Adjusting to missionary life

So this week went by way fast. We were super busy with lots of stuff!

I don't know if I told you all but I'm the District leader here in Miaoli. That basically means I just help the missionaries around here and teach them stuff during district counsel each week. What's a little weird about my district though is that there are only two sisters and us two Elders here right now, which means I don't go and help them much cause we are only supposed to have limited contact with them #lockyourheart. They've been trying to reduce almost all contact between Elders and Sisters in the mission. So the sisters in my district report to the sister training leaders instead of me so I don't know what really goes on with them. And then the sister training leaders tell me if they need any help with certain things and I can train them in District counsel. 

The two Sisters in my district have been super stressed out lately. And because of that, the STL's told me to teach about stress management in Adjusting to Missionary life, as well as finding people to teach. Two things they've been struggling on. The zone leaders came to visit and by the end of the meeting the two sisters broke down crying cause of the stress they feel. I really don't know how to help them because I can't really talk to them outside of district counsel. If anyone has any advice about being happy and dealing with stress I'd love to hear it to help them more.

Onto the good news though. Our mission has had a goal to talk to 10 people about the gospel per day outside of finding activities. That doesn't sound too hard when you think that's all that missionaries do, but when we have so many other things we have to do it's hard to hit that goal. We've been trying though and the days we have more time we succeed. Mostly our biggest challenge is finding people. The people we have found we are working with though. 

We had four people that came to church this past week! One that can't get baptized cause his parents won't let him. Another that is his friend and who is going to get baptized the end of this month, and a couple that plan on getting baptized this weekend!! We need your prayers to help them get ready. If they aren't we may wait another week or two but we will try our hardest. 

We also taught our friend Dan who is up at the college. We are super excited for school to start so we can find new people. It was cool though cause we were playing basketball with him and then all of his friends came around. One of his friends who's a girl is actually Christian! I had a book of Mormon on me with the Restoration Pamphlet inside so I gave it to her. She was so excited because she didn't know God had given us more scripture as his children. She took it and said she would show her whole family! Pretty awesome.

Another time we were at the college we taught a friend from Niger and his French friends were all around talking to us. Then I see a bunch of Asians walking past whispering and I knew they were talking about us. I started speaking Chinese thinking they were Taiwanese and they replied in broken English that they were actually Japanese! It was way weird cause that was the first time I couldn't communicate well with Asians. We were all laughing though cause we were from different countries all speaking second languages  when I heard them speak Japanese it sounded like we were in some Anime or something haha. 

But yes another week in the mission! I'll make sure to let you know the successes we see this next week. Love you all.

-Elder Grayson Thayne