This week was full of adventures and "I'm a missionary!" moments.
1) I had a dream at the end of last week that we had an investigator turned over to us from the Land of Nephi missionaries, because we were the Zarahemla missionaries and she (funny Lau Jimuih) was moving to Zarahemla. The Land of Nephi missionaries were either Nephi and Lehi of Helaman, or Nephi and Timothy of 3 Nephi. When I saw that Nephi had been in the land of Nephi forever, it made dream me understand why he had never met Captain Moroni. Book of Mormon dream! I'm a missionary!!! Hahaha.
2) We were finding in a park earlier this week, when we see a white lady with a Philipina friend beeline towards us. I figured she was a tourist who wanted directions, but it turns out she was a Jehovah's Witness! She asked us about Mitt Romney, and summarily let us know that he couldn't fix all the wickedness in the world because, according to the scripture she showed us in her mistranslated bible that doesn't exist in ours, Satan is in control of the whole earth. Then she flipped to Genesis to explain to us that Adam and Eve were the source of Satan's power, and that God never intended Adam and Eve to fall. I asked her "God is all-knowing, and knows each of us more than we know ourselves, including Adam and Eve-- don't you think he knew they'd eat the fruit?" and she quickly dismissed that, saying that put sin in the mind of God. She also said God doesn't know things in advance, because that would be predestination, he can just adapt to everything. I thought it was sad that she truly believes that, because it puts God on the same level as Satan, or us for that matter, and ultimately denies the power of the Atonement. We talked a little bit about what we know about Adam and Eve, and she stopped us and said "God didn't intend for us to die." I asked her "Why does it matter, since the resurrection overcomes death anyway?" She didn't really have an answer for it, and kept getting more and more contentious and smug, while we were calm and not contentious at all. We finally said "We know that our beliefs and your beliefs differ, but I can testify that we know these things to be true because we have a living prophet on the earth today who talks directly to God to find these things out," which testimony she interrupted and told us she had to leave. It was really strange because we don't even know what point she was trying to prove or what purpose she had for coming up to us-- I don't know why she thought it was so important that we know that Adam and Eve caused Satan to reign over the earth. That experience reminded me a lot of how Christ described the churches of Joseph Smith's day, having some form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. There was just such a stark contrast between our demeanors-- she was trying to bible bash with us, and wouldn't listen to anything we had to say, kept getting more and more contentious, while we refused to bash back, were calm, bore testimony, and always brought it back to Jesus Christ and God's love for us. It was sad to me that someone who professes to be Christian would act that way. It was also sad because her Philippina companion seemed genuinely interested in what we had to say. Oh well!
3) Speaking of Philippinas, Tuesday was a national holiday, so all the Philippina helpers had the day off, so the International District called us in to help them out, since there were so many Philippinas out and about. We went finding for 3 hours in front of this big bank in Central, since there were so many women there. It was good to practice finding in English, so that maybe I can do it better in Chinese. But I got more phone numbers in 3 hours than I've gotten on my whole mission combined. It was sad to feel the Spirit bear testimony through me and have people still choose to ignore me or walk away, but I did find a few sisters who are really prepared for the gospel and want to come to church this week, which is great.
4) Monday was also a national holiday, because this weekend was Mid-Autumn festival, which basically consists of eating a lot of food with family and eating mooncakes. On Friday the ward had a relief society activity that we went to since we had a few recent converts go to and need to strengthen our relationships with the ward, and we made our own iced mooncakes! I felt really cool. No pun intended.
5) So on Monday, our ward had what's called a Leuih Hahng, which is basically when they all go to a different part of Hong Kong and have a barbeque. There were a ton of members there, a few less-actives, and some nonmember friends too, which was great, because we were able to get some contacts and potential investigators out of it. But basically the Leuih Hahng consisted of several fire pits and roasting a ton of meat over fires. We also roasted some vegetables, marshmallows, and bread with honey on it-- we ate so much and it was so good!
It's starting to cool off a little bit here-- mornings have gotten pretty nice, though it's still getting pretty hot during the days sometimes. But I here winters are freezing since it's humid and there are no heaters, so together with my lack of winter things here, I'm feeling okay with it still being pretty warm.
I've attached some pictures from my hike last week and the Leuih Hahng on monday!
Love you all! I hope you're all doing well!
Love,
Sister Heaton
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