S4:E18 The One Where We Have A Dialect Activity!

 

Hey everyone! 大家好!

Okay this was such a crazy busy week, we had so many activities and meetings to do!! Don't even know where to begin. But let's goooo!

♡ We had dinner at Ade's apartment last Monday and we had such a great time together. I was praying so hard for the gift of tongues cause her brother in law was there and literally was a rap god it wasn't just his accent but he was using so many unfamiliar words haha but one of the compliments I got from him was that my Mandarin was good and that if I went to Mainland they wouldn't even know I'm like a foreigner or what. So that was so nice of him to say that and compliment my Mandarin yahoooo! We had all of the different kinds of topics that night haha it started with missionary work and then it shifted to Tao Bao and how you can buy a house, a car basically anything on Tao Bao and then it shifted to idioms. It was a super super fun 请 that we had and we were able to learn more about culture in China!! The conversation was so good that we left their house at 10pm... yeah yeah it was so bad we didn't know how to stop the conversation cause they just kept going and found. We got home at like 10:45 bahaha they were all talkers. But they were such a sweet family. My 9:30pm alarm even rang 

♡ We had our mission conference with President Lund and Elder Newman and Elder Johnson! It was such a cool experience to learn more about lasting discipleship and conversion to Jesus Christ. They all had such fun experiences in their mission and it just made it so much more meaningful for us. 

♡ Last Wednesday as we go out to go to the chapel to help with the activity, I out of nowhere just told the whole apartment that we were gonna meet a girl from Shanghai. I said that she would be a super cool friend and she will live in Hong Kong and that we were gonna meet her. As we were walking together to the church I was keeping my eyes wide open for anyone who might have Mainland vibes yknow yknow and then we arrived at the chapel and didn't meet a girl from Shanghai. But the next day as we were having our district council meeting, an elder called us and said there was a girl from Shanghai downstairs and so we hurried and went down. We met her and her son, Summer and Oscar and so naturally of course we asked where they were from and they said Shanghai!!!! What the flip. And then we asked if they were visiting and they said they live here. WHAAAAAT. They said they were Christian and they were finding for Sunday School for her son to attend. CraaaaAAAaaaAaAzzzyYYyy!! If you need to know anything about the future just ask me ;) jk

♡ We had a really good lesson with Cindy about the plan of salvation and she had awesome questions that also made me think and reflect. I love it when lessons also allow me to learn, not just a one sided thing. She asked "why did Jesus do the atonement?" Such an awesome question to reflect on. 

♡ We had dinner with the Lee Family and all the food was so good aaaa we ate lasagna, some salad and some awesome cake and I have no pictures of anything.  But we also played shaggidy shaggidy, a game that I introduced to them that they all enjoyed. I love their family so much especially their kids. They are all so sweet and nice. 

♡ Transfer interview!!!!! Yoooooo it was kind of a scary interview cause president Chan asked me some questions yknow some hints for the next transfer. Anyway it's happening really soon and there's no stopping it. 

♡ Our dialect activity was such a success! So many Filipinas came and we all got to see some performances from different parts of the Philippines! It was a crazy week and day inviting people to the activity. Glad it's over and that it was a success!

♡ We called our friend Lilly last night and it was the sweetest call ever. She told us a lot of things like how she used to be married to someone and how all of her life she thinks she's never had true happiness. She's literally that person that PMG talks about. She talked about how she's never found peace in her life and we offered to take her to the temple and she was so excited!! We hope that this plan with her will really do through and that she'll have wonderful time in the temple. So many exciting things!! 

PICTURES:

• dinner with Ade Huang and her family

• Sunny!! Favourite security guard

• Jollibee's + trash :>

• Cowgiiirlz

• dialect activity!!

• departing devotional laaaa 

XUE JIEMEI

薛姐妹

SISTER SY

                                                         

                                                 

S4:E17 The One Where We Have a Mission Tour

 

早安！

No way it's already gonna be June in like 10 days. I'm hitting my 9th month mark in June 9. That is crazily a little bit too fast. It's also been a year since I opened my mission call.

