BIG WEEK!

Leihdeih hou!! This week has been crazy!! We'll go for a highlights reel again because I'm not really sure how else to make it all coherent. Here goes: 1. Last p-day we went to Big Buddha! It was really really cool, really really cold, and really really interesting to learn more about Buddhism. Buddhism is pretty big here, so it was really interesting to learn about it--it definitely helps us to understand people's backgrounds more. 2. We had a zone Thanksgiving feast on Thursday and it was SO MUCH FUN! There was so much food, so much laughter, and so much to be thankful for. Since I'm from Idaho, the zone leaders shamelessly picked Sister Christensen and I to make the mashed potatoes, and let me tell you, they were some of the best mashed potatoes China has ever witnessed. The mission also provides each zone with a turkey, which was a welcome addition to our feast. :) It was so fun to get to hang out with the zone for a little while, and I'm so grateful for all the friendships I've made while out on my mission. Also we have such an inifite number of things to be grateful for and it was good to reflect on those too. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving doing the same thing across the world. :) 3. We got transfer calls this week! I will be staying in Tai Wai, which I was excited to hear because I love Tai Wai so much! Sister Christensen has finished her mission and will be going home, so I'll have a new companion here! I'm really excited to keep working with my sweet ward and also to see what happens here in the next few months! 4. Yesterday was probably the highlight of my whole mission so far. We had THREE baptisms in our ward!! Two of them were the kids of one of our newer members, and the other one was one of our sweet sweet investigators (Sister Lau, who I actually met on my first day here in Tai Wai) that we've been teaching for a long time and we're so happy for all of them! The elders shared a cool spiritual thought (inspired by our big meeting with Elder Evans a couple of weeks ago) about how missionary work is just completing families and it was really cool to see that happen in our investigators' lives. The two kids who were baptized are another step to creating an eternal family, and Sister Lau's family was just completed (her husband was very recently reactivated). We're hoping that she and her husband and their cute baby can be sealed soon! Knowing that my family can be together forever is one of the most precious things in the world to me, and it's really such an amazing opportunity that we have as missionaries to help other people obtain the same blessing of having an eternal family like we have. I LOVE MISSIONARY WORK. Life is great and God is so good. I love you all, so grateful for your love and support! Have a good week! Gayauh! Sister Wasden 郭姊妹 Pictures: 1. One of the temples at Big Buddha 2. Big Buddha 3. Baptisms!! 4. Seriously so cold outside 5. Sister Christensen and I and our sweet Young Women :) 6. Thanksgiving fun!

Thankful:)

Leihdeih hou! Nothing too wild to report this week! Just lots of good lessons and good people and good meetings. :) Since Sister Christensen is leaving soon, we have had SO MANY MEMBERS feed us this past week, and I have never been so consistently full in my whole life. I love love love getting to know the members better though! Tai Wai is seriously such a golden ward and I'm so grateful for every single one of them. :) This coming week marks my SIX MONTH MARK, as well as my 4 month mark in Hong Kong! SO CRAZY. Time is definitely flying, and I'm so infinitely grateful for every moment on my mission so far. It's definitely been incredibly difficult, but I've learned and grown so much and I've been so happy here that I wouldn't trade any of it for the world! This week is also Thanksgiving! We get to have a feast/party as a zone and I'm so excited! Updates on that to come next week. :) I'm so grateful for every single one of you! You are all such big blessings in my life and I'm so grateful for all the love and support I feel. You all make all the difference. :) I'm also so grateful for this gospel! Sometimes as I look out at all the people in the big crowds, I'm amazed that they don't know about Jesus Christ and they don't know all the blessings that can come from following Him, and it makes me that much more motivated to go and tell every single one of them about it in broken Chinese. :) It really is such a big blessing to know that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us so much that He sent Christ here to make it possible for us to return to Him again. Don't ever take that knowledge for granted, and make sure you go out and share it with others (and refer them to the missionaries :)). That's pretty much it for this week! Love you all! Gayauh! Sister Wasden :) 郭姊妹 Picture: Us and the Tai Wai elders at Jeh Jimuih's house for dinner :) She and her granddaughter are so sweet!

MONKEYS! And other exciting things.

