Learning, Failing and Flying in HK

Try to explain the word "quaint" to a roomful of 1st graders who only speak Chinese!

I love being here--I love the new experiences I have every single day and how much of an actual, real help I feel I am providing, more and more (as opposed to just a body that follows my trainer around and smiles a lot). Sometimes I get asked to do things that I don't think I can do--crazy and exciting and terrifying and often seem impossible things-- but they HAPPEN and I'm LOVING it.

For example,

This past Saturday I taught English class alone. (Remember I speak Cantonese only three-months.)

Surprise!

Sister B and I were split between ward buildings teaching two English classes simultaneously. I had my member companion helping me--who didn't speak English and a roomful of moms, dad, and kiddies who ALSO didn't speak English and I was trying to teach tongue twisters ("the quiet quaint queen quit quilting").

Sister B. noted later that evening as she looked over the worksheet we were working from and I lay on the floor in exhaustion, "Wow, do you know all these words in Chinese?"

"HAHAHAHA," I responded in maniacal laughter.

Let me elucidate (Aristocats) --Sis B. and I were in different ward buildings doing different activities on Sat. I was expecting to help in Eng class, but I ended up having to teach it alone, which was raaaaather difficult since my Chinese still sounds like dropping silverware in the washing machine and putting it on the spin cycle. Tee hee.

BUT I DID IT! AND YOU FAILED! As they say, enthusiastically, in Meet the Robinsons movie.

I tell myself that all the time, with all the same enthusiasm and equal amounts of peanut butter and jelly.

If we don't FAIL, we aren't trying hard enough to improve. Right? Woo!!!

I also (all impromptu, and all in Cantonese) taught an FHE an object lesson about Muddy Buddies and how if we don't have every ingredient the recipe won't work--just like our lives--God, master chef, is helping us write the perfect recipe.

Then I taught an investigator--Wendy (pray for her) about why we need to ask God things in prayer from 3 Nephi 11 in a Chinese Book of Mormon, (please remember I can't yet read Chinese characters) and accompanied a couple hymns (that part was in musical notes, not Chinese).

IT WAS A MOST CHALLENGING SATURDAY EVER improved greatly by the following factors:

• 1, I was told (for the second time, actually) that I should marry a very traditional Chinese man so that I would never have to worry about wheat,
• 2, when we came home, our 3millionyearsold door guard (who is grumpy until he gets his smoke break and then turns into the happiest old crazy Chinese man alive... let's just say he's NOT smokin' tobacco) opened our gate and said, HELLO, BEAUTIFUL! in ENGLISH and then he asked worriedly, "Ho mh ho yih gam yeuhng gong?" meaning "(Can I say it like that?)" and basically Sister B. and I dissolved into a puddle of laughter in the elevator, and
• 3, we made GF cookie dough out of rice flour!! We didn't dare cook it (no xanthum gum--oh yeah, and no oven!) so we've just been eating it frozen out of the freezer. Freezing kills salmonela, right? :D bwahaha.

Monday was a holiday--dragon boat festival!--so we scheduled some time to go "finding" on the bus and in the streets.

(We are not allowed to go "tracting" door to door here.)

I have very little time so I'll make it fast. We started out with a HUGE let-down--girls who were really nice, really talkative, really friendly and really interested in our message about a restoration of truth to the Earth until they figured out which church we were then they ske-daddled.

Then we got on the train and I started talking to a lady who, oopsie daisy, only spoke Mandarin. That's cool, I can say at least 4 words in Mandarin, and nothing's gonna get me down when I have this much Spirit with me, so I did so (said my four words in Mandarin)! And turns out she spoke more Cantonese than she was letting on...

Anyway, she got off the train and we sat down next to Them. Our miracle couple. They only spoke Mandarin, too, but they WANTED what we had. We introduced ourselves in Mandarin... didn't know what to do... and finally just pulled out a simplified characters Book of Mormon. All I could get out was "I...know... this... book... is... true" in my extremely broken Mandarin--and the husband SNATCHED IT--and started READING it?!?! On the TRAIN?! The wife grabbed our pamphlet about the restoration that Sister B. offered. They were trying to communicate--they kept saying who-knows-what in Mandarin--and pointing and nodding and crying was about the only thing we could understand, along with the strongest Spirit ever. It was amazing. They took everything we had and thanked us again and again. It was so amazing--to teach a lesson about God without using words.

I love you all and I thank you, thank you, thank you, for your prayers. I am learning and failing and FLYING here!

Love, Sister D.

Love