S5:E6 The One Where I Get Called STL

 

大家好！

Yes you've read the title to my email. Let's talk about transfer interviews! I got inside the room and president Chan asked me to say a prayer and I gave it in Mandarin as usual. He said "wow, your Mandarin is better than mine." And then started talking about how proud he was about the numbers we accomplished this whole transfer especially last week. Then he told me that I was going to move to Kowloon to become an STL and move to Filipino work. I'm excited! But holy moly I'm going to be moving apartments and leaving the great Elizabeth House. Not a causeway babe anymore. In other interviews other sisters have shared with me about how President Chan has been sharing about how our companionship has had some record-breaking numbers and also shared how he said our companionship was very important to this mission. That's the cutest thing I've ever heard. 

• We had a really good lesson with our friend Sophie. We told her at the beginning that our lesson would be a little different because we had been reading the book of Mormon for some time and haven't shared the restoration message yet. As we got to the great apostasy she had some concerns like how we believe there is only one right translation of the Bible and that the book of Mormon had no other translation. We explained to her how a lot of people interpreted the bible using their own wisdom and then she said that she had a hard time reading the book of Mormon and we told her that's why we are here to help you read it. And then just like what PMG says, indeed her concerns were like an iceberg. We only saw a part of it but then she finally said that she had dyslexia and it REALLY was hard for her to read because she mixes up everything. She said she read a different version of the Bible that was more friendly to her needs. She asked why the book of Mormon didn't have it and so we told her there was a children's version but she didn't want that because it missed a lot of parts. I never thought of it that way. There was a misunderstanding on our part because we didn't know that she meant "translations" in that way. We didn't know she needed a simpler version because she was dealing with dyslexia. So it was an eye opener to us and saw it in a different point of view. It was a very open conversation. We got to research a little bit about how we can help her. She even said "if God loved us wouldn't he want the book of Mormon to be accessed by everyone including people like me?" and I loved that question! We couldn't really help her a lot but we told her that we missionaries are here to help her understand and then we gave her an idea to listen to the audio of the book of Mormon. I then told her I was leaving soon and I was heartbroken. Sophie is my favorite person to teach. I've grown to love her and learning together with her has been the most fun I've ever had. She is the sweetest soul ever. Before her palsy got worse, she was a horseback rider which I think is SOOO cool :) she even met with us this week at church even if she was so scared to come to church because she was afraid her pastor would find out. She gave me airpods  it's crazy. She's so loving and sweet! She also bought sister Liu a shirt and said "I studied your profile picture so I would know what kind of shirt to get you" that's the cutest thing ever!!

• We met Ava and she just went inside the chapel randomly and then we got talking and started crying so much because she felt that she was being treated unfairly. It was so hard cause English isn't her first language and we didn't understand her a lot with the way she expressed her English but we could feel that she felt so hurt. We had her watch peacemakers needed and it calmed her a lot. I think it's special how people just stumble on our chapel and then have a wonderful experience afterwards. 

• We had a successful art exhibition / performance last Saturday. So many people got to share their talents. One I was simply amazed by was Christina. She played Chopin's and even memorized it. I want to be as good at the piano as her! It's amazing how she's so determined and disciplined. 

• Started saying goodbye to some friends at church. It saddens me that I have to leave this chapel. It's going to be a very very different and unique chapter of my mission but I'm so excited to learn from my new companion. Wow. Big change. New chapel, new apartment, new faces. But I'm so grateful for another transfer to stretch and really grow. I have one more week until I leave Wan Chai. Also can't believe I'm not going to be an island baby anymore haha I'm going to spend my 1 year in Kowloon!! 

• I've learned a lot this week. I'm grateful everyday I understand and learn new things about my purpose as a missionary. My love for the people increase everyday which drive me to wake up on time, get out on time and HUSTLE. I'm glad to be here. Always glad I'm here. 

XUE JIEMEI

薛姐妹

SISTER SY

PICTURES:

• last Lehi district picture WAAAAA

• last zone picture goodbye and hi

• PANASONIC ☆☆☆☆ the great Elizabeth house goodbye.... thank you for the 9 amazing months, glad I could be a causeway babe

• 苹果. This baby is literally named Apple. Her cousin is also named Orange.

