oh my goodness. i'm actually here. in some indonesian "cafe" writing you an email. it's so weird to think that i'm actually in hong kong haha sometimes i feel like i'm just in another state or something because it's pretty westernized, but other times i definitely feel like i'm in china. Some of the buildings where people live are very old. For some reason i thought everything wouldn't look too bad but the insides aren't too shabby. our apartment is really big. i was pretty shocked. supposedly it's one of the bigger ones but i don't know if we have AC so it's always blazing. We're only on the 10th floor. the flight over was pretty long and i didn't sleep much so yesterday when we got here we were complete zombies. it was pretty funny hahaha and since i was the only sister i slept in the mission president's apartment with their family (which happens to be in the hong kong temple). Now it's not everyday that you can say you've slept under a temple :) hahah it was really nice and President and Sister Chan are so great! All the missionaries have amazing cantonese (some of the white ones sound completely native it's crazy!) and it just motivates me to really get the language down. So my Trainer! Her name is Sister Chinison. She's from tahiti and she speaks fluent english, french, and cantonese. she's also chinese and grew up learning all those languages so she was only in the mtc for 3 or 4 weeks. She's really hard working and she will help me a lot i think. I told her that I want her to speak Cantonese with me a lot so that has been helpful. I can't remember what our area is called but we live far from where our proselyting area is. I haven't been to our area, only our apt so i don't know what it's like over but she says there are a lot of trees and mosquitos(no clue how to spell that one). Sweeett. i love trees and mosquits never bite me. It is pretty hot hear. The humidity just makes you drip but it's ok, i really don't mind it. I haven't done a whole lot these first two days....mostly orientation stuff but i did bare my testimony to a taxi driver on our way to the peak (which is sight where you can see over all of hong kong---so beautiful! the ap's took all the new missionaries) but people see our nametags and jolt. at least that's how i feel haha i guess i can say i've never felt so noticed before but it's a good thing. when we were waiting for a taxi to get to the peak, a lady was walking by in another line and i caught her smiling and reading my nametag. it sounded like she was speaking mandarin, but i asked her if she spoke cantonese and she just smiled and didn't respond. so then i yelled to the new mandarin elder so that he could go talk to her. he called out something in mandarin and she responded, but then she turned the corner and our taxi came up. i wanted to talk to her so badly, but she couldn't understand me. there are sooo many people that are ready to hear the gospel and we have to find them. It feels overwhelming sometimes because there are so many people, but as we learn to listen to the spirit, even when chaos is surrounding us, we will be lead to those people. I really feel that my faith will be tried here, especially this first part of my mission. I have so much to do, so much to learn, and so many people to help. and with faith i can do all those things.
tonight we have EEFY which is english especially for youth. we'll play games, teach english, and give a message. it should be way fun! then afterwards we are teaching pang ji muih---she's from mainland china but speaks cantonese. we are teaching her the first second and third lessons and then seeing if she can get baptized on sunday before she leaves back to mainland. my companion says she's ready. they already taught her the commandments too so we are just teaching the lessons in depth for her. i'm excited and hopefully i can do or say something that will help her increase her faith. we are also teaching an 11 year old girl tomorrow. I bet she's adorable and i can't wait! even though i don't know a lot i'm so excited to just dive into all of this. anyway, sorry this letter isn't too grand, i'm sure i will have many more stories and experiences to share next thursday. as for now, i will just press forward! I love you all!!
Kahm Ji Muih
ps Keep me in your prayers. I need a lot of help learning this language.
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