Transfer 4: Commencing

This has been a good week. A quick week. Typical. They fly by. I made a list last night of the things I wanted to mention so now I'll send you all a random smattering of things from this week that I thought of.

 

Last Monday we went to Chili's with a bunch of elders from our zone. It was mega fun and tasted like America. SO WEIRD! But so good. I love that place. And I love eating. My companion and I are the food girls because we talk about food all the time. People think we're fat. On Monday evening I gave a man named Gary a Book of Mormon. He's our taxi driver. My first transfer Sister Daye and I had a taxi lesson with him. He wasn't super interested, but he is interested in English class. My second transfer we saw him again on the street and he pulled up to say hi to us. Then we saw him on Monday. We passed him and I just yelled out his name, turned around and went to say hi to him. He's such a cool dude! He was excited to get the Book of Mormon and he said he'll try to find time to read it.

 

We also started teaching an 8 year old the lessons. Her cousins and siblings are members but her parents aren't. She's great and she knows exactly that she is meeting with us to prepare her for her baptism. She's the cutest little girl!

 

Last Friday we did temple tours. I love temple tours. But sometimes we give tours to people who dominate the conversation. A recent convert came to us asking for a tour. We only had a few minutes until we had a training meeting so we figured to give her a quick tour. She said she wanted to learn more about bible stories so we headed over the the painting about the bible stories of Christ. At every painting she stopped and told us the story. We hardly got a word in. And she just talked and talked and whenever we started to share something she interrupted. Definitely a patience tester. It was... interesting. The whole tour only lasted about 15 minutes though. I am not adequately describing the situation. It was NUTS! Also on Friday I passed phase two for my language tests! Now I'm working on phase three (characters). It's awesome. I don't know if I ever mentioned my goal is to read the triple combination in Chinese before the end of my mission. Not much time to do that-- especially because I need to learn the characters first.

 

Also there are parades her almost everyday. Two days ago was one of the god's birthdays and there was this crazy huge parade. People had their faces painted and there were huge floats and also these guys wearing huge costumes (they were dressed up like the god). It was the coolest thing! I didn't get a picture though because we were just biking by.

 

We met a lady on the street the other day who was willing to set up to meet with us. I'm nervous to meet with her though because she said that she has to focus really hard to understand me because my accent is so thick. Okay, pal. I didn't think it was that bad. But according to her I have bad chinese. I just hope that she understands the things we want to share with her. Those are more important than the language.

 

We have a new missionary in our area. And another new missionary in our district. They are cool. We're all gonna hang out today for pday!  Also I'm the English leader for our English class. I honestly have no idea what that means, but I'm gonna figure it out and try to be the best English leader I can be.

 

Also, everyone thinks Sister Boyer and I are twins. PROBABLY BECAUSE WE ARE! Seriously though. Her sister calls her beans. Ya'll call me bean. We find different similarities every day. And we both love pickles. Mmmmm. And gummy bears. And chocolate. mmmm mmm. SUDDENLY I'M SO HUNGRY!

 

Sister boyer and i have a goal to take a picture everyday which we're failing miserably at. But we needed one yesterday and decided that we'd take a selfie in the bathroom of the church lol. but we didn't wanted it to look like a selfie so we tried to hide the camera... obviously that didnt work. evident by the orb exploding from my arm. we laughed so so so hard by how ridiculous and hilarious this picture is. This is a pretty accurate depiction of how things are with us. just crazy... and laughable!

One day we knocked on a door and a man let us in. Okay back up. There apartments are all stacked on top of each other and in order to knock doors you just stand at one door the whole time and ring the bell for different apartments and talk to them over a loud speaker. Then when the door is opened you get to a bunch of stairs to climb that has people's individual doors there. So a man let us in without even knowing who we were or talking to us. Then we climbed up to the stairs to his front door (and actually had no idea if it was going to be a man or a woman). We saw him peek out and said who we were. Then I realized why he was peaking... He was completely naked. We left as soon as that information was made known. Eeek. How awkward!

 

Also-- PDA is gross... in all countries. On our way home from temple tours we were sitting on the MRT just minding our own business and a couple sat right in front of us and who knows what was going on but it was not cute at all. I hate pda. I hated it in America and I hate it here too. It's just icky.

 

Also I'm not sure if I've mentioned how they collect trash here.... not sure. Let me know.

 

The main thing I learned from this week though-- besides all the hilarious stuff-- is that people need to feel loved. We encounter so many people all the time that just don't feel loved or feel like they belong. It breaks my heart. I wish they knew how loved they are and felt it  regularly the way I do.

 

Oh on Thursday one of the members of the seventy is coming here as part of a mission tour. I have to prepare a 2 minute and 50 second talk in chinese with a memorized scripture on repentance. So stressful. I won't know until the day of if I have to speak. I was thinking though. When the scriptures says repent, it almost always says "come unto christ." An invitation to repent is an invitation to be one with Christ, and thus one with the Father. What a blessing! Plus when we repent we become worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost-- that is constant companionship from a member of the Godhead. That is a huge blessing. Moral of the story is: repent. It's good for you!

 

Love you all!

Cae

An investigator just went up to E. Hagedorn in the middle of sacrament meeting and gave him four pairs of sunglasses for us missionaries. such a hoot. oh and elder beck-- the elder that is on the far side just got moved to hua lian on the east coast for this transfer. cool.