Wellp.. Good luck sister Thornley welcome to a new world...

Well everyone I have now experienced my first transfer! WHOA! And I went from shaddy sunny rainy beautiful east coast of YiLan City to... wait for it... The heart of Taipei City I am in Xin An as a Sister Training Leader with my new companion Sister Gagon! WHOA

 

Little bit of a culture shock when I realized I just moved to a new country all over again. Yep. Bit of a shock to the system. But I love it already so so much. My companion rocks she has been here almost as long as I was in YiLan flippin the tables. But she really is so incredible and I am learning so much already like one you have to talk FAST if you want them to stop. Its the pace of New York City on steriods here and if you want these people to stop you've got to get your message out fast a little crazy. But I love it. So much. I may move to New York when I get home. (Sister O'Brien you got room for a roomie??) we had such a great end to the week and it really built my testimony. I came here and the sister who just moved is our mission's rockstar like baptisms galor whereever she goes. A little intimidating stepping into that shadow. But we prayed that we would still see much success and in the 3 days I have been here with her we have already seen the Lord blessing us so much. We set four baptismal dates with people in two days. Yes. That is really crazy ridiculously ALL the Lord. I am so looking forward to being here and getting to work with the Sisters here that we look over. such a giant blessing.

 

The baptism on Thursday was beautiful. It was a little scary as we had to literally fly on our bikes from a lesson to get to the baptism about 30 minutes away in 10 minutes. Dont worry guys the Lord protects his missionaries. So sense we had just flown there our hair is a bit wind blown.. excuse the ugly baptism pictures. It was awesome and Sister Liao's testimony after was really super awesome. I love her!!!

 

So for the past 3 days I have not spoken any english. Its mine and Sister Gagons goal to shoot her english before she goes home. I will be her last companion and since preach my gospel says speak the language of your mission at every opportunity we are not speaking any english to each other at all. ever. I thought at first it would be crazy hard but a relief to see that the Lord is blessing us so much as we try to improve our Chinese and it has been not too bad. Pray for me. ;)

 

Well family I love you all. Super excited to report better next week after I have been here a bit longer. Keep the faith

 

-Sister Thornley

my last p-day in YiLan. we went to go see these super cool sand sculptures. be jealous

 And the Wu family a less active family I have been working with for a year

 The baptism Sister Liao and her Son

 My new incredible beautiful amazing new companion in a new area! Sister Gagon

Miracles

​This is a fruit exclussive to Taiwan.. ba?? its called Leechee I think I know the chinese name. Lizhi

​The coolest thing ever. Went to the dragon boat festival and this was going on there. They are some crazy martial arts people. The one with the two men is a long iron rod that they mangaged to get wrapped around their throats. Coolest thing ever.. 

then we got to meet him. what!!! His muscles are bigger than my head!

 oh also the hair wrap she puts on every night to keep her locks a flowing

this was a hike we did last week got up to the top and there was a buddist temple that we got to go in. This is the fountain of the holy dragon water. Or translation regular water coming out of a statue dragon mouth so they think its holy and that if you drink it it will give you luck. Well you know what we say as missionaries. Try it and if you feel its right. so we drank it. No feeling. 

 A wishing well

 The great STONE DRAGON!

we found black and white makes us look less fat.. so yes. Black and white here we go., The district. Asian up! 

We found an american hamburger shop!

who also had a cardboard cut out of my man Obama! 

Also.. I have been told that I will be leaving Yilan this week. My first time moving. So took tons of pictures with my sweet yilan members.

Its been great.

This is Sister Liao Xu Rou Jun the one getting baptized this Thursday. I find it is easier to pray for them if you can see them. Shes beautiful huh?

Well everyone. This week was one to be remembered. I got an email from My mission President that told me that this would be my last week here in Yilan so I needed to do all I could to save the souls of those I loved here. No pressure. We worked really hard and both of us prayed and fasted to help them this last week. I have never been so grateful for the guidance of Heavenly Father. we saw so many crazy miracles. No time to write them all. But Thank you all for your prayers they paid off. And the biggest miracle. Sister Keung and I will see one last baptism together the last night here together this Thursday a mom and her son. Pray for them Sister Liao. and her son. Their english names are anderson and jane. classic :) I love the work here. Never in my life been so happy! greatest feeling ever!!!

