Love you all!
Sister Makena Bauss
包爱蕾姐妹
Hey there everyone! Hope you have all been having a wonderful holiday season! Things have been crazy (but good) the past week. This past week our Mission held a Scripture Read-a-thon. On Christmas Eve we read all four of the Gospels and started on reading the Doctrine and Covenants. We continued again with the Doctrine and Covenants on Christmas morning and will continue the Read-a-thon tomorrow and on New Years Day, finishing the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price as well. Christmas Day we started off with a call home to Sister Mak's family in Hong Kong and breakfast at our Bishop's house. Then, we went to the Read-a-thon, a members house for lunch, call home for Sister Willoughby and I at one of our Chinese members' homes, dinner at another members home, and an activity for some of the recent converts who were unable to go home for Christmas. It was a busy, but wonderful day. The rest of the week has been pretty ordinary. Lots of contacting. Or at least, a lot of attempts at contacting. Waterloo has been practically abandoned the past few weeks as all the students have either gone home or traveling for the holidays. But we're having fun finding ways to keep warm and have actually seen some amazing blessings in our investigators who are in town. Our investigator Isabella is prepping for her baptism later this month and I am SO EXCITED. On Saturday, she told us for the first time (after a long teaching process) that she really believes what we have taught her is true and that Jesus Christ is her Saviour. I was so happy when I heard that. We also have another investigator, Yushi, who is prepping for baptism this month. Watching the Spirit work with him has been so amazing and I was so happy when he came to church this week for the first time. The Spirit was so strong! And in the spirit of the New Year, I've made a resolution to start a Gratitude Jar! Everyday, I'll fill out a tiny strip of paper with something that I was grateful for that day. Then, at the end of the year, I'll read them all. Each week, I'll choose one to highlight in my posts. I challenge each of you to find a way to make gratitude a part of your New Year. We each have so much to be thankful for!
Love you all! Sister Makena Bauss 包爱蕾姐妹
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Merry Christmas everyone! This will be a short post this week, we have lots to do today! But I want to make sure to start with some big news! Our trainee has arrived!! When Sister Willoughby got the call from Pres.Scott last week telling us we were going to train, we expected that our trainee would be arriving about two weeks later than the rest of the new missionaries (Mandarin speaking missionaries tend to come in at a different time due to the timing of the transfers for missionaries in Taiwan). Boy were we surprised when we got to the Mission Home for training on Tuesday and discovered we would be taking a new sister home that day! Sister Mek (麦姐妹)is our new companion. She came in with the other missionaries because she wasn't at the MTC studying Chinese, she was there studying English! She's from Hong Kong and is AWESOME! She's already teaching us so much. She is absolutely fearless and we both love working with her.
Unfortunately for Sister Mek, her first Sunday in the field did not include church! We were hit by a HUGE ice storm on Saturday night, and as a result, church got canceled. So instead of church, we went out to do our first bout of tracting here in KW! It took us forever to chip through the 1/2 inch thick ice on our car, and as we were walking there were several wipeouts, but all in all it was a fun and exciting day. Love you guys and take care! Sister Makena Bauss 包爱蕾姐妹 Well, lots of big news for you guys to read about today! In reverse chronological order:
1. Transfer calls were last night! Sister Willoughby and I will be staying together here in Kitchener Mandarin...TRAINING! Our new companion will be coming in a few weeks. We're pretty excited! Tomorrow we'll head to Brampton for training on how to train. SO EXCITED! 2. Leo got baptized! He's been investigating since July and he was both baptized and confirmed this Sunday. We had the baptism before church and it was going to have to be quick since we only had 45 minutes from the start of the baptismal service to the beginning of church. And then Leo and the member baptizing him showed up 30 minutes late. We had to skip the talk on the Holy Ghost and the last song, but we managed to pull off the world's fastest baptismal service and still have the spirit there strong for our five investigators who attended. It's been so amazing to watch his testimony grow. Thank you so much to all of the missionaries who have worked with him over the past several months and planted seeds! I am so excited for him and can't wait to continue to watch his growth :) I'll send a pic of the baptism next week, it's on Sister Willoughby's camera. 