14 July 2011

Well hello everyone.

Today I got to go to the temple!! It was SO AWESOME. I am so grateful that we can go to the temple once per move. yeah...
This week was so busy. We've just started this english summer camp called EEFY (english especially for youth) where we have one hour per day, five days per week, three weeks per session. Its SO MUCH FUN. its like being an efy counselor but just for an hour per day. and we teach english, play games, etc. Our group is called "The Lion's Den" and its the young women from Sha Tin/Ma On Shan/Tai Wai. I love it so much! It takes a lot of time (like yesterday we had to make cupcakes as part of an object lesson, just think about the prep time.. ugh) but it's so fun. we helped one of our investigators with her A-Levels test prep afterwards, and i'll be completely honest, it was nice proof-reading something. Using my brain in a different way I guess. Even though I pull out my random geography facts throughout the day, I am still in need of some additional brain exercises.

Speaking of which, I started studying daniel this week in preparation for THE LIONS DEN. Did you know that Daniel and Lehi were contemporaries??? and they lived in Jerusalem at the same time? (even if just for a couple of years before Lehi left). yeah. That blew my mind. And then i used my old testament manual and sister d and I started to just go into old testament history and kings and empires conquering and blablabla all that stuff. SO INTERESTING. I want to teach seminary someday. However, last friday i also taught a class in english on the history of the book of mormon in connection with biblical history and world events. and this university student (mandarin investigator) wanted to know more about what was going on in the world at the time the book of mormon came about. It was pretty cool but i think perhaps I'll need some more time to figure out how to teach using english if i ever want to teach seminary, become a teacher, professor, etc.

What else happened today-- oh yeah! My MTC group got together for our year in hong kong mark and ate lunch at pizza express which was DELICIOUS. It was so strange just sitting around talking because as missionaries we rarely have time for that. and it was too much fun! We swapped stories and reminisced about the good ol' days of the MTC (which i do kind of miss.. its actually really fun.. hmm maybe i'll become an MTC teacher? i honestly think that'd be one of the best transition-to-real-life jobs after the mission,, just saying). And elder K shared an interesting experience from when he was in international. One day he was at the church in Wanchai, and these two guys came in dressed as missionaries. one had a nametag called "elder dumb" the other was "elder dumber" and to make a long story short, they had spent the entire day pretending to be mormon missionaries except they were doing very inappropriate things, recording them, and then posted them on youtube. It makes me so angry because the work we are trying to do is so important, and is so uplifting and good, and yet there are people who are stupid and rude and immature who would do something like that. Pretty sure they'd been drinking too, but still... theres another reason you shouldn't drink. yeah.

on a happier note, when we went to the temple, the area president was in our session. I think it may be his last session before being released, i think i overheard the temple worker say something to him like that. I was thinking about what must be going through his mind at this time- I mean, overseeing the Asia Area is like 1/2 the worlds population. pretty big task, probably pretty busy. Then i was thinking about after his mission... ok like now. going back to real life? what does that even mean? then i was thinking about my time as a missionary- in a week i only have 3 months left. and three months goes by like the blink of an eye. How do you transition? e. jay e jensen when he came here said that this is the closest to real life we're ever going to get. but how do you maintain that? How do you maintain and still be normal? I guess I'll how when it comes? I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of anxious about the fact that people keep telling me I'm dying soon. But I guess when it comes it comes right?

Other than that, things are going smoothly in general. Our investigator A is getting baptized this coming sunday. We reviewed the restoration with her and her comments were "that's me, i'm exactly like joseph smith.. I searched for 12 years to figure out which church to join and find out what path to take. and God answered my prayers" yeah. people in HK usually don't make that connection. She's teaching me so much about how God works with his children, and how faith and patience and perseverance works.

Sister D and I are doing pretty awesome. She's seriously going to be like 10 times the missionary I am, or at least thats my goal for her haha. I totally think its true what e holland said, the lord's sending his best here, because HK is hard. However I have faith that with the Lord's help we can do SO much... i've seen it.

I was feeling kind of cranky and stressed this week because we just got a summer missionary, but our summer missionary is actually really amazing too. She's got such fire and drive for missionary work. yeah. Helping people come unto christ is probably one of the best things ever.

also i wish I/others realized younger how important example is. because example is probably one of the biggest factors in helping people come unto christ. Sorry to anyone who i've ever offended or any time I haven't been an example of what I believe. But seriously, there's nothing better than the gospel- its what God's given us to be happy. and its so amazing. and it works. and its true, we just have to figure it out for ourselves.


Hope you're all doing well!

love you!

sis black