This week has been so busy/crazy/fun/great! So many things. I made a list of what to write about, so this won't be in any logical order whatsoever.
First off, my first morning in my area we went outside to exercise, and there were about 30 old people doing Tai Chi on the basketball court across the street from our apartment. It was really awesome. They do it every morning, so Sister Kiene and I are considering asking them if we can join in, since we exercise there every morning anyway. We just don't want them to think we're making fun of them. Haha. And when I say we'll ask, I really mean she'll ask, because let's be real, I don't really know how to. But Sister Kiene is great-- she's been really helpful in helping me learn useful vocabulary, and she's pretty chill and fun, but still cares a lot about being obedient, so we seem to be a pretty good match. Our apartment is actually not even in our area, since I guess they need to put the sisters together where they can, so we're currently living in Kwai Fong, though President Hawks is going to try to move us closer. We're crossing our fingers for an apartment in the temple. Our apartment doesn't have A/C except for in our bedroom, so we turn it on at night. Thank goodness. When I got in to our apartment at first I was like "NOOOOO! No A/C!" So it was quite a pleasant surprise when I walked into our very cool bedroom the first night. We just have the windows open all the time in the rest of the apartment, so my hair has been drying extremely weirdly every day from the humidity, but I expected that, so it's no big deal.
Also, my district is extremely awesome. We have 2 elders from the MTC district ahead of me, including the one who might be the most hilarious person I've ever met, Elder O'Gara. Then we have the kid I knew from EFY, the Assistants (who are awesome), Sister Kiene and I, and our District Leader. The District Leader was the only one I didn't really know going into our first district meeting. It made the transition a lot easier. Today some of us went to Korean BBQ for lunch, where you roast meat on a fire at your table. It was really good. We also have a zone activity tonight where we'll go to Victoria Peak (I think) and look out over the city at sunset. I'm super excited, since we normally wouldn't be able to do that on P-day, but we could today because this week we've had an English EFY for 2 hours a day.
For EEFY we'll do different fun activities every day and we'll somehow relate it to the gospel, and we've told all the members to bring their friends to it so we can find new people to teach. Monday we had an Americas day, where we had a pinata, horchata, played football, and let them watch The Testaments afterward. Tuesday we did martial arts and paper beads. Wednesday the kids did a picture scavenger hunt; today was science day with Elder O'Gara, where he related all kinds of experiments to the gospel, and had the rest of our district dying of laughter. Tomorrow we're doing Olympics. It's been a really fun way of finding.
On Sunday we had a baptism! It was a 16-year-old named Justine, who's dad went to BYU-Hawaii and joined the church there, but since then has gone inactive. She's really cute and funny. Sister Kiene and I will get to go with her to the temple her first time to do baptisms for the dead, so I'm pretty excited.
We're also teaching Jeng Jimuih, who's probably around 60 has a daughter who's a member, and has cancer. She's so sweet and so golden. If her health permits, she's going to be baptized on the 26th. I'm glad we're teaching her to ease me into teaching new investigators, because she's so nice and understanding of my lack of language abilities. Haha.
We also have 2 other investigators who were actually found by 2 of my teachers! One is A-Pui, who has wanted to be baptized for awhile, but her parents won't let her, so we keep praying that the Lord will soften their hearts. She was found by Jeung Jimuih, my newer teacher who's only been off her mission a few months. We also started teaching A-Yan, who's about 18 and was found and taught all the lessons 2 years ago by Brother Jackson (Jang Hingdaih), and she is so adorable and naturally speaks slowly so I can actually understand her a lot of the time! Yay! I also had a ward member on Sunday asked me if I knew Gu Hingdaih, another one of my MTC teachers. It's fun having all these connections with all my teachers who've helped me out so much.
Church on Sunday was really good. We cover 2 wards, including the area by the temple, which is nice. We went to the Cheung Sha Wan Ward on Sunday, and after sacrament meeting when the bishop had me introduce myself and bear my testimony, everyone was like "Your Chinese is so good! I could understand everything you said!" So that was encouraging, although people seem to tell me my Chinese is good all the time, which makes me think they're just saying it to be polite, because a lot of the time it's very halting, and it's pretty difficult to hold a conversation with natives who don't speak much English.
Our mission has a lot of what they call summer missionaries, which are basically youth doing mini-missions for 2 weeks, so they'll usually be a 3rd companion. Our companionship had one named Cheung Jimuih, and it was really good having her around because it forced me to speak in Cantonese, which has helped me a lot. She's done now, which I'm sad about, but she's hoping to go to LDS Business College, so who knows-- maybe one day I'll see her again!
Love you all! Be awesome! Give the missionaries referrals!
Sister Heaton
No comments:
Post a Comment