I love you all be safe and wise and full of the spirit. ps Kyle Bryan havent heard from you twos in a while.. still alive???

The week to be remembered

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA 

yep that about explains it. 

love you all have a good week!

okay no I am kidding. Lets start the update for you all. So this week I was not here in YiLan for much of it. I really really love this place with all my heart. But we had some cool meetings. In which we were trained on how to get back to the basics to improve our teaching skills and help people prepare for baptism. It was really good and led to a lot of personal reflection. The other fun parts of it was at the meeting I was called to translate! WHOOT WHOOT promotion! Okay acutally it was really humiliating and a nice reminder from Heavenly Father that I cant just pray for the gift of tongues I need to use all I have to improve my language ability. So I will begin to do better at that but it was still a cool experience speaking at the speed of light translating the english to chinese for those there who dodnt speak english. 

The other fun part was I went on two exchanges this week. One I stayed here in LuoDOng and worked with a SIster Steed who is going home in two weeks. She is really amazing and a huge blessing came from it. My sweet little Sister Keung came back and said to me, "Wow Sister Thornley I really take you for granted. I am really glad to be back here with you." Melted my mommy heart. Haha I really love this girl so much its gonna kill me to separate from here. The second exchange I was blessed to go up to Taipei. And work with Sister Barden I learned so much. A lesson I learned that she taught me came from Jesus the Christ. He teaches that there is a unified disunity in the way Christ teaches. For instance with one blind man he literally touches him. Another commands him to form clay and another he spit to another his words alone. The principles are the same but the way he reaches them is different. And I saw whoa, yikes I talk to everybody the same. Whoops time to change it up and follow the spirit better to know when to tell others when to touch when to get to spit in their eye... okay no just kidding but yes :) 

Then the greatest miracle of my life happened! I called our investigator Yan Jie Mie I called her sunday morning to check she was up and coming to church. She told me that last night was really hard and that she has a report she needs to do with her classmates at ten and that they got really mad at her when she told them she was going to go to church. I told her to stop pray and then read the book of mormon and THEN decide if she was going to come or not. As soon as we hung up my companion and I knelt in prayer praying that she would be touched by the spirit and make the decision to follow the commandments. We went to church and didnt see her there. I sat pondering and praying that she would be touched and that I could know what to do for her. If she didnt come this week she wouldnt make her baptismal date. My phone then rang. It was her. She said, "Sister Yao, I am downstairs. I dont know where to go." We ran downstairs and I hugged her so hard! SHE CAME!!!!!!!!!! and now she is going to be on track for her baptism next week. But still many obstacles to jump over I ask you all please be mindful of her. We are doing all we can to help her. 

And oh! also we met a boy from germany who is now going to get baptized when he gets back. Your welcome berlin! ;) As my mission President says, " We help other missionary's we give referrals because we are a team. We are TEAM JESUS!" Love it :) Greatest mission ever! So so happy!!!

Love you all! 

-Sister Thornley/Yao

The Week

Well guys I only have 16 more days with my sweet little kiwi bird. Yep. Realized that last night and it pretty much ripped my heart in half. I really have such a strong testimony that every single companion we are paired with here is all really REALLY hand chosen by Heavenly Father. I love all my companions so much and am so grateful for all of them especially you Sister O'Brien! ;) haha! 

So for the week we saw so many miracles all from a huge test of our faith. We as I think I told you all recently have been very investigator-less and so our time is required to be out on the streets or knocking doors. So thats what we have been doing. It took so much prayer to accept this. I think sometimes I feel that if we are not teaching in a lesson at every half hour and getting a baptism every week then I am not doing the Lords work correctly. I know it is so important to do this effectively and we have the potential to get a baptism each month but I hope to also keep it in perspective. But the fruits of our labors as my companion says are starting to bloom. 

We found 5 new investigators this week! SO GREAT and as we did this we were able to be happy the whole time! Another huge miracle was that we have been praying for someone to be able to be baptized while we are here together and werent sure how this could happen because they have to come to church several times before they could be baptized and the past 3 weeks we had had NO ONE at church. :( But we got a miracle call. A girl who had been an investigator for years and years and never got baptized called us and told us, Hey Sister Yao. I went to my friends baptism. And I want to come back. I wanted to start crying. I am so excited to see where this goes. 