• Eva! She's so cute

• My girl SOPHIEEEE I'm going to miss her with my entire heart 

• the Lee kids !! I will also miss seeing them run around at church :(

• Lucas and Noah oh my goodness my 帅哥 boys. They're gonna grow up and break some hearts. Also it breaks my heart that Noah keeps wanting to wear a mask because he thinks he isn't handsome  he's literally the most handsome kid I've seen my entire life 

                                                       

S5:E5 The One Where We Crush our Goals

Hey hey hey this week zoomed so fast! When we started the week I knew I was going to blink and it was going to be Monday again

• On Tuesday we left home a little later because we had to do our apartment home meeting and so we left at around 12-ish and walked to the church. When we arrived at church there were 2 different people from Mainland who wanted a chapel tour, that made me really glad after being at home the whole morning. I get really excited when people tell me they're from Chengdu because I get to connect with them and tell them I've visited their place. One of them was from Chengdu and I wanted to tell them I saw your pandas hahahahahaha and Mandarin is crazy hard because of its tones. Panda in Mandarin is xióngmāo and I accidentally said xiōngmáo lol and then she was like what and I was like what and then I looked it up and it meant chest hair  anyway I learned how to say it right because of that ahahahah anyway we met another girl Judy from Shanghai and she's so cute. She is a CEO of an embroidery company and came to Hong Kong to look for inspiration and new ideas to create and stumbled upon the church and thought it was pretty. Then we got to share with her a little bit about the book of Mormon. She said she was searching for light because people look at her and admire her for helping so many people. She said she feels pressure having to have to share her light because what if she runs out. She said she wants to learn and become smarter and so we told her that the book of Mormon will help her find ideas and share light with the people she works with. Right after that we did our studies and had a lesson with Megan who is so cute. We're preparing her for baptism and her mom wants to prepare her as much. She had a fun idea of playing hangman to guess church terms and she's so funny cause she is so easy to read and guess. We had a really chaotic art activity and Judy and another friend Beverly came to join and we planned to teach them both separately. Toto was there during the activity which was perfect timing. I asked him to join our lesson and we had a really really good experience/lesson. She started sharing again about how she's seeking for light and then kept going and going but we couldn't keep chatting so Toto and I taught her about God's role in her life. We first asked her what she thinks and then shared our testimony. We taught her that God is our Heavenly Father. Then it got to a point where she shared about how her early father passed away 4 years ago and her mom died last year. She said that ever since, she's felt like no one has understood her and that she couldn't share her burdens with anyone. We taught her about prayer. I took a prayer card and then read it together with her. I shared a very simple principle about how she has a perfect Heavenly Father who has perfect love for her and then she felt really moved. We taught her that God knows her circumstance perfectly and we taught her how to pray. It was a really good lesson and I'm so happy Toto got to be in that lesson. 

• Wednesday was crazy busy! We had 5 lessons and I've never had that much lessons in 1 day I don't think. We had another lesson with Judy in the morning before she left for Shanghai and read Enos together with her. She shared how she felt like she was Enos and had the same circumstance. Then we had a lesson with our friend June and taught her about the book of Mormon and she said she will! We got to share about the different Christian churches and so we told her that we share a message about why there are so many different Christian churches. Then we ran to North Point and met with our less active sister A-min. She treated us to KFC. I'm simply amazed by how much I understand her accent and the way she speaks now haha. She's such a sweet person, she treats us like we're her own daughters. Then we had a good lesson with Candice about keeping commandments and we had our member come join. She shared how she's in Jacob now. She's such a golden friend. She does everything we invite her to do, it's amazing. She's also really smart. Then we had another chaotic lesson with Hanna and we just cancelled her baptismal date cause her mom wouldn't allow her to be baptized because of their religious background. Then she told us that she still wants to take the missionary lessons which melts my heart cause I'm glad she wants to stay. Then we got to go to sports night with Lorainne and she's back from Nanjing. She shared so many updates about her work experience in Nanjing and taught us Mandarin haha it was so fun. 

