November 11 2010

Hello Again Everybody!

I hope things are going well. I really enjoyed this week. Last friday we had 24's exchanges, where our companionships change from noon-noon the next day. So sister m, from my older group in the MTC joined sister S and I in Kwai Chung and Tsuen Wan. It was so much fun! We went and visited two less-active members and made a few new appointments, then made vegetable soup and apple pie (in the huge toaster oven we just found under the sink last week!). Then saturday and sunday were super busy again, we found out that our zone needed to come up with a musical number for the mission tour on tuesday. Elder M headed it up and we performed "if you could hie to kolob" by michael mc-something or something like that. its actually a piano piece but we sang to it with the music. Its a beautiful piano arrangement though, you should look it up. SO GOOD. President Perkins, the asia area president and member of the 1st quorum of the 70 spoke to us. I learned a ton about faith, and how to develop it. He made this set of stairs- 1. no faith 2. belief, 3. faith 4.witness/testimony 5. power I think thats the order. but the thing I wanted to point out, is that faith is a principle of power, and you have to walk forward testing out different principles until you can gain a testimony, and once you have faith and a testimony, if you can cast out doubt and fear, that is when the power comes. And I know that through faith miracles can occur.


Ok so mission tour was amazing. but also some funny things happened. So in the middle they fed us lunch, and as I was helping set up the table the AP elder A was walking behind me and i stepped back on accident on his foot, which made me completely lose my balance and essentially i fell back onto him and it was SO embarassing. then as I was getting my food a few minutes later, i gave our mission president a flat tire. yes. I am clumsy and it is awesome. Then that night we had english class. the elders taught about making phone calls and gave people HILARIOUS situations to talk on the phone in, but the best part of the night was seeing C and V. We've been teaching this mom and her daughter for a couple of weeks (but we've known them for about a month and a half), and at first it was liek their relationship was terrible. C was always on v's case about being stupid and v thought she was ugly etc. not happy. But since becoming more involved in stuff even now with just a short amount of time I can really see a change. They are talking more, smiling more, you can tell they care about each other and it isn't as cold of a relationship. its really cool to see.

OH OTHER STUFF I CAN"T FORGET! So sister s just found out that she is moving to macau on friday (tomorrow) and she'll be going with sister t speakign chinese for a week and then going International! She's going to get to work in english with the philippinas and indonesians nepalese etc. No doubt her chinese will suffer but it is so cool to serve in international I've heard. That means sister a is coming here for a week to be our companion!! So i'll have been companions with sister a, s, and l from my MTC's older group! so cool! Then we also heard that sister h will be training! there are three native cantonese speakers coming in 1 from macau and 2 from HK. Sister h's trainee will be a week late though. SO- this is my speculation. There has to be a three-some somewhere in the mission. I wonder if they will keep me in kwai chung/tsuen wan with her while she trains! it'd be really nice to be here for the holiday season since i already kind of know people. but we shall see. The chances are pretty slim to train in a tripanionship, but because she'll be a week late, someone has to be with sister h for a week... .. . . . anyways, it'd be really cool. plus i'd get a native companion which would help with the cantonese A LOT. and A LOT is the amount of help my language needs. I know learning any language is hard, and will push you etc, but because of the difficulty of cantonese, I'm going to probably come home not understanding a lot of stuff still, whereas people who go spanish/portuguese/other languages can come home really with a huge vocabulary and a much better ability to communicate in that language. My language is still progressing, but I am still amazed that after 6 months of working on it, i understand so little of what people say. especially compared to when i was in holland, not trying super hard, after six months i could understand a lot more.

but the difficulty of the language is not really getting me down luckily. I know that as long as I'm putting in my effort and trying hard that its ok. I still have 11 months left to keep working at it and my listening skills will improve I know.

anyways I am out of time, but I love you all and its so nice to hear that you had a good halloween and guy fawkes day :)

I hope you are all doing fantastic! I love you so much! keep smiling, keep being good and serving others. The lord lives, Jesus is the Christ, and they restored their church through Joseph Smith. I know this is true because I've read the Book of Mormon and asked God if the things it contains are true and from Him. And the answer I got was a yes. I love this gospel and I love serving others and sharing this message with them. Thanks for all the support!

Sister Black/Baahk jimuih