Thanksgiving

Those videos were SOOOOOO great!!!! For Christmas you have to send me just a bunch of videos of everyone opening their presents and eating Christmas eve dinner. Seeing everyone in almost real life is totally different from just reading a letter. I would send you all a video if I could, but I dont really know if there is anyway possible besides through the mail.

I am glad that Landon got the letter and the present. I am not sure exactly what it is either. (some sort of dried fish jerky) One day during Relief Society they were just passing them out like candy, and of course as missionaries we left with like 3 in each hand, so I thought I might as well try and send it home.:)

Well Thanksgiving has come and gone. It sounds like everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving and ate lots of pie. Our Thanksgiving day went like this:

7 wake up and run

7:30 prep and leave

9 go to yam chah with Winnie. yam chah (drink tea) is really just like a restaurant, but they just order alot of small dishes and drink tea or like us hot water. It is very very popular here. Someone told me that there is a yam chah place is Salt Lake City somewhere... but I have no idea. They are all over the place here. The dishes range from dumplings to veggies to mochi to fish heads. Winnie ordered as the best and last what was apparently a rare dish that consists of a fried rotten orange peel, a fungus of some sort and chicken feet. Luckily by that time we really had to go to make it to the lesson we had at the church. (There is just a little bit about the food for you dad.)

11:00 we had a lesson with Sister Chan. She and our member were running a bit late so we thought we might as well start watching the new Mormon messages dvd our chapel just got. We started the first one, "Mountains to Climb" which just made us start balling like little babies. We just turned to each other and said "Why are we watching this?" and started laughing really hard. That video is SUPER good. watch it. it will make you cry. But we just barely managed to put ourselves back together by the time they showed up for the lesson. We watched Finding Faith in Christ together because Sister Chan has no background of Christ at all, so that movie really helps people to have a little bit more of an idea of who Christ is. Afterwards she said it would be so good to live in the times of Jesus Christ because he could heal us and help us. So I thought we should just pop in Mountains to Climb because it is all about how the Savior can heal us in our troubles and trials now. Afterwards we learned that Sister Chan has cancer. She is in the second stages of breast cancer. Her husband is in Mainland working so she takes care of her 2 daughters and going through therapy. She is in the middle of chemo therapy. At this point I had a rough idea of what was going on, but i didnt really know. Luckily we have really great members. Our member told her about priesthood blessings. In fact our members mother also has cancer and before she became a member she got a blessing and it really helped her to have less pain. Our member, Erica, told her that the Relief Society can help her watch her kids when she has to go to the doctor and so many other things.

After the lesson I was just kinda in shock. I had no idea. I thought something might be off with her, but I didnt think it was THIS big of a trial. She is just so humble. She has said so many times. "I dont know why you two were in that garden that day or why you talked to me" Everything was just so planned by God. His plan is amazing. We are just such a small part in it. ... Yesterday Sister Chan got a blessing. :)

anyway....

thanksgiving. After the lesson with Sister Chan we did our studies and then had a zone Thanksgiving dinner!!!! It was SO good! We had all the usual turkey, stuffing, gravy, a bathtub of mashed potatoes, corn, even some jelly. It was fantastic. While we were waiting for some of the food to cook we all played knock out in the gym. It was like a real Thanksgiving. :) just basketball instead of football and a bunch of missionaries instead of real family. :)

Well... Hong Kong is great. Everyone is slowly progressing. Sister Yip as still not answered her phone and has been picking up King from school so we are pretty sure she is still in Mainland.

Cheung Sha Wan is great!

I love you all and miss you!

WOWOWOWOWOWOW... WOW!!!!

Holy Cow what a wonderful week it has been! SOOOO many miracles! You know how last month was pretty hard since we hadnt had like any investigators and we were feeling like poopy missionaries? Well if you didnt know... thats how we felt somedays... but this week and last week have been amazing!!!! All of the blessing from working so hard are finally starting to come in!