• on Thursday we had a really good District Council and we had President Roper come join our meeting to teach us about working with members. It was really good and made me reflect a lot about my work. He asked "are you gonna go home with regrets?" I think that was a really good question to start with that allowed me to think about what I lack and how I can improve. I definitely don't want to go home with a lot of regrets wishing I could've done this or that. Then we had a visitors center shift and I prayed that 4 people would stop and do a Chapel tour. That didn't happen but during our shift we got to talk to brother De Vega who shared his conversion story. He was born devoted Catholic in Mexico and he moved to California to study and had a roommate who was a member of the the church and invited him to meet with the missionaries. He didn't mind meeting with them and so he started taking lessons and had a lot of questions he didn't agree with and they invited him to make commitments like reading the book of Mormon and getting baptized but he didn't do any of them. He still continued to meet with them and in his own words he said "Yeah I didn't really know what was going on in my mind. I agreed to meet them but I didn't believe anything they said." and then one day a new missionary in the field, a greenie, bore his simple testimony about Jesus Christ and then he felt something different. Then they invited him to watch the tabernacle choir and he felt something different during the songs. Then he told the missionaries he wanted to be baptized and then he got a job offering to come to Hong Kong and he didn't have a testimony about anything but he wanted to be baptized and he read the whole book of Mormon during his flight from California to Hong Kong and then he had a testimony that it was true. It took him 20 sets of missionaries. It's amazing. He said he felt so bad but we told him that everyone has their own time. Such a wonderful conversion story. Then we met this guy Evans during the last 30 minutes of our shift, I invited him to come see our  chapel and he went up and then started saying he only believes in himself and that there was no God and then we took him inside the chapel and sat with him and I asked him to look around and outside, did he really believe that there was no God. Then we gave him a few moments to think and then he said okay yes I believe in God now. It was so interesting haha it felt a King Lamoni story. Then he asked how he could join the church.  We called Sophie and read the book of Mormon with her and she asked lots of good questions. She asked about Joseph Smith, she asked about how she can know if the church is the only true church and so we invited her to pray about it. She's awesome! Then we had a lesson with Lilly and man my Mandarin nor my English was not going out the whole time. I felt like I didn't find the words to say and it made me so sad. I wanted to teach my friend something really important and special but I couldn't teach to my ability. Man...

• we visited a less active whose pregnant and her mom whose super active in the Philippines. They're a super cute family and super funny too. After doing a 3 hour block of trying to visit less actives, we had our game night and got to meet a family of 3 from Beijing! They were so cute and we played werewolf in Mandarin haha it was so cool! They asked a lot about missionary work and was surprised that we weren't paid. They came to church on Sunday too! I hope this family can feel welcomed at church. They don't have any religious background at all.

• on Sunday something really special was one of the members in Wan Chai came up to me in the ground floor and she said "薛姐妹！今天没有机会看到你。可多说你是很好的姐妹。我们很喜欢你。但是可多说薛姐妹是非常好的传教士，她是特别好。" 

XUE JIEMEI

薛姐妹

SISTER SY

PICTURES:

• dimsum

• judy + toto 可多

• a-min

• some hong kong bug o wuteva

• lorainne! i braided her hair

• bolongans filipino family

• amanda, kenny and ronnie

• my favorite chaotic kids who are super sweet

• our great mission leader huang dx

• groot 

                                                         

S5:E4 The One Where Yang Yang and Her Family Get Baptized!!

 

大家早安！

Hello everyone!

Yay another week went by so fast and so many good things happened.

♡ On Tuesday we went to the temple and I listened to the session in Mandarin. It was super cool and special to hear it in my mission language. I understood most part. It's the same meaning in English haha the gospel is for everyone and for all nations. Everyone is privileged to hear the gospel in their own native language and that's so special! Everyone deserves a chance to hear about the restored gospel in a way they can understand. 