Now I wanted to take the time to reflect on my mission call. MY mission call. I still remember the day I opened my mission call, I woke up at midnight cause I was anticipating for it to arrive and I knew I was gonna receive it one of those days that week and so all I could think was my mission call. Where will I be going? Will I really accept where the Lord wants me to go? Will I be disappointed with the outcome of my call? Am I ready to preach the gospel to a people? These were all of the worries that I had in my mind. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and immediately checking my phone cause I just knew! And I was right! I got a text that changed my life. I was shaking as I read it alone not knowing where I was gonna go. And then I read China Hong Kong Mandarin speaking. The first person I could think of was of course Jayzon. The same night I woke mom and dad to tell them that I GOT MY MISSON CALL AND THAT I WAS GOING TO HONG KONG!!!! Now a year ago, that mission was special to me but a year after it means so much more. My mission call never changed but the way I understand it has so much more meaning now. I want to focus on one of the sentences that all mission calls contain. 

"Greater blessings and more joy than you have experienced await you as you humbly and prayerfully serve the Lord in this labor of love among His children." 

The promise is true. I am living and experiencing the same blessing that was promised to me a year ago. This work is truly a labor of love. A year and a half of meeting people who I would have never met unless I decided to be here. It's been 8 months of becoming more like Jesus, developing Christlike attributes especially in the hardest times. I look at people I've been serving and serving with and I'm amazed by how much love I can share and have for them. I've had 4 different companions who I've learned to love in different ways, and because of them I've seen Christlike attributes that I wanted to develop myself. All of my companions have taught me very important lessons and traits that every disciple of Christ should have. Not just missionary traits, but who you really are and who you are becoming. This call to serve is so special even if the one soul you help is yourself. This mission is definitely not what I wanted and expected, everyday is a day I repent and change and it's very uncomfortable but this is what Heavenly Father knows I need in order to become more like Him. 

Anyway! More about highlights of my week. Did we even find people this week? We barely did haha! We were out teaching and baptizing people just how the Lord wants us to. Let's start with Tuesday 

☆ we had a chance to go to the temple and I saw LeAnne, Laurice and Mon Sabado. So happy to see familiar faces here. They were on vacation and took a trip to the temple. It's also so happy to see that LeAnne was here cause we were supposed to serve together if she wasn't reassigned. So glad she got to visit her original assignment. And then we got to visit Kiko and help her learn English. She said she wants to go to Cebu to learn English and so now I'm on an errand to find her a school, housing and all that haha. 

☆ we had lunch with our friend Lorraine. We met at the Chapel and ate at the gym. It's the perfect place to eat and teach haha. We thought all our plans for Wednesday were going to get cancelled cause there was a rainstorm. As we were walking to the Chapel, the rain was already pouring but halfway there it suddenly drops like so much harder and we had to run. But we said a really sincere prayer that the rain would stop so that all of our friends could make it to church. And it did stop! So our friend Lorraine made it to church, and also our friend Kris was able to go to church. So it was all part of God's plan for all of our plans to happen. So so happy the rain stopped. 

☆ we also had a fun lunch with Sabrina. And she was like "yeah I don't really have interest in learning about Jesus Christ. I just think you sisters are beautiful and I want to hang out and be friends with you." Haha so that was really interesting and funny cause there really are people who just are interested in you and not what you believe in but that's okay. So we taught her how to pray and she said she would try cause she doesn't really know anything about church or religion. And then at the same time we went to church with her so we could show her what church was like. We also had Cindy come to church together with us and we had an awesome lesson with her and the senior missionaries. She had so many good questions and all the missionaries were just in awe of how awesome she was. And the lesson literally lasted for 2 hours haha. 

☆ we had a mission tour / zone conference. We had Elder and Sister Homer lead the tour and it was so uplifting. All the good lessons and skills that they taught us were really applicable. It was my first time joining a mission tour so that was an interesting first time experience. 

