not to those things! It promised amazing blessings and spiritual power. We started our 40 days yesterday and I am excited to see how it goes! 

Spiritual thought for the week: Have you ever noticed that God always tells His children to fear not? Heavenly Father never wanted us to fear. If you look in the fear section of the Bible dictionary, it says that one of the first things that man experienced when Adam fell was fear. Fear comes from sin and is unworthy of a child of God. God wants us to have confidence in him, he wants our fear to go away. In the Book of Mormon there is a reoccurring theme that although people feel fear, that fear will turn to joy as soon as they repent. The message of repentance is a joyful one. Repentance through Jesus Christ's Atonement allows us to be confident in our Father, and comfortable in His presence and joy. His "perfect love casteth out all fear."