This week has been so amazing! The MTC is wonderful and although sometimes it can be hard, being here is so worth it!
My companion is Sister Low from Holladay, Utah! She also went to Utah State (although she went the year before me) and she is so sweet! We get along wonderfully and she has been such a strength and a support for me. This week we agreed to work on patience together and it's been so helpful to have her remind me to be patient with myself when I don't understand anything in Cantonese. She's the best companion I could have asked for!
The Cantonese is coming slowly but surely! Sometimes it's easy to get discouraged and feel like I don't know anything, but it's really cool to look back and realize that not even a week ago and I didn't speak Cantonese at ALL and now I can pray and testify and speak some basic phrases. The first day I felt like I might as well be learning sign language because if I understood ANYTHING our teacher said it was because of his exaggerated hand gestures, but now I can pick up words and phrases and figure out what he's trying to tell us (some hand gestures still involved, obviously. I'm not THAT good yet ;)). God is real and He really helps out when you're doing His work. It's amazing to watch everyone progress! (Also, a silver lining to all of this is that it turns out I know WAY more Spanish than I thought! I'm getting better at Cantonese now, but for the first few days anytime I tried to remember a word in Cantonese it came to me in Spanish instead, so that's cool.)
We also got to teach an investigator on Friday and Saturday! Friday's lesson was really frustrating because we couldn't really communicate what we wanted to and we couldn't understand the vast majority of what Nikki (our investigator) was trying to say to us, but on Saturday Louh Jí Muih (Sister Low) and I decided that instead of trying so hard to SAY the right things, we wanted to really just focus on bringing the Spirit in and having Nikki FEEL the right things, and it went WAY better. Louh Jí Muih and I left the lesson laughing instead of almost crying and it felt so much better. It's really cool to realize that what we say isn't what's important, it's what the investigators feel, and I don't have to be fluent in Cantonese to be able to have the Spirit.
In other miscellaneous news, in just a couple of weeks the new buildings on the MTC campus will be finished and all the Cantos and Mandos get to move into it! BRAND NEW CLASSROOMS FOR US! Really excited for that. :) Also, since there's not nearly enough Cantonese speakers to form a whole zone (there were only 4 of them before my district got here!) our zone is mostly Mandarin speakers, so for better or worse the majority of our meetings are in English. It's confusing listening to them all speak Mandarin though, so I'm grateful.
My district is really really great! We all get along really well and are all encouraging as we learn and make mistakes together. :) Something that's really cool and unique about our district (and the other Canto district) is that in most other districts (even the Mandarin ones) the missionaries are going all over the world, but in ours every single one of us in going to Hong Kong, so it adds an extra layer of unity and a more common purpose because we all have the exact same people that we're working for. They're really great. :)
Yesterday we had our Sunday devotional, and the Administrative Director of the MTC came to talk to us. He used to be the International Director, so he spent a lot of time showing us the other MTCs and telling us stories from the missionaries who were trained there with the purpose of emphasizing that we are not alone. There are 70,000 other missionaries in the world doing exactly what we're doing day in and day out and it's amazing to be part of such a powerful team.
I'm just so grateful for the opportunity that I have to be here and learn the things I'm learning! It's been a challenging week but I've felt my faith (and maybe even my Cantonese) grow stronger already, and I've only been here 6 days! God is great and the gospel is so good. :)
Love you all! Thank you for all the love and support! Your prayers have been felt and your emails and letters have made me smile so much! Much love to you all!
Gayauh!
Gwok Jí Muih (Sister Wasden)