 

Last night was our wards Thanksgiving party. Hong Kong doesnt normally celebrate it, but it is a good excuse for our ward to have a party so two Sisters said they would make turkey and everyone else brought other random food. Sister Wilcox and I invited everyone and their dog to come to the party or to invite their friends and family to come... and they did. We ended up having 8 REAL investigators at the party, not even including members friends or family. We were running around like our heads were chopped off for most of the time. Running back and forth between Sister Chan and her 2 daughters, to Winnie, to Vicky, to Sister Jeung to just everyone! Luckily we didnt have to worry to much about Sister Jeung cause Carol has been taking really good care of her and Hoi Yee, her daughter. It was Vicky's first time to the chapel and meeting any members, plus, she is just hard core Catholic so that was kinda stressful but it was cool. Then Sister Chan's daughters.... oh i love them... but I hate them. They can either be little angels or little devils. Throughout the entire movie, oh yeah, we watched The Testaments after everyone ate food, Ying Ying (2 yrs old) kept running around the entire chapel which wouldnt have been so bad if she would have stopped when people went up to bear their testimonies, but she didnt of course. Just kept making a big circle all the way around onto the stage. Sister Chan of course did nothing. Then her other daughter Chingching (10 yrs old) was crawling under the benches. CRAWLING under the benches! She is 10!!! I poked her and said "Waih, Leih geido seui?" (Hey, how old are you?) 10 she replies "gan jyuh chah." (then SIT.) of course she just blew me off. Our coordinator was giving me the eye to do something about it... but i had no idea what to do. It would be SO easy if I could just grab Yingying and make her sit on my lap or something. But for some reason we have this rule where we cant play with kids which includes holding them in our laps. Normally I am pretty good at staying calm when kids are loud during sacrament meeting, but last nights activity was SO good. and kids were screaming while Jesus was healing Jacob. Gam cham.

 

But the activity was super great! Loads of people and they all really really liked it.

 

I wish you could all hear and see the weird/funny things that happen every day. but really. Things like listening to Steven Lauh's prayers that he insists saying in English even though we are the only ones who understands. I don't even know if they really count has prayers since he never starts with "Heavenly Father..." He just walks up to the front bows his head and says "good morning brothers and sisters, I am so grateful that we could be gathered here together in the lovely chapel to worship our God." and goes of in something that sounds like Shakespeare. or hearing someone mistake our investigator Fantasy's name for Fantastic, or seeing the old grandmas going their dancing exercises.

Just SO many things.

 

Ma/ Pa are you planning on coming to Hong Kong to pick me up? I sure hope so cause their is SO much I want to show you.

 

I could not be more happy! Sister Wilcox and I agree that we are far to happy right now, which means that when transfers come... one of us is leaving. BUT we have faith! Companions forever la! Cheung Sha Wan is the greatest place to be! I would love to stay here for the rest of my mission.

 

Love you lots!

Eats lots of turkey dinner!

I will. dont worry. I have already had 2 thanksgiving dinners and still have one with the missionaries on Thursday. After this we are going to go help sister pearl make some apple pies. :)

 

                                          Sister Chan

                                                      Chingching and yingying

                                                            Just one section of the party

                                         Vicky, me, Winnie

Here's the email...

All the emails this week were super good, so I just spent forever reading them and watching Lunas cute little video

And that article was really good. We live with a couple of sisters from the Philippines and they were super worried this last week. Sister Dequilla hadnt heard from her grandparents last I heard, but she was more worried for her friends who were serving that mission. But I am happy to know that everyone is ok ish. 

I have been trying to remember... our zone in the MTC was with a huge group that were going to the Philippines. I have to look through my journal to see if I know Amanda Smith. 

But Hong Kong is still super great. This week has been full of miracles. People are just popping up all over the place ready to be taught the gospel! ^-^ 

Yip JM and our other investigator Eva have kinda fallen off the face of the earth since they havent answered their phones in the last 2 weeks... but since then we have met so many people. On Wednesday we were out finding in the afternoon before English class not having to much luck... but we kept talking to everyone anyway. We went to one of our favorite playgrounds to talk with some of the moms over there. The first mom literally RAN away from us.... so we moved on to the next mom her name is Sister Chan. And she ended up being SUPER de duper nice and actually really wanted to learn more about how church could help her two daughters (Chingching and Yingying) They ended up coming to English class and came to church on Sunday as well! Sister Chan is really humble and just wants the best for her kids. 