♡ We got to teach Megan Lau as she prepares herself to be baptized soon. She is such a cutie! We taught her for a really long time haha she was so easily distracted by so many things but our message got through haha

♡ There's this cute new family that was passed off to us. They're the Tam family! The mom Tiffany met missionaries a couple of years ago as a little girl but was scared to talk to them because they were men. She also wondered why there weren't as much elder missionaries in Hong Kong. But she's grateful there are sister missionaries cause she feels safer with the sisters. She has 2 cutie little children Stephany and Solomon. They are so precious! Both are so talented in art and their mom is so loving as she spends her time more with her children than work. 

♡ We pushed back our friend Hanna's baptismal date because she isn't prepared yet. She didn't really take any of the previous lessons seriously with her previous missionaries and so she knows little to nothing. We are teaching everything from the beginning and it's been a really slow process and progress. She's so hard to teach because her friends are there in the lesson and she gets distracted all the time but by and by we let her re-teach what we teach her so we can see if she's understanding the message that we relay to her. I'm also simply amazed by the willingness of the young women to help Hanna keep commitments and support her. They're doing their best to help her understand the gospel principles. And they ask us how they can help. 

♡ We had another good lesson with Candice. She understands the message super well and we asked her to bring her daughter Berry to church. She shared how she wants to learn more about the church before introducing it to her daughter. Love seeing her progress and learn and grow!

♡ Our cute friend Sophie looks like she's dropping us soon. She mentioned how she was afraid that her church would find out that she was attending our church because they track her phone. I'm so sad! I hope she'll continue to meet with us because she needs to receive the fulness of the gospel. She is getting there! We have become really good friends too.

♡ We had a successful art activity. So many people came to our August program activity and so many children are having so much fun and meeting other new kids. It's been a joy getting to meet new people come to church. It's been so fun being surrounded by kids. They are all so innocent sweet and kind and not to mention really hilarious. 

♡ There's this really interesting friend we have, Jessica. She isn't Christian. She loves coming to church activities and she's been coming to church every Sunday. She's also willing to meet with us and watch the book of Mormon videos but when we had a lesson her body language said a lot about her interest level. Something that we have to figure out about her!

♡ Our game night was such a blast! There were so many people last Saturday and we had so much fun. All the kids came back from FSY and they're on a spiritual high! Everyone is so pumped up about the gospel and all the kids are just talking about their cute little crushes and their experiences in FSY. They talked about not having enough hours of sleep. It's so fun seeing the youth have their own spiritual experiences and share about it. 

♡ Yang Yang and her husband and his little brother all got baptized yesterday. It was so chaotic during the week finalizing everything. So much happens behind the scenes of preparing people for baptism. But grateful everything went smooth. 

♡ The highlight of my week was getting to speak in sacrament meeting. I gave a talk in Mandarin  I talked about the gift of the Holy ghost and how we can recognize it. I prepared so much for my talk this whole week and got so much compliments from the members. They said my Mandarin has improved so much since arriving haha I had a special mention in the classes and talks after that. So fun! The best thing I got was from my favorite member telling me that my countenance was shining while giving a talk. 

♡ We attended a funeral service yesterday for one of the members in Victoria 1st. He recently passed away because of a biking accident. The service was really spiritual and everyone talked about his life and all the good things he's done which made me think a lot about the plan of salvation. Does a knowledge of the plan really make it easier for someone? Or can it make it a little harder? We only have such a short period of time here on earth. What are the things that matter most? Who are the people who matter most to you? What legacy are you going to leave behind? Life is so short but I hope and believe the plan to be true. So many mixed feelings came to me yesterday. How precious our life is on earth, how can we make it more meaningful? How can we make it more worth remembering? 

It's been a busy week teaching people! We had no time to find this week. I'm grateful for a busy schedule that helps me stay focused on my missionary purpose. It's been 11 months! I'll be back before you know it haha. 

"If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves"

Love you guys! I miss you and I pray for you all every night. 

