December 24, 2010

sorry if you were all looking for an email yesterday... our Pday was changed to today so we could have our christmas party on a Pday. Anyways it was a BLAST. each zone did skits and my zone just had some changes (having sisters) so they had to change it around a bit. while it is appropriate and hilarious for elders to shake their hips and do a dance, its a little less "dak" for us sisters to do so. So we made it a zone meeting where we were late and walked in on the elders all dancing together. It was really funny and to this music from alex boye called build the world or something. i'll have to show it to you when i get off my mission.

other than that.. nothing too exciting today. I got a couple letters this past week. It was really nice to hear from everyone. I also wanted to thank mor mor for the card. and just let her know how grateful I am for her. Because she decided to join the church when she was younger it changed the entire outcome of my own life. and she raised my mom, and she has stayed faithful in the church and stuff. yeah. thank you mormor!! :)

Then I also was thinking about all the many many many billions of things I am grateful for. I am so grateful for my parents. for my companion sister L, for having a healthy body, for my mind, for Heavenly Father for helping me learn this language, for the ability to spread the message of Jesus Christ and the restoration to the people here, for the opportunity God has given me to serve, for my parents for making it possible for me to serve, for my sisters for all being such good examples to me, for my parents for being patient with me even though I am most definitely a piece of work at times, for good friends who have helped me learn, for not-so-good friends who have helped me learn too, for the sunshine we've had this week, for the fact that I've lived in Hong Kong now for almost 6 months, for my apartment, and the members in the ward who are willing to help us spread the gospel, for the courageous men and women who, since Joseph Smith, have changed their lives and followed Jesus Christ and acted on the promptings of the spirit to learn about this amazing, absolutely amaaaazing message. Yeah. I just can't even explain all the ways im grateful.

This week we had some really cool experiences. So actually last week, we had some finding time and we were walking along this river and met this man from mainland. he only speaks mandarin and we only speak cantonese (exept for rudimentary mandarin from sis L) anyways, he had interest in our message but we couldnt communicate. so we called the mandarin elders and we brought the man like 30 min out of his way so he could go meet with the mandarins in kowloon Tong. It was basically really cool, and never happens like that. then this week we had some extra time so we made plans to go finding in sheung shui, but that didn't feel right, so we changed to going finding in Tai Po, then the thought came to us to go visit this less active woman at her shoe store. so we get thre, and we're walking from the chuch to her store, just trying to talk to people along the way and this woman and her 8 yr old daughter stop and start talking to us, but the mom doesnt speak cantonese she can just understand it so the daughter is like translatingish and long story short they wanted to come back and have a look at the church building, so the elders were on exchanges and one of the mandarins just happened have just left the chapel 20 min ago, so he was erally close. we talked to the lady 20 min and then elder Y and D came back and taught her with us there. pretty much the coolest lesson i;ve been in on, because she totally felt the spirit. she'd never learned about who god was, or even learned who jesus was (she was so surprised when we asked if they knew who jesus was and the daughter was like "god's son!" absolutely astounded) anyways when she prayed at the end it was so sincere and i felt the spirit so strong. Seriously. It was amazing. I was also amazed at how much I was able to understand in the lesson even though it was completely in mandarin. What a blessing.

Other than that, we have been still organizing things. we have 6 wards so that's six sacrament meetings and we can't possibly attend them all... so this last week we went to 3 of them. Next week i think we only have time for one. Since we have a few investigators we have to be careful and pick and choose where to go to church based on where we have people to teach. It is a lot of fun but also a lot of work, so i'm pretty muich happy almost all of the time. Christmas is really tiring since it is also 6 christmas parties we have to choose from, but hopefully we can make it to 4. party hopping tonight and tomorrow. . . hahahah yeah.



oh ps for christmas dinner they had a whole pig. like the WHOLE THING. snout and all. and i hope everyone has a really good christmas. it is a wonderful time to remember what is really important. Hope you all have a great time!! :) eat lots of yummy american and swedish and dutch food!!!!!

-Sister Black