Leihdeih hou!! This week has been so good! First things first, MONKEYS! I'd been here in Hong Kong for around 15 weeks and had yet to see a monkey. Everyone told me that since I'm in Tai Wai (which is a little more jungle-y than other parts of Hong Kong) that I would see them for sure around people houses, and still no luck, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. Last week for p-day, we took the trek to Monkey Mountain. Fun fact: since monkeys are definitely a thing here in Hong Kong (a fact I was previously very doubtful of), if you ask a taxi driver to take you to Monkey Mountain, they will in fact just drive you up a random mountain and drop you off, so the key to enjoying this particular adventure is to go with a member who knows their way around. Our member of choice was Tanner, our fabulous ward mission leader, and his mom, who is one of our investigators! Apparently I am natural monkey repellant (which I am now grateful for after actually meeting monkeys) and there were not nearly as many monkeys as there usually are, but I saw enough to be content. Baby monkeys are adorable, adult monkeys are terrifying. That is all. We also did a cool hike around a lake that involved walking through a mini bamboo forest, and after all the monkey excitement we went to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, which is for the most part shamelessly dedicated to Bruce Lee. I've since determined that becoming a martial arts master is part of my future plans. Among other adventures this week: I finally tried chicken feet! We were eating at a member's house, and she was serving us some fish, and her cute two-year-old daughter Ouji (who I LOVE) also wanted to serve us some food, so she grabbed the serving spoon, dipped it into the bowl of various chicken parts, and somehow got one of only two chicken feet in the whole bowl. I was sitting right across from her and saw the danger I was in. My heart dropped. Ouji moved the spoon (and the chicken foot) towards my bowl, and her mother saw what was happening and quickly said "Oh, missionaries don't like those! Don't give it to her!" but Ouji was DETERMINED to be a good host and serve me food, so into my bowl it went. (P.S., it's Chinese culture that if something goes into your bowl, you have to eat it unless you can sneakily slip it into your bones pile or into your purse or some other hidden place.) Sister Tohng told me that I could just put it on the table and not eat it (bless her soul), but I was determined to try it. I asked Ying Ying (the seven-year-old daughter) to show me how to eat it (you bite off the toes, suck off the meat, and then spit the bone out. I wasn't really digging that), and then the pressure was on me. Sister Tohng kept telling me to just put it on the table, Ying Ying kept saying "It's SO GOOD! TRY IT," Sister Christensen was telling me to go for it, and Ouji got excited by all the noise and started yelling her two-year-old Cantonese gibberish at me and waving her arms. The pressure was high. The moment was now. I ended up chickening out (pun intended) and just gnawing off a tiny little bit of the skin (none of that bone-biting business for me, thank you very much). I'll stick to chicken wings for the time being. Also, during our regularly scheduled English class finding session this week, I had not one, but TWO people come up and ask to take a picture with me (because I'm white). So that was definitely a big milestone for me as a missionary here. This week we also had a lot of miracles in our missionary work! We have been trying SO HARD to find new investigators, especially through the members, and this week it finally happened! We had the opportunity to meet with FIVE new people this week, THREE of whom became new investigators! That kind of miracle doesn't happen often here, and we are so so grateful for it! Two of those new invesigators accepted baptismal dates already, and they all have so much potential. I love being a missionary! God is really watching out for us. This is His work, and when we really show Him that we're willing to do things His way, it all works out for the better. Life is good, and life with God on your side is even better! Thanks for all the love and support! Keep smiling, don't get too close to monkeys, and avoid the chicken feet. Sending love to you all! Gayauh! Sister Wasden 郭姊妹 Pictures: 1. The hiking crew (me, Sister Christensen, Tanner, Sister Lai, Sister Lee, and Sister Bannagao) 2. MONKEYS! They got a lot closer than that, but when they did, I didn't dare turn my back on them 3. Be water, my friend​​

The Week :)

Leihdeih hou! It's been a crazy fast week! I can't believe it's already November! Not a whole lot of time this week, so here's a couple highlights: 1. This past week we had a big meeting with Elder Evans, who is in the Asia Area Presidency. It was a super super cool meeting, and he answered a ton of my questions that I'd been studying and praying about. It was also really cool to hear him talk to us about missionary work, because he actually lives in Hong Kong and spends all day going over numbers for the missions in our area, and he also served as a mission president in Japan, so he knows what missionary work is like in Asia and he knows what our particular challenges are and he was able to address those specifically, which was awesome. He talked a lot about different ways to get referrals and about how missionary work is all about completing families, which I loved. He also talked a lot about the "if you will, you may" principle. If you will be obedient, then you may have the promised blessings. If you will really dedicate yourself to obtaining the Gift of Tongues and learning your mission language, then you may speak Cantonese (or your assigned language, whatever that may be) at a higher level. If you will ask for referrals, then you may have a lot of people to teach. If you will, you may. So cool and so applicable to real life too, not just missionary work. :) 2. We had a really cool miracle this week, and two of our investigators that we've been working with have finally accepted baptismal dates for the end of this month! One of them is a 9 year old, and her little brother (who's 8) will also be getting baptized then, so we'll have THREE baptisms in one day! We're so excited and so happy for each of them! We've been working really really hard, and it's so good to see the blessings coming in. God is real. :) 3. I found some American money in my bags the other day and it looked and felt so weird to me, so that's cool.​​ Life is good! Missionary work is hard, but there are so many blessings. God is looking out for each of you. Don't forget that if you will, you may. :) Love you all! Sister Wasden 郭姊妹 Pic: Sister Christensen and I, featuring the temple in the background :)