S8:E1 The One Where I Start My Last Transfer

 

早

I only have to make 5 more emails!!!! WOHOO!!!!  I'm joking. I'm going to change the theme of my emails now. I'll share 1 miracle and 1 important thing I learned. 

They say your last transfer is the hardest but also the most fulfilling. It has only been a few days and it has already been hard, sorry not hard, but challenging! Not a lot of people want to talk but one miracle I want to share with everyone is when we were walking to the chapel on Sunday, I started greeting everyone in Cantonese of course. So many people smiled back. I want to have more enthusiasm as my mission ends soon. And then one particular lady stopped us, she walked a little slow but said 早安 and then in Cantonese she called us beautiful. So we stopped and talked to her, she had a cute smile. And then she asked if we were Christians so we asked her if she was too! We had a short conversation about who we were and what we were doing in Hong Kong. We asked her phone number but she didn't have one but then she gave us her address instead. I know.... its a little suspicious, I would never give my address to someone I just met 3 minutes ago but hahaha hey! It might lead somewhere! 

One thing I learned this week: we invited this lady named Margaret. She lives right next to the border so she lives FAR. She's also Nigerian. We invited her to church and the self reliance class which made her more interested to come. She kept saying "okay, I'm not gonna promise you that I'll go but I'm determined to go. I have no money, I don't have a job right now but if there's a will there's a way" lol I love talking to her, her accent is so fun. Anyway we told her very clearly which station to exit but she's not very good with directions so she called and sounded a little angry. And then she arrived a few minutes late to the chapel and did not look happy. I felt SO bad, she traveled at least 2 hours and then chose to take a taxi because she was lost. The next half of the sacrament meeting I felt so bad and I didn't know how to face her after that. Goodness, it was my first time meeting her and now it'll be hard to build trust and friendship. As I was reflecting the whole sacrament meeting, Elder Teh got up and shared his talk. He talked about making sacrifices, he said "it's all about making sacrifices" and then I remembered what one missionary shared how as missionaries we need not to be so hard on ourselves when we make a mistake. We don't need to be so hard on ourselves when we say something not right during a lesson or forgetting to invite someone to something when we find them on the street, or other human mistakes that we make. When we beat ourselves too much, we forget the Atonement of Christ. We forget that Christ makes up the difference. He will finish what we have lacked to do or accomplish and so I wrote myself a word of encouragement on a piece of paper saying "Jesus Christ will thank you for the sacrifice it took for you to come all the way here. Don't feel bad that it took a journey for her to get here instead be happy she made the sacrifice to be here. Your sacrifice and her sacrifice is so little compared to what Christ has offered & done for you". So next time you are too hard on yourself, remember why we have the Atonement. He will make up the difference, always.

See you in 5 weeks :)

PICTURES:

• my new compy, my last compy!! sister helen joy santos

• glad i have a bike accident story to share from my mission lol + i couldn't walk for 2 days without it haha my knees are so bruised and dry!!

薛姐妹

XUE JIEMEI

SISTER SY