XUE JIEMEI

薛姐妹

SISTER SY

PICTURES:

• Candice

• me giving a talk bweheh

• temple day

• yang yang + family

• dimsum

                                                           

 

Sister Sy Sacrament Talk (starts at 1:30 clip)

S5:E3 The One Where I Have Such A Stressful Week

 

Hello

This transfer might be the busiest I have ever been and the most stressed I've ever been. President Chan has given me lots of assignments and responsibilities. First, I was called to train and at the same time double cover two branches, and become apartment leader. It does sound like it's so little but there's so much on my plate right now. The only thing that's keeping me sane is remembering that this the Lord's work, whatever happens happens. 

This week was crazy just because!

Zone conference has given me lots of personal revelation on how to further this work. One of the revelations I have received was about using my personal talents in this work. I have been learning the kalimba for awhile but haven't been practicing it a lot but I know a few songs! So this week we decided to do kalimba finding, we would ask people if we could play for them and ask them if they knew the song that I would play which was of course a song about Christ!!! A good way to direct the conversation haha

☆ We went to Kennedy Town and tried kalimba finding for the first time. We thought this was a good time to just serve people. Because it's summer, everyone is leaving Hong Kong and everyone is also coming to tour. We can't really recognize who actually lives here or not. But we went to the harbor and there weren't a lot of people which was kind of good? Cause we knew that we should approach people. So we first approach this man who was already playing music. And as we start playing, he sees our tag and kind of mocks us for being Christians. It was sad because there was another guy who came and he was interested cause he saw that we were playing and probably didn't know what a kalimba was. When he heard the other guy mock us, and so he also did the same. It was so sadddd but its okay may they find peace in their lives 

☆ We went to COCO ICHIBANYAAAAA to have dinner with Cindy. This was kind of our drop dinner for her. She isn't progressing anymore. She's awesome but she already told us very clearly that she didn't want to make commitments and promises. It's so sad but one day we pray that it will change. We know it just takes time. 

☆ We went and visited the Sambalod's and taught them the word of wisdom. We had a really fun idea on how to teach it  we wrote the word WOW and drew eyes on top of the O so it would like like a face with its mouth wide open and inside we drew some food that we were allowed to eat and not allowed to eat. It was so fun! So many different ways we can teach the gospel simply and in a creative way. The kids are just so smart and so willing to learn the gospel.

☆ We went to the harbor for the second time to do kalimba finding just before our lesson with Candice. We met this girl from Sri Lanka and idk she was a little sues but we talked to her using Google translate haha and we got to play the kalimba for her. Then we kept finding for other people and played for this group of 3 people. After playing the kalimba they asked us to sing for them lol it was the most random thing but it was so cute haha then we told them that we were volunteers and are here for church and so we got to share a little bit. 

☆ We had an AMAZINGGGG lesson with our friend Candice. She's just so prepared. She was a media referral. She signed up to learn more about our church and she has a goal to be baptized too. Hopefully her daughter will start taking lessons soon too. We also invited Ella, a young women to our lesson and she did absolutely amazing it was crazy how good she did! And it was just the perfect lesson for her to join. The lesson went too smooth, the friend asked questions and not just any kind of question, she asked a question that wasn't normally asked. She asked why the Jews and Gentiles were separated into 2 groups and what it meant. We have never had that question asked to us before and we gave her an answer and also told her we would research and study so we could give her a better answer. I hope Ella now knows that as missionaries you don't need to know the answer to everything. All we needed was a camera so someone could film us and put it on Tall Embark lol. It really was so so good. She is a golden friend!!!!

☆ after our lesson we had to RUN to Sheung Wan and we climbed lots of stairs so we wouldn't be late for our appointment with Sara hahahaha and we arrived and knocked on their door and she wasn't home. She forgot about our appointment. So we called her but didn't pick up. We went back to Wan Chai and decided to eat dinner in my favorite Taiwan restaurant and after all that running and sweat the dinner tasted like 5x better. Then we went to the church and played the piano for awhile and then Sara called us and was apologizing for like 30 minutes haha but she shared to us how she's grateful we can be sisters and that she has never been so close to a pair of sisters. We were glad to hear that and just made our hearts swell :)

