Missionary Email: Kamikazi Birds

Monday, March 16, 2009 7:57 PM

Yeah I didn't email in the morning because our Branch Presidents wife gave us Chinese names to do this week, so we wanted to do initiatories and a session...so usually when I email I was at the temple. I don't have as long to email because I have to go to dinner here in a few minutes.

This week wasn't too interesting, like most weeks. But there were a few things worthy of mentioning. Well, only one really that I can think of but after that we'll see what comes out...

This week we had tragedy strike, 4 times that I was there to witness. Our elders claim that there were a couple more times than that, but I don't know because I wasn't there! But yeah, 4 times birds flew into our classroom window...and died. All during Song Laoshi's shifts. Coincidence? Maybe, but it makes it an interesting coincidence. But it is quite a sight to watch this black thing SMACK into the window, then this POOF of feathers flies up and occasionally a feather or two gets stuck. Our Elders think it is the funniest thing in the world and they can't stop laughing. I think it is sad, but I laugh too. My companion by far thinks its more sad than I do though, because she doesn't laugh when it happens, she pouts a little. While the rest of us crack up at the randomness of it.

In our branch we are told to prepare a 5 minute talk every week in Chinese, just in case we get called. I was thinking I had pretty good odds to never talk, because there were only 6 people out of the 33 in our transfer that would ever have to talk because there will be fast Sunday, then general conference our last two weeks here at the MTC. Last week a sister talked, so I thought the sisters would have a break this week from speaking, but no dice. They called on me. Good thing I didn't totally cop out of making one. As the weeks have progressed I've written shorter and shorter talks, and this week my talk was pretty short, but it was good because it had all the general points I needed in Chinese, I shared a scripture, spoke about it, said the general points I had prepared, then testified for 2 minutes. It was funny though because the older transfer translates for the newer transfer...and there were a couple sentences that nobody could translate...so as I paused to allow translation it was completely silent. Can't blame them, I wouldn't have known what "cleave unto charity" was in Chinese if I hadn't studied Moroni 7 in Chinese that day. And the speaker from our branch presidency quoted stuff I said twice after I spoke, so I felt my talk was pretty good...and now i don't have to worry about whether or not to prepare one my last non fast/testimony fast Sunday here because I 100 percent am not going to get called on anymore. Woo. But yeah it was a good experience to get up in front of everyone and practice my tones and stuff.

At our TA on Saturday, we did pretty good. My companion taught the Atonement pretty powerfully. My teacher was observing at that point and even mentioned as much, and it was a great way to transition into talking about how if you pray and find out that the church is true, it is necessary to receive baptism. I love transitioning into that...every lesson since we had a meeting that they talked about how missionaries were starting to think that service and other things in missionary work were good and if baptism wasn't taking place it was okay...but our teacher informed us that a missionaries sole purpose is to bring others to Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, BAPTISM, receiving the gift of the holy ghost, and enduring to the end. Baptizing people is an incredibly important thing to do as a missionary and they tell us there is no better thing to do for a person than to bring them to Christ through baptism by water and fire, and never to think that service and other things were substitutes, even though they are important. So yeah, ever since that fireside, I make sure to at least mention the importance of getting baptism when they find the answer about the truth of the church in the affirmative every time that it is appropriate in any way when we teach.

This week I read all the scriptures I could find about Rachel in the Bible. There was a relief society where we talked about Ruth and Esther, and I wanted to write down the different tribes of Israel, so I thought I should study Rachel. She was an interesting lady. I never know who to feel bad for...her? her sister? their maids? It's kind of a weird situation. I'm not sure I quite understand. But that is sad that in the scriptures there are so many siblings who are enemies...Rachel and Leah...Nephi/Sam and Laman/Lemuel...Cain and Abel. If you think about it...some of the worst curses/destruction came from people who were at bad odds with siblings. My zone leader says they should just fight it out and get over it because he just read half that paragraph...

AH ONE MINUTE LEFT, i better send this or I'll lose it all! bye

Fu jiemei

Uh...Yeah can't think of anything else interesting that happened this week and I only have 3 minutes left. Happy St. Patricks day tomorrow, don't forget to wear green!

Repetition, Repetition (First Email MTC)

So, we get 30 minutes on the computer today, which is my preparation-day. I wish I had gotten on the computer first because I just spent the last hour writing you guys a letter that I plan on sending because I spent an hour on it!! But Sister Ackerson and I decided we are just going to use half of our time on the computer now and check our email again later to see if you guys wrote back or whatever. She's really anxious to hear from her family.

So, since I'm going to get back on later and read if you wrote me anything this will be short. And business first. Mom my teacher said most of my skirts are too short, the day he told me that I was wearing the one you made, so according to him even your dress was too short. So could you make sure to make that black skirt REALLY long, like ankle length and if you have time make a brown/creme/or white one. And I'll just wear one of those two skirts every day under my other ones. Also, I don't have that brown dress that was really long that I wore on Sunday, it must still be at home, so if you can send that as quick as possible, I'll stop getting in trouble for my skirt lenghts. It has to be "mid calf" so I only have 2 that work at all for his standards, and one is dry clean only. My companion and I both think my skirts are fine, because they are modest and cover my knee completely, but I need to learn chinese, so I need to go to class..so I need to have skirts that meet the STRICT requirements of my teacher brother Hutchings.

I like my other teacher Song Laoshi, or brother Sampson a lot. He is really matter of fact and he is really plain about things. I like that a lot. Brother Hutchings is more of a circling things kind of guy, but he's nice overall, he just doesn't deal with situation well.

I love my companion. She's the best. There is a solo sister here that is in the older district that is our dorm mate, her name is Sister Tedjumulia. She was in Gen and Annika's ward so she knew them. I guess she has a sister who is older who looks like her? I knew i recognized her from somewhere.

So far I haven't really learned much Chinese. But I think I'll start actually learning more next week.

They have asked us already to SYL, so I try to sit next to the Elders that have been here for 7 weeks. Particularly Sun Zhanglao. He's always willing to talk with me in Chinese and teach me new words and phrases. Its suprising because most of the older district hate to SYL during meals because they just feel like they need a break from Chinese I guess. But it's sad for me because they are the ones I need to be speaking with, my everyday Chinese vocabulary is pretty much almost to the same level as theirs. I just have a long way to go on the gospel vocabularly. But so far I've had plenty of meals that I've practiced speaking to many of the older elders and i was able to improve little by little.

The first couple days went by SOOOO slow,but sunday picked up and today is Preparation day, so it should fly by...i'm hoping the days dont start to slow down again, because BOY the last few went by slow.

Yesterday Sister Dibb, President Monson's daughter taught Relief Society. Well, spoke at. She talked about how she read an obituary and had an impression to go to the viewing because the description of the 14 year old girl was so wonderful...it talked about how she loved the gospel and stuff. Then that night she had dinner with her father and told him about it, and her father had an impression to go to the funeral and he was able to testify that that little 14 year old girl was in Heavenly Fathers arms. How awesome is that? The prophet was able to comfort her parents and say she was well taken care of.

Well I'll only have 11 minutes later to recheck this so I'll go now! Later...oh and I don't know if I'll have time to get on every p-day so the dear elder letters are good too. I get those the same day you send them. haha.

Okay, bye.