Last night we had a fantastic lesson with Sister Jeung. I dont remember if I have already told you about her... but we got Carol to help us teach her and it was a match made in heaven. Carol and Jeung jimuih have SO much in common it is ridiculous. Carol pretty much just taught the entire lesson and bore testimony throughout the entire thing. It was awesome. We are going to have a FHE with them tonight at Carols house. I am super excited. 

OH! the other fantastic miracle. We went out finding in Sham Shui Po (look it up it is just a crazy market) with our display and it was just really hot and no one was looking at us. Then all of the sudden the office elders call us and say "where are you? Can you get to the chapel quick? There is a mainland member referral here." So we just look at each other in shock and then within 30sec take down our poster and run for the train. At the church was waiting Fantasy. Her co-worker lives in Mainland and is a member of our church. The member was getting her patriarticle blessing so Fantasy was waiting and wanted to learn more. She is awesome! Has alot of desire to know if it is true! I will keep you posted on how she is doing.

I am sorry... this letter is awful. But just so you know. Things are great here. I am surprisingly not homesick like at all. I thought with the seasons approaching that I would miss you all alot more, but it still doesnt feel like Thanksgiving. I still feel like it is September. 

I love you lots!

I will write better next week. Just read Sister Wilcox's this week. 

I will also take pictures this week. sorry la. 

Love!

2 investigators at church?

Hey!

Another week has passed.... ha! not really... only 3 days. Time is still super weird. Not to much exciting has happened the last couple of days. Here were a few of the highlights...

Friday we had a fantastic Zone Training. Sister Wilcox and I had to give a short spiritual message at the beginning to set the mood of the meeting.... after a couple days of thinking we ended up telling all the missionaries that they needed to repent and work harder along with us. It ended up going really well and the rest of the training was awesome. Our zone leaders taught us all about how to make our lessons more meaningful and easy to remember. They gave us a challenge for our sihfaahn (role play) to pick something in our bags and teach a gospel principle using whatever we could find. So sister Wilcox whipped out her anti-itch cream and bug spray and we related the anti itch cream to the atonement and her bug spray to the commandments. It was actually super good. So we used it the next day in one of our lessons.:) 

Later Friday night we went over to Carol's for dinner. Do you remember Carol? She is the one who gave you the flash drive. Can I just tell you that she is one of the awesomest people I have ever met. Her life story goes like this: When she was 17 she got baptized, but soon fell away, got married to a nonmember and had two of the cutest kids I have ever met. Then just a 2 years ago or so, her husband suddenly passed away. This made her end up coming back to church bringing her nonmember parents and best friends family. All ended up joining the church. But that is not all. She then has been doing family history out the wazzo. She talked to her husbands grandfather who remembered some of his ancestors in his hometown in mainland. Carol was then able to track down like 10 huge SUPER old books that are just records of her husbands family history. She now has over 3,000 names she can now start taking to the temple. She understands God has a plan and has one of the strongest testimonies I have ever heard. She is fantastic.

Saturday we did some finding without much success. We visited Sister L whose life is exactly like a drama. I would tell you the story of her life... but that would take up the rest of my email time. So that one will have to wait. 

Getting dinner Saturday night I asked the lady how old the curry was instead of how much the curry was. everyone got a good laugh at that one.

Through prayers we were able to finally track down this possible lost member and her former investigator daughter. Whichever missionary in the past who made their record was extremely awful. Luckily Sister Wilcox is very persistent and has a lot of faith.  

