Week two was such a great week! The week definitely has its ups and downs but I always end every week feeling even more excited to get out to Hong Kong and start teaching my people and meeting my future investigators!
This week was a good week of bonding between myself, my companion, my district, and all the zones here learning Mandarin. We all spend like 9 hours a day together struggling to learn this amazing and difficult language, and I've gotten so close to everyone. My district is just full of the most interesting people! For example this one girl in my district won a car and an elliptical on The Price is Right. Super random, but so cool haha. It's great as the week goes on to be seeing all of my friends from BYU slowly arrive in the MTC, this week Elder Curtis, Elder Smith Driggs, and so many others came! The Mando crew is just the best too, it's fun to have such good friends from before like Elder Hammond and Sister Pugsly here with me learning, feels like old times every once in awhile. I hope I can get the pictures to work this time, the computers have been a HUGE pain, Pday is the most stressful day of the week because time is so limited and there's so much to do and say, thank you to all the personal emails they make my day!! And sorry ahead of time if I don't get to answer them I get to what I can!
My companion and I have been working hard to be the best teachers we can be with what little language we have! I have noticed huge jumps in my language and understanding since the first lesson, its SO incredible to see how much the Lord blesses us here, my companion and I have noticed huge differences in our lessons when we have the Spirit, and when we don't. We are trying to listen to one another and the investigator while they are speaking instead of focusing on what we could possibly say next, and that's helped us to improve! We got our first 'investigator' Zhang Yu Fan to commit to baptism which was awesome! I felt the Spirit strongly in the room as we testified what we know to be true, and I felt the language come to me more easily as I kept the investigator and his needs in mind. It was great! I've gotten all the tones and tone combos down as well as all the weird pronunciations down which is great (like shi which is pronounced sure) and I am continuing to work on the weird grammar. Like some words are only verbs like to prepare, so to say you are prepared you have to say you very prepare well completed (Ni han zhunbei le). Kinda. It's confusing to explain, but I'm working at it haha
Funny story, one of my roommate elders, Elder Jackson, snores excessively in his sleep, and his companion, Elder Kirschner always hits his bunk when he starts snoring to shake him out of it. So the other night Elder Jackson started snoring and he hit his bunk, which made Elder Jackson spasm and yell in his sleep, which freaked out the half-asleep Elder Kirschner who also yelled, which woke me up, and for some reason I thought they were both in my bed so I yelled, it was so funny how freaked out everyone was I laughed the whole night and got no sleep. Also some kid spilled milk on Elder Hammond's one suit at dinner and he got so mad I was just dying the whole rest of the night. You really gotta find the humor around you here because everything else can be so serious. Having a best friend from BYU in my class makes it good though, we often laugh uncontrollably randomly throughout the class, which I think is healthy and lets everyone calm down and relax a little, but we occasionally get lectured about it. Oh well. Also I rolled my ankle a little playing basketball this week but it was worth it because I got the and 1. I'm definitely the king of injuries here. It's healed up pretty well though which is great.
This week I've been continuing to work on my charity towards others, as well as trying to get to know more about our Savior Jesus Christ, and the type of man that he was while he was on Earth. (my favorite mandarin phrase right now is Dang Jidu zai shishen de shihou it flows so nicely and means when Jesus was on the Earth...) I started to read Jesus the Christ and it is an absolutely amazing book. So well written and addresses every possibel facet of Christ, his character, personality, sacrifice, and perfection. Everyone should read it. The type of man that He was is incredible. In his hardest, final hours of complete betrayal and loneliness, he thought of others, never Himself. Wow. I just think of how much I think why me all the time, and that's where unhappiness comes from. The constant focus on oneself and what we think we should have or what we think we deserve. I'm trying to turn myself outwards, and give all of myself to this work.
Love all of you and it is sooo great to hear from you!! Only 102 Pdays left! lol
Wo ai nimen!
Wu Zhang Lao (Elder Woolley)
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