☆ we had another mainland baptism. We helped Bao Xue Qing and Huang Zi Yu. As we finished the first 3 lessons, we had a lunch break and then there was a guy who gave us a pin from Taiwan. And so I had to ask him which part of Taiwan he was from. He said he was from Taichung. Whaaat. So I told him my brother served in Taichung a few years ago and I showed him a picture of my family. He said he didn't know Brent but he started pointing at Jayzon and said he knew him. So it was just so cool that he knew Jayzon but it gets funnier cause he called him  

☆ Sunday was crazy. We went to church 3 times and took the sacrament 3 times hahaha. We went to Mandarin sacrament for the 1st hour and then we went to Island branch and then we had another sacrament with President Lund. It was a cool experience! Our friend Eason got baptised too. He has the coolest story. When he was put on bap date, his parents who barely message him called him and asked if he wanted to join the CCP. And the day of his baptism he was detained at the borders of Shenzhen and wouldn't allow him to cross. Satan!!! But a few hours after he made it and got baptised. Yay!!!!

PICTURES:

• mission call that changed my life

• temple day

• church with Grace!

• mission tour!!!!

• cheng jimoiiiii

• baptism day woooo

• sambalod family weehehe!! amaya came to church SISTER STAKKEY

• eason got baptised

• waiting for our kids to come to class

• the guy from Taiwan <3

• some pday hiking activities yeyeye

薛姐妹

XUE JIEMEI

SISTER SY

                                                          

S4:E16 The One Where We Have Another Mainland Baptism

 

早安！

This week was amaaazing. Let's start on what happened last Tuesday :)

☆ we had a mainland baptism! Yaaaay. It's still crazy to me how special my call is to be a Mandarin missionary in Hong Kong. We taught all the 5 lessons in 3 hours and then they both got baptized after a few hours. While waiting for their baptism, we took them to the temple and they were so excited to go see it. As we were walking, we saw our branch mission leader and his wife who just finished their temple session. It was perfect cause they got to meet other members of the church while being here. We loved having shared a memory with them of running to the temple because of the stoplight hahaha. It was so cute! Then the mom said she feels very touched and felt the spirit as she was in front of the temple. The daughter was also so cute cause she was so happy to see the temple and was talking about how BYU Hawaii has a temple too. She's going to BYU in December and it was so fun getting to know her better. We even promised to meet each other after our missionary service. 

☆ on Wednesday I had exchanges with Cheng jimoi! We had a lot of miracles together. So we were determined to join the Wednesday family mother's day activity so we went out and started finding. As we went to the immigration we saw 2 Filipinos who were finding a bathroom and they were heading towards the public toilet but it was under construction. And so we were like heyyy our church building is so close and you can use our toilet. And so they were thinking about it and they said okay let's go and so we brought them to the church chapel and then Cheng jimoi and I started laughing cause we literally just started our finding and 5 minutes in we thought wow our prayers have been answered and now we're gonna have a bathroom conversion story but that didn't happen hahaha they didn't have time to join but hey they know us now! So we continued finding in Tamar Park and we met Kris. We sat with her and shared the restoration lesson with her and helped her download a book of Mormon app. It was pretty cool. Hopefully she comes next Wednesday to church! Then as we were about to end our exchange we did 3 Chapel tours haha, we met 3 different guys and it all went pretty well. It was a very productive exchange with her. We were glad we were able to do Mandarin work at the end haha cause we did like Filipino work since most of the people we saw were Filipino

☆ i got to do an exchange with Sister Bigtas this week too. We went finding again around Tamar Park and got to talk to a bunch of Filipinas! We even met a member whose taking care of two American kids and they sang "Bahay Kubo" hahaha so cute

☆ Saturday was quite the crazy day. We went around Hong Kong visiting less active sisters and we gave them flowers for mothers day. It was raining so hard that day haha and we were drenched but it was fulfilling knowing we were able to share our love to these less active sisters. We got some of the most sweetest reactions and also funniest surprised faces haha. 