Oh and to top of the three days.... SUNDAY!!! where all of our investigators either didnt answer the phone or just couldnt come. except ...... Sister L. The recent convert 0 friend who we have taught a couple of times. Sister L came with O and brought her little sister who was visiting from mainland. But........ both were totally and completely drunk. At first I just thought her little sister was drunk and sister L was ok... but they were most definitely not themselves. We had just visited them on Thursday and they were super great. But they were all over the place on Sunday. For Relief Society they just sat outside on the couch. When we went to investigator class, we decided to just make them come with us... both of them just kept saying what handsome men our elders were and that they really wanted to take pictures with them. Fortunately they didnt do anything really crazy. I think it was just the last little bit of their drunkenness. I think Sister L had more of just a hangover.  Apparently they had a rough night. O slept through all of church. she said she had to watch them all night. By the time they left we were kinda exhausted of stress. I dont know whether or not we even count them as investigators at church....

But Hong Kong is still great! It is filled with all kinds of awesome people. I love it SO much. 

I love you all!

we just do missionary presents...

FAMILY!!!

 

So we just got done with a fantastic trip to the temple. I love the temple so much. I have decided that it is the one place that can lift the burden of the badge, for a short time. I love the calling and the pressure that come with being a missionary. But it is so nice to step into the celestial room and just take a big deep breathe and just relax for a few min. The other sister's usually have to drag me out of it by the time we have to go.

 

But this last week has been fantastic! SOOOO many miracles! Can I just tell you how much prayer works?! But really! It is crazy! Goodness gracious... it has been so long since I last told you anything I dont even know where to start.

 

We have been busy teaching lessons this week. By that I mean... we have been busy listening to people talk. Almost every single investigator we have right now is a talker. A MAJOR talker. Most of the time I wouldnt mind, except when they go off about I dont even know cause I have no idea what they are saying... then it just gets kinda frustrating. Not only the not understanding part, but the part that I want to teach them something to help them progress and not just listen to what they did yesterday. We have been trying to have members at ALL of our lessons, cause no one really wants to tell us their problems or concerns cause they know that we wont fully understand what they say. That is also kinda frustrating. But there really isnt a quick solve solution, so we just use our members. Fortunately our members are fantastic and pretty much teach the lessons for us. Usually it is cool cause we just tell them what we want to teach the investigator beforehand and then they just teach the lesson. I have come to the conclusion that you dont really need to speak fluent Chinese to be a missionary. You just need to have awesome members who are willing to help.

 

We are so blessed to serve in Cheung Sha Wan. Yeah, we might not get near as many referrals as other missions or areas, but everyone really does want to do missionary work. Even just last Monday, since it wasnt Pday we had the entire day without even one appointment. So we called up a-kei who is leaving on his mission in January to Texas, and Jacqueline who just recently quit her job to take a break and made them come out finding with us and do a display. They just ended up hanging out with us like the rest of the day. Our ward is filled with so many great missionaries. I am kinda jealous of how much interaction they get with missionaries. I can only remember seeing the missionaries like once all growing up. But all the kids and teenagers participate here in missionary work. It is awesome!

 

One miracle that happened this week:

That same day we went to do the display, we decided to stop at 3:30 to take a break and try to stalk King (Sister Yip's son) and his grandma. So we know the exact path that they have to walk from Kings school to go home... so sometimes when we want to see them we just hang around that path until we "miraculously" run into them. :) So as we were walking up and down the path, we stopped this lady who was a hard core christian and started teaching her about the Book of Mormon... when all of the sudden Sister Yip is running towards us!!!! What?!?! isnt she supposed to be in mainland?! She just said "Hi! Oh i want to talk, but I have to go pick King up from school." We were just totally shocked to see her. The lady that we were teaching was really really confused.... We are like 'No problem!" we will wait! So we continued teaching without much success, till Sister Yip and King came back. I went to talk with them while Sister Wilcox continued to talk to the other lady. Turns out she hasnt been to mainland yet cause they have to be put on a waiting list to burn her father in laws body. She said they still have to buy a coffin to burn with him and then they have to buy 32 jade urns to put his ashes in. So she wont be going up to mainland till the 14th. She said that her husband has been feeling super regretful and has been trying to sleep alot so that his dad will come to him in a dream and he can say sorry. I told her that her father in law is really busy right now learning the gospel so probably doesnt have time yet to come back to see everyone. It was a total miracle that we ran into her! We taught her again later in the week. She has been reading and praying, but she thinks that Kings school and homework are more important than church. Ugh. Everyone in Hong Kong just needs to take a chill pill and breath a bit.