I also realized this week that our motives are very important to the work. We are only able to do as much as we think we can and as our faith requires. I realized that my purpose my drive before was to be an exactly obidient missionary and do whatever the Lord asked of me with full heart and be valiant in doing it. Then I was thinking, So Kim, why do you want to help these people be baptized? My answer at that time was, because thats my purpose thats how they come unto Christ and because President Day expects us to get one a month. WHOA! Slapped myself dont worry. I did it. Then I took some time to pray really hard to help me have more love for these people and desire their eternal salvation. I learned from my companion that I need to look at these people as my brothers. My sisters. And I need to really WANT to live with them MY FAMILY for eternity and thats why I want to help them. So that they can be there with me. It worked. IT was that night that we found the investigators. I really do love them and I am excited for it to keep growing. 

Okay so for the funnies of the week. We were biking at night among the houses inbetween the rice fields. I am in the lead and I see a huge black dog in the field tense up as we come up. I get a little afraid that it will chase after us. Well I pass and it didnt come. I look back to check on my companion and right then I hear her scream WHOA SISTER THO(R)NLEY (the parenthesis are so you know to put in a new zealand accent on the r) DID YoU SEE THAT?! and yes yes I did I did see the dog jump at her but thankfully it stopped. SHe then starts laughing that was the first FROG I have ever seen here! -okay so yes I am like HUH? That was not a frog darlin and turns out the Lord blessed her to not get hurt by distracting her from teh dog jumping at her by catching her eye on a frog that was on the other side of the road. She didnt even see the dog at all. 

Next thing so sometimes we get little critters in our houses here.. Well I am also a bit paranoid we are going to come home and have a stranger in our house so I always check and flip on all the lights as we come home. Well I came into my studies room flip on the light and see something black move out of the corner of my eye,  scream and jump. It was a little lizard on the wall. HAHA Then it was right next to me this morning as I was studying good little guy eat ALL The mosquito! 

Well that is pretty much it! I love you all! Have a great week!

-Sister Thornley

Let it Rain

This week we got lots and lots of rain. But don't you worry good thing I LOVE the rain! HAHA it was so much fun it started POURING it down like literally the drops were HUGE and you know me I am a dancer it was super fun but no worries I also stayed a very dignified respectable representative of Christ. Also.. the movies that make it seem like Asians are either good at math or music.. Half of it is true. We were knocking doors and I heard this super cool violin music playing inside I thought, yeah I could be this guys friend I like this music... knocked and a little girl opened the door holding her violin and bow looking at me like, Excuse me I need to practice you are destroying my future. Yep... well I apologized and said we would come back later. Really though. like I almost wanted to ask for her signature she was THAT good. 

We are finding ourselves in a spring cleaning of our investigator pool. Drain them out and fill it up again. Its not always the most fun but its what needs to happen. Its sad to see the people we love not keep commitments and put other things before learning about our Heavenly Father. But, I know that there are those who are going to put it first. 

Yesterday I translated a Temple Recommend interview for Margie! Thats right everyone! She is AMAZING and so so so excited to have a recommend. Even though her work she has now wont permit her to make the trip to Taipei to go to the temple she is so excited to be holding her recommend to enter the House of the Lord. I love her so much! aLSO she was just given a calling as a ward missionary. She is to invite all she can from her country to accept the gospel and learn from the missionaries. I am so so so happy for her she is the best ever. Also her family is going through a bit of a hard time right now we hope this experience will take them to a place willing to hear the gospel. 

I went on exchanges this week with a Sister Edwards here in Luo Dong. we had two people take us to eat and whoa like I have never been more full in my life! And actually it wasnt that bad of food! Miracle! ;) When we were on exchanges we were knocking doors and found a woman. Her xing is Lai. xing means last name sorry. So Sister Lai. She is abused by her boyfriend and has permanent damage from it. I ask you all to please keep her in mind this week and pray for her protection. I was very impressed with the thoughts throughout this week that every child is a child of God. When we forget this we begin to judge others. It cannot be so. They are my family and I am here to help them return back to the fold. Yep. 

So I am doing very good I love it its getting warm here again so its time for wet from my sweat period of time again. Lets embrace it! Have a good last week of school Utah! love you all!

-Sister Thornley