3. Thursday morning we got a call from the Relief Society President in the Ward we are serving in. She asked us to come by her house that night at 8pm. We were a little confused as to why, but when members of the Ward Council want you over at their house, you don't hesitate to show up! So later that night we show up at her house and go inside. She asks us to sit down and tells us she wants us to see something. We were so confused. Both of us were thinking we were in trouble (what for, neither of us had clue) and were just wondering why she had invited us over. Then her husband pulled up a picture on their iPad and showed it to us. I freaked out. On his iPad was a picture of my mom, Madeleine, Chad, and Sis.Thompson. The kicker? In the pic they were standing in the Relief Society President's house. I was so scared. I was freaking out that they were in the house, that I was going to see them, and that I was going to get sent home. Heart attack. (no worries everyone, they were NOT in the house and I did NOT see them) The Relief Society President then proceeds to give me all of my Christmas presents that my family had dropped off at her house. Including a cooler full of my mom's home-cooking. Needless to say, I was a happy missionary. It was so nice to have my "Christmas package" arrive (I had been checking the mail for it for days) and to feel so much love. Included were notes from my home ward and family. Love you all so much! Thank you! 4. Apparently, we're moving apartments! The man who lives below us just had his apartment renovated, and ever since, every step we make sounds like a herd of elephants downstairs. He went to the landlords to talk about switching apartments and they told him that the people above him would be moving at the end of the month. He came and told us what they had said and we were really surprised. It was the first we had heard of anything. We called the mission office and asked if they knew about that, to which they replied that they did know and that they couldn't say anymore. So...we're moving. No idea when. Or where to. But we are moving. Fingers crossed for a nice apartment! Love you all and have a very Merry Christmas! Sister Makena Bauss 包爱蕾姐妹 Hey y'all! Sister Bauss here! It's been a good and busy week! We had Zone Conference in Guelf last Tuesday which was awesome. We talked a lot about the Doctrine of Christ and how it's the center of everything we teach. We also had our annual Christmas game of Jeopardy, where we were quizzed on our Preach My Gospel and White Handbook knowledge. It was tons of fun! Then we were surprised with a visit from President Halstrom of the Presidency of the Seventy on Thursday. Only those who were relatively close got to go and see him speak, and luckily, we were part of the lucky group! He gave an amazing talk on the Work of Salvation and when he bore testimony...wow. I'll send some notes from it next week. During his visit we also got to see nearly all of the Chinese missionaries! Only two companionships weren't there (sorry London and St.Cats!), and it was the most Chinese missionaries I've seen since the start of my mission. We got to see Sister Hsiung and Sister Conner, the other two Mandarin sisters who are currently serving in Bayview (the Mandarin Ward in Toronto). To our surprise, we found out that there is another Mandarin sister here already! Her name is Sister Leung and she's from Hong Kong. She's currently being trained in English work, but now there are five of us! Apparently Sister Conner has a friend who was called her Mandarin speaking as well. So we're expecting her sometime next year. We're growing! On another exciting note, Leo should be baptized this week! He's been investigating since July, and we're really excited about him. :) I just love our investigators so much!Keep up! Keep Praying! And Keep Strong! Love,
Sister Makena Bauss 包爱蕾姐妹 Bao Ailei Jiemei BREAKING NEWS ALERT! We had 21 lessons last week and 10 of them were member presents! And we had 4 at church! Needless to say, it was a successful week. We're looking at several baptisms for the month of December and I'm really hoping that the Spirit of Christmas touches our investigators hearts and helps them get there. This gospel just has such a huge ability to bless their lives! I've had a lot to be grateful for this week. With the success mentioned earlier, combined with all of the dinner's and lunches we've had, I've been blessed! I love it here in KW Mandarin and can't get enough of the work! It's going to be a short post this week, but I'm making it up with pictures. Okay? Okay.
Love,Sister Makena Bauss 包爱蕾姐妹 Bao Ailei Jiemei |