This Sunday was Chinese New Year! Happy
New Year! Gung Hei Fat Choi! It was pretty fun. It felt like
Christmas-- church was only an hour, everyone was so happy and loving,
the streets are pretty empty, everyone was wearing their traditional
Chinese garb-- it was fun stuff. Ko Mama, this 70-something year old
woman in our branch who has more energy than most people I've ever met
and has the funniest little high-pitched giggle and has the coolest life
ever invited all the missionaries over for lunch with her children and
grandchildren. It was a lot of fun. I'll try to attach a picture of her.
She's like, one of my favorite people ever. She's from Burma
originally, and everyone we've met in Macau who's Burmese knows her, and
she always speaks in a mix of Mandarin and Cantonese that I somehow
usually manage to understand. She's awesome. Anyway, it was fun to feel
like we had a holiday of sorts. People here will also set off loud
popping fireworks pretty often to scare away evil spirits or something
like that, so the first 10 or so times I heard it I thought someone was
getting shot. Haha. Then yesterday we did the traditional Chinese New
Year version of spring cleaning, wherein we had an entire day devoted to
deep cleaning our apartment, which is why this email's coming a day
late. It was pretty exhausting, but kind of a fun shake-up from the
normal routine. I also managed to get food poisoning near the end of the
day yesterday, so that was fun. I'm still on the recovery from that.
Missionary work-wise, this week has been pretty
good. We had a less-active who we've been trying to schedule for months
schedule us and tell us that she really wants to come back to church,
and this Sunday she did! We actually had 4 Less-actives we've been
working with lately come to church on Sunday! It was so great!
We've also started teaching Siu Mahn (our funny
10-year-old investigator who comes to church with her aunt, who's also
investigating)'s whole family! She has 3 older sisters, who are all so
great. Their dad passed away at the end of December, so we taught the
plan of salvation to them-- it was so powerful. They were all so
attentive, even hushing their mom when she started joking about
something we said. At the end they told us to come back, because they
want to learn the gospel! So awesome!!! I love them! Those 4 sisters
just felt so united and like they take care of each other. I could just
feel their strength-- it was so cool. Yeah women! haha. The girl who
fellowshipped with us, Hoi Keih, was just blown away-- she was like
"Thank you for giving me this opportunity to fellowship!" She's so
funny. She's the daughter of the LA family we helped move who's been
coming to church by herself. She's so great.
We also have this fairly new investigator (I don't
remember if I've talked about her before) named Joe who goes to
university in Beijing, so we're trying to teach her as much of the
lessons as we can while she's here. She's so cool! I totally want to be
her friend in real life. And she really thinks deeply about things, like
the big questions of life and what truth is, etc. It's awesome! It's so
refreshing, because so many Chinese people don't really seem to know
how to think critically. Our lessons with her always go over because she
asks a million questions. And she's been reading the Book of Mormon
too. And she's super funny. I don't want her to go back to Mainland! I
want her to stay here! But I did get the info for how to attend church
in Beijing, so we'll give that to her. Joe's so cool. Actually, right
now we have 2 investigators name Joey and 1 named Joe, and they're all
girls. Haha. I love Chinese English names.
I don't remember how much I talked about Sister Lau
in my last email, so I figured I'd give more info. Dad asked if she
speaks Chinese in a British accent, which I'd say she kind of does,
except that Cantonese sounds really British in and of itself--it's super
weird. Her dad's not a member and her mom is LA, but both she and her
older brother have gone on missions. She's a very good teacher, so I'm
learning a lot from her, and I've already felt my Chinese improving
again with her, which is relieving. I'll actually send a picture of her
this time!
Oh yeah! I also got the closest to Mainland I've
ever been! We were waiting at a bus stop that was right next to a huge
fence that had a mote on the other side that had a red fence on the
other side that was Mainland! I was like, 50 feet away! So cool!
Love you all! Have a good week!
Sister Heaton
P.S. In the cannon picture I'm shooting a casino. Hehe.
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