☆ We had district conference this week!! I loved the talks so much. We have awesome leaders who remind us of Christ and strengthen our testimony. Also Sunday was pretty crazy for us cause we had 8 friends come to church. ISN'T THAT CRAZY?!?!?! That's like the best thing ever it was so happy but I felt like I had to be an octopus at that point. But it was really such a happy day cause they were able to attend the district conference and be nurtured by the word of God

On the spiritual aspect..  (I don't think I've ever included uplifting things in my weekly email lol) I wanted to share a few things I've learned this week. 

♡ "While we lack recollection of our pre-mortal life, before coming to this earth all of us understood definitely the purpose of our being here. We would be expected to gain knowledge, educate ourselves, train ourselves. We were to control our urges and desires, master and control our passions, and overcome weaknesses, small and large. We were to eliminate sins of omission and of commission, and to follow the laws and commandments given us by our Father. That the effort involved dignified and ennobles man has been recognised by the world's great thinkers. Consider your origin; you were not formed to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge."

♡ Another question we can all reflect on.. "And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received His image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?"

~~~~

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO MY MOMMA  THE QUEEN OF MY LIFE  I LOVE YOU MOM :) 

PICTURES:

• mainland baptism yay!!! bao li hua and bao rui xuan <3

• bao rui xuan (roxana) she's too cute!

• exchanges with cheng jimoi + our new friend kris

• cheng jimoi my favorite bundei

• wednesday family yayayayaya

• EGC literally popped off this week!

• yay flowers!!

• exchanges with Sister Bigtas

• kiko!! one of the members we visited

• ME AND MOM ♡♡♡ I MISS YOU AND I LOVE YOU MOM 

薛姐妹

XUE JIEMEI

SISTER SY

                                                          

S4:E15 The One Where We Get a Golden 请

 

大家好！

☆ We went to Yau Tong last Monday and had dinner with Angel Guo. I think she missed us hahaha after kinda quarreling with her about why she hasn't had a baptismal date yet even if she has been taught for 20 years already. It's hard but agency yay

☆ We finally met Lilly in person!! CRAZY RICH ASIANS VIBES I'M TELLING YOU. So she invited us to eat at a restaurant called Coucou. It was a Taiwanese hotpot restaurant and we ate so much. I sat beside her as we were eating. And so I saw what she picked and it was $798 and she even ordered other stuff. It was a grand lunch  we ate a lot of seafood and tried abalone for the first time! And she introduced us to something called razor clam, I don't know if you guys know what that is cause we don't know it either haha but we shared a scripture verse after and she came to church last Sunday and loved it. Her story is just so fun to tell like how she first met the missionaries :)

☆ We had a pass off lesson for Grace. It was so hard to pass her off cause she's literally our best friend but she can't be in our teaching pool anymore but it was a wonderful few weeks seeing her progress. She looks so much happier and she was just sharing all that she understood about the things she was learning from the book of Mormon and the pamphlets that she got and she even brought her friend to church and her friend absolutely loved church and they were both just so cute. I'm so excited for her baptism and all the blessings she can get after that

☆ I got sick last Friday from working under the heat and going to an airconditioned room haha it felt so weird being in bed the whole day but it also felt like a vacation getting to sleep in bed all day haha it was so bad though cause I felt so bad for everyone around me cause they needed to take care of me and stay with me but yeah I'm grateful for apartment mates who can cook for me :>

I think that's about it for this week I don't really have a lot to share for this week haha one thing I've learned this week is that I can't do anything with the results of our efforts because this is the Lord's work and not mine. I'm just here to assist Him and this whole mission is still a gift to me cause I get to see and know what it's like to work with the Lord as my boss. And I get the best perks by being in the front row seat and seeing all the miracles. 

PICTURES:

• hotpot pictures!!!! <3

• less active work yay 

• Kate he yay Japanese food yay

• passing off grace hahaha sad ahahshsh

• mango juice SO GOOD

• finally tried love rice noodles in front of our apartment

• did our studies in the library weee

XUE JIEMEI

薛姐妹

SISTER SY