 

OK. This is a long letter and I didnt even tell you half of what has happened. But dim shun a.

I love you all!

Missions are awesome. 

Quit reminding me I am already past halfway. It's gross.

I was confused by all of your Halloween pictures. I thought that Halloween was in a couple weeks. weird.

I LOVE YOU!!!!

FAMILY!

Sorry I never get creative with the titles of these letters.... maybe someday....

well another week has come and gone! Holy crap. It goes by so fast. I cant believe it is practically November. I have to start saying now that I have been in Hong Kong for seven months. Well thats poopy. The longer I am here, the more people expect of my language. Seven months is along time. Blast. But some days my language is better than others.

 

We had one investigator that we had met last week say when we called her that we should just have our member call her cause she doesnt want to deal with our awful Cantonese. So that kinda made us feel crappy. But it is cool... she said she didnt want to meet with us again or learn more anyway. She is just not quite ready. One day she will get it. :)

 

But alot of other people are still really nice to us about our Cantonese. Alot of people ask if we were born in Hong Kong, and then they find out how long we have been here and they are blown away. That is always kinda fun.

 

But this week has been great! Every week there is so much stuff that happens I feel like I have to choose very wisely what to share with everyone....

 

On Wednesday we were out finding for a really long time. We had decided that morning that we should go to this one park down in Tai Kok Tsui. Usually parks here are hit or miss. Sometimes they are chalk full of moms and children and other times it is just full of a bunch of grandma's and grandpas. But we got to the park and there was NO one there. there were a few yehyeh's (grandpas) doing exercises... but thats it. I was really frustrated cause we hadnt had any success the entire day. I sat down and turn to Sister Wilcox and said... well, what do we do now? She said that we should stay in the park for a bit longer. So we stayed there and talked to anyone that was passing through the park. Soon we only had 15 min left before we needed to head to the chapel. We were talking to this mom whose kids were playing on the playground, and I see someone behind her that looks familiar. It looked like someone that Sister Choi and I had taught 2 or 3 months ago, but whose phone broke so we lost contact with her and she fell of the face of the earth. So I ran over to her and stared into her little Asian face and said "Leih Jimuih?" sister lee? and she started smiling and told us that her phone is still broken. She was there with her 4 year old daughter and husband. So we got to meet her entire family! We didnt have much more time to talk, and she was busy playing with her daughter, but we got her husbands number and scheduled her for Saturday. :)

 

Saturday we met her in the same park. Her daughter came too, but was just crying the entire time cause she didnt want to leave the TV at home. So sister wilcox played with her on the playground while I talked with Leih Jimuih. Apparently she doesnt have much interest to learn more cause every time she tries to learn something it puts her to sleep. But she wants her daughter to go to church and learn about Jesus christ.

 

So they ended up coming to church on Sunday... it was kinda crazy. Leih Jimuih tried to leave her daughter with us and leave for most of church. During sacrament meeting it was the primary program so I ran outside to try and find Leih jimuih only to find her across the street looking at the temple. So we yelled at her to get back over to the church so she could watch her daughter sing. She loved it. The entire time she was just giving Si sa (her daughter) thumbs up and waving to her.

 

You know... even though she doesnt really want us to teach her, and she said she only wants to see us on Sundays.... I still think it is a fantastic start. Soon she will learn that she needs to be an example for her daughter, and one day she will love learning about Christ. :)

 

Also! Saturday night Yip Jimuih finally answered her phone!!!! We pretty much scream of excitement. We were right... she was in mainland. Apparently her father in law has died so now her and her husband need to take his body up to his hometown, which is like in Northern China... so they will be gone for another two weeks or so. We were really sad. She was really sad as well. She has alot of challenges to overcome right now. Hopefully she can work everything out soon so that she can have a bit more stability and time in her life.