☆ on Saturday we went to DISCOVERY BAY!! It was our first time over there and it was gorgeous!! It felt like a resort tbh haha and everyone was from a foreign country and everyone was just riding their golf carts. Saturday was the most miraculous day ever oh my goodness. We went over to discovery bay and had made plans to do some finding and visit some less actives. We knew nothing about the place and our goal was just to explore the area and see what it was like so we could know whether or not we should go back next time. We started with a prayer that Heavenly Father would bless our efforts and lead us even if we didn't know anything about the area. As we were walking we came across this girl, it looked like she was a resident over in DB and it looked like she just finished working out so we said HI! How are you doing today? And she was so friendly and started chatting us up. We told her it was our first time in DB and that we didn't know anything about the place so we told her we were from HK Island but we're originally from different countries and have come here to become missionary volunteers. She shared with us that the day before she talked to her friends telling them that she was finding for the right church and recently stopped going to church on Sundays because she didn't like the church she was attending. She shared how she fell in love with the bible and asked if we did bible study together with people. We told her that we did something similar to that and asked her if she would like for us to give her a call sometime and she said "of course! You guys are the representatives of God right? Get my number and contact me" and it was so nice to hear that she recognized us as servants of God and respected our call. Her name is Joji and we are so excited to get to know her better and learn with her! She's planning to come to our church once she comes back from Phuket. Aaaa miracles! After a few minutes we were just walking around the area and saw her again with her husband it seemed like on a golf cart and gave us a big wave. It was so cute!! And then we saw her for a second time again after that haha. The rest of the day for like 2 hours we spoke to people and visited LAs but no success in either haha we said a prayer because we had reached our goals for the day but we wanted to have more goals of having at least 1 more contact and a good person we could speak with but nothing happened but we had a dinner appointment with the Lau family and got to know their stories in joining the church. Brother Lau shared how he grew up in church because his grandma was the only member, he went to BYU but never became a member of the church until 4 years ago in his late 50s isn't that crazy? He said everyone has their own time. It took some time but so glad he decided to finally do it. They have a cute little daughter named Megan and she's the funniest little girl. We were supposed to take the ferry at 8pm because we needed time to go home and not be late but the family home evening took longer than expected. So we took the next ferry at 8:30 and at that point we told ourselves oh goodness we're just going to have to clutch it going back home. We knew we were going to be either a few minutes late or on time but as soon as we landed in HK island, the bus to our apartment came and we were the only people on the bus BUT few minutes later a foreign family came and we were praying and hoping they would sit in front of us and not go up AND WE PROMISED WE'D SPEAK TO THEM. And we did, one of the family members looked really familiar but I couldn't tell!! They told us they visited an island and we told them we did too. We asked them where they were originally from and they said Armenia and that sparked something to me. As soon as they said Armenia I screamed and told them that I've met them before!!!!! I saw the dad and the little boy in front of church months ago and told them we'd already met and they asked if we were from the church of Jesus Christ in Wan Chai and it was so cool that we got to meet them again and we just got to talk to them and invite them to our summer art festival and they were so willing to come yayyy. Our prayers were answered after like 5 hours :))

☆ Sunday was CRAZYYYYY busy we went and had exchanges so we could both go to our 2 branches and then Lori from Shenzhen came back to Hong Kong to meet with us and we went to break the fast together. We were able to chat a lot and just see how she was. We also went back to the church and on our way we helped a drunk girl on the street and her boyfriend was clearly abusing her. So glad that the people around called the cops. After that we went to the church and taught Lori a little about the book of Mormon and taught her how to pray. She had a lot of good questions and hopefully she continues to pray. I know it wasn't an accident that we met her that day. 

☆ We also taught Yang Yang and she's going to be baptized next Sunday yayyy can't believe its happening. Yesterday we were barely able to do any of our studies. We were just crazy busy busy but we were able to accomplish most of our key indicators which was the happiest thing ever!

XUE JIEMEI

薛姐妹

SISTER SY

PICTURES:

• sambalod kids

• sl zoneee

• sri lanka girl

• discovery bay!

• lesson with Jessica, Lori and Sophie

• key indicators smashed! well.. almost