Hong Kong: DRINKING FROM A FIREHOSE

June 15, 2015

Ni hao.

Questions:

My companion's name is Elder Wooley or Wu Zhang Lao. He is from Denver Colorado and was one of Liza's good friends back at BYU. He lived in B-9 of Helaman Halls this past year which is right next to Merrill Hall. He is a pretty cool guy, we get along well and both like to play sports, which is good. He ran cross country and track in high school. He is also an accomplished pianist and plays the cello. He is hard working although does get distracted and loses focus occasionally. My Chinese name is Shi (with a first tone) Zhang Lao or Elder Wet. I think we get our full Chinese name around week three. You pronounce it shir on the higher range on your voice and a constant pitch. Our P-day is Monday, today. The other guys in the district are cool. I am one of the only people in the district who has not had any previous Mandarin so I am trying to play catch up. Only 3 in our district are going to Hong Kong. The rest are going to Taiwan. I haven't played the piano yet. It is really hectic and busy. I feel like there is barely even time to do doctrine study. My MTC teacher is Chinese although he grew up in California, i think. It's hard to tell cause he never speaks any English so I can never understand what he is saying. I think things will settle in this week. Sunday was great. I have not heard anything from the MTC President Yet. We had an Administrator gave the devotional last night which was really good.

I'll try to kind of walk you through this past week if I can remember. It really is like trying to drink from a firehose here, but it is great. Right after I got dropped off I went in and got a bunch of papers and my name tags. The papers were my proselyting license, a debit card (I guess they give you one here), my meal card, and some other papers. We then threw our bags in the room and went straight to Mandarin Class. I was taken to the computers and watched this short intro video, which I didn't get to finish since we had to leave to get to Class. Wu Zhang Lao and I got to class and the teacher just spoke really fast in Mandarin while I stared at him for 15 min. No idea what he said. Then went to Building 1M and had a big meeting with all the incoming missionaries from the MTC Presidency. It was cool. We started with Called to Serve, which was great. The spirit is so strong through music. President and Sister Burgess reminded us to yield our hearts unto God and explained that there is no growth in a comfort zone and not much comfort in a growth zone (MTC). President Burgess also showed us pg 30 in the missionary handbook about always having our companion with us and encouraged us to underline the always and the nevers in the book. We closed the meeting by singing We'll bring the world his truth. It was cool when we sang the last past, instead of singing: And we will be the Lord's missionaries... we sang, "and we ARE NOW the lord's missionaries to bring the world his truth." After that meeting we went to dinner. It is just like the Cannon Center, but bigger. I saw tons of people I know: Maren Cline, Benny Bajo, Liza Pugsley, Caroline Anderson, Trey Rutter, Taylor Smith, Tyler Larson, Jameson Thornick, Paul B askin, Blake Wilson and many others. After dinner, we had a few minutes to start unpacking before we left for 2 hours and met with groups of about 80. We sat down had an "investigator" come in. The man in charge turned the time over to us to teach her. He periodically stopped, made some comments and suggestions. We did this with three investigators. They told us that most of the investigators are members, but there are a few real investigators here. They won't tell us which ones are members and which are investigators. Then we met our Zone Leaders and had a brief orientation. Then we went to the Residence Halls finished unpacking, wrote in my journal and went to bed.

Basically how the schedule works is we wake up, eat breakfast and have gym time for 50 min, then come home to get ready for the day. This is different for everybody, we lucked out to have it first thing in the morning. We then usually have Comp study for an hour, Personal Study for an hour and Language study for an hour. Then usually have 6 hours of Mandarin Class. I never know what he is asking us to do. Luckily almost everybody else does and has had Mandarin before so I just do what they do. This sure is humbling. I really need to rely on the Lord. We have lunch early and dinner at around 4:30. We have daily planning session and an hour in the Residence Halls to get ready for bed, write in journals, and whatever else. A man's voice come over the speaker and says "quiet time" at 10:15 and "lights out" at10:30. I'll give you a better schedule next time, when everything settles down.

One thing I loved in one of our meetings was about the missionary purpose. He focused on the word others. It doesn't say to invite investigators to come unto christ, but others to come unto Christ. This includes everybody including your companion. We taught our first lesson we taught was Friday, all in Mandarin. That was rough. We barely could say anything. We knocked on his door, he eventually opened the door a crack and looked out. We said our names in chinese and that we were missionaries. He looked at us and spoke a bunch of Mandarin and then looked at us. We didn't know how to ask him if we could come in, but eventually he let us in. We sat down and asked him some questions we prepared. I kept trying to say stuff and he just looked at me having no idea what I said. My pronunciation must be really bad. Anyway finally he understood and then rattled of in Mandarin for a few min. We had no idea what he was saying so we said another sentence we had written down. After 30 min, we said thanks and left. He was trying to say something to us as we left, but we couldn't tell, so we just jeft. We went back to class and then realized we didn't set up an appointment to meet with him again. We didn't know we had to do that. He must have been asking us if we were going to come back when we left. We had to go back and get an appointment for the next day. We taught him Saturday, which was a little better. Wu Zhang Lao could at least understand him a little bit and could kind of respond. I still could not pick up on anything he said. Anyway, we bore our testimonies to him at the end of the lesson and left. We taught him, or tried to teach him about prayer and tried to get him to commit to prayer. Who knows if he understood that is what we were trying to get him to do. We have our third lesson tonight at5:15. By the way, his name is Zhong Yu Fan. We are going to follow up on our commitment and try to explain to him the Holy Ghost and how Heavenly Father answers our prayers through the Spirit. We definietly need the gift of toungues and pray for it often. We have to pray every class in Mandarin which is really hard.

For gym time we played spike ball and threw the frisbee on Friday and played basketball on Saturday which was fun. Today we went to the temple in the morning and are doing laundry while writing. We are playing zone against zone kickball at 2 which I am pumped for. I am sorry my letter is so disorganized. We have 1 hr to write and there is a lot to write. I'm trying to keep to my commitment from my Mom to write long letters and take a lot of pictures. Everything is flying out of my brain and I only have a few min left on the computer.

The first day, I forgot to put on a tie, everybody in my room didn't notice and I found out soon cause I couldn't get into breakfast. Also just barely, I went to grab some pretzels and the whole bag ripped open and they went everywhere.

Sorry if I can't answer all your questions.

Sunday was awesome. We had 4 hrs in the morning to study. We planned our 3 lesson for Zhong Yu Fan and memorized the missionary purpose in Mandarin and studied vocab. Also I finished writing my talk. During sacrament meeting, the brach presidency randomly asks 2 people to give a 3-5 minute talk in Mandarin on a certain topic, so we have to prepare a talk each week in case we get called on. I wasn't called on luckily. The rest of the meeting beside prayer is in English. We sang a musical number I know that my Redeeme LIves for sacrament. Luckily I wasn't asked to speak. Later we had a devo about prayer and it's importance which was really good. We went to choir practice which was awesome. I love music. Spirit was so strong. Then we watched a short video from Bednar on the Characters of Christ. It was amazing.

Remind me to tell you about it next week. I am out of time.

Love you all. Thanks for your prayers. I know that the Savior's Atonement allows us to receive strength beyond our own capacity. I have seen that in the MTC. I also have been greatly humbled. I know that when we are more humble and strive to follow the guidance of the Holy Ghost we are more teachable and are able to come close to Christ.

Shi Zhang Lao (Elder Stratford)