Her son King is still happy has ever. Apparently saturday he had to write 3 sorry notes for things he did at school. Gam chahm. He is a good kid. :) Just has alot of energy.

 

So things are still fantastic! Still loving Cheung Sha Wan. I wouldnt mind staying here for the rest of my mission. :)

 

I love you all and miss you!

Shea

 

                               Finding with Tin Ngoi!

 Toby (an LA) invited us over to her house for her birthday dinner!!! her husband bought her a bundle of like 6 dozen roses.

So this is the crazy lady in our ward that is obsessed with obama and white people. everytime we see her she gets out her camera and tries to take pictures with us and then the next sunday she has all of them printed out ready to give to us. she always talks to us to... but I have no idea what she says cause she speaks mostly in manderin. but this photo is fantastic. that man in the back is our mission coordinator, the girl in the back with a sassy face is Jacquline and I hope that you notice half of Elder Allens face on the left side of the camera. I dont know if this is a very good picture, cause it is a picture of a picture. when I get home I will have to show you the really life picture. It is hillarious.

hola familia

ha. Spanish. That's about all I can remember. BreAnna sent me a letter in Spanish and I could only understand about half. Sad. But it is ok... Chinese is much more useful. I thought this week I might as well start off with yet another Cantonese mess up. This week when we were contacting this girl sister Wilcox commented, "Leih se dak leng. (Oh you write really nicely)" and then I comment "Ngoh se dak fei.(I write really fat)" What I meant to say was chau yeung (ugly) but the Spanish word started coming out first. Feo. So they it just got switched in my mouth to fat. fei. Hahaha... that might just be funny to me... but i dont really care. The lady we were contacting laughed and so it was alright.

 

But this week as been a fantastic week! It has been chalk full of finding, but every time we were tired and feeling down the Lord rewarded us with awesome and prepared contacts. This week we met Stanley a dad who wants us to share with his family, Kabby a mom who is just not happy with her life right now, Ivy a christian that wants to find truth, Ms. Lee a high class Chinese from mainland that has no idea what religion is but wants to learn and so many others!!! We were able to give Eva her baptismal date for Dec. 8! We also ran into some people that we had taught a lesson or two to and then they stopped answering their phones. I feel like if you run into someone twice... especially in Hong Kong, God is definitely umpi ing (bah! chinenglish. i cant think of the translation.)... like setting up the thing to happen. The only bad part of the week as been that Sister Yip has not answered her phone and her baptism is planned for this upcoming Sunday. As of right now there is no way that she can make it, but it just makes me nervous when she does not answer her phone. We are pretty sure she has just gone back up to mainland for a bit, but she didnt tell us ahead of time... MAINLAND!!! the biggest mahfaahn (bother) ever. But really though, when that place opens the church will double in size. They are just so prepared and humble.

 

This last Sunday we had stake conference. Whoever planned general conference and stake conference to be back to back was not thinking. Normally I love stake and general conference. I think that it is great for the ward members and we are able to receive alot of revelation about how to better serve others. But when you are trying to get people to come to church for the first time and you are trying to explain what it is like... you explain everything and it sounds great. Kids class, learning, singing, 3 hours. Ok. But then... oh wait this week is a bit different. It is two hours of you sitting and listening to people you dont know talk about how you can share this gospel, of which you know nothing about, with your friends. Not to mention it is at a different place and different time than usual. ...... well thats just poopy. So we didnt invite to many people to come to church this week cause I was kinda afraid that they would never want to go back. I dont know if that is bad or not... but during stake conference half the ward members were asleep. So I actually dont feel that guilty. Next sunday will be SO much better.    

 

Ok la... well... things are still super great here. sister Wilcox and I are still loving Cheung Sha Wan. We decided that we are going to become the first sister AP's. we are trying to teach a bit more excitingly and becoming more creative with teaching and finding. If you think of any good object lessons, or ways to get attention, without seeming insane, email them to me. We are pretty willing to try a number of different things. :)

 

I love you all!

Keep doing the work there!

Shea