This Week's Adventures

Leihdeih hou!
This week has been HECTIC! We had a few lessons, a few almost lessons, a few rescheduled lessons, and a few member visits, as well as a new investigator and a few more lined up! Tai Wai kind of went through a slower phase these past couple of months, and I forgot how crazy it is, and how nice it is, to be so busy! It's been great though. :)
A few highlights from this week:
We have English class finding every week. English class finding is always fun because somehow that's the exact two hours every week where you find all the interesting people. This week, this guy named Herman talked to me for 50 minutes straight (in actually really good English) about probably nearly everything under the sun. We discussed baby powder, learning German, teaching English (at least that was kind of relevant), and who even knows what else. He was super nice though, and he really wanted me to remember this little nugget of wisdom that I guess I'll pass on for your benefit: "Knowledge is power, but practice is the key." Sister Risenmay and the elders and I eventually had to leave to go to a member's house, so Herman then went and talked to Sister Bannagao, hahaha.
The member visit was great! Brother Ng served a mission in HK in the late 80's, so it was so fun to see all of his mission pictures, as well as the great fashion of the times. Love our sweet members here.
Miracle of the week: this week we had a zone find in Tai Wai to help us find some new investigators. The NTK elders found Kelvin, who has researched our church a lot and has so many questions! He was so excited to come to church yesterday and he even brought his girlfriend. They have so much interest and we are so excited to work with them!
Looking forward to another good and busy week! This Wednesday we get to go to the temple (so today isn't acutally p-day, we just get to email. P-day will be this Wednesday) and I couldn't be more excited! Life is good, love you all so much! Gayauh!
Sister Wasden
郭姊妹

Pictures:
1. Study room selfie. You'll never stop seeing these.
2. View from one of the apartment buildings at night. (Tanner, this is your house. Sorry if it makes you homesick, haha)
3. Me and a sparkly notebook?
4. Some nighttime less-active finding drama
5. In case you forgot what our tags look like

This Week in HK

Leihdeih hou!
It's been a good week here! We've had lots of lessons (mostly with recent converts and not investigators, but recent convert lessons are some of my favorites anyways), zone conference, and even a cheng out or two (meal with a member or investigator). We have a busy busy week ahead of us and we're so excited to keep working in the Lord's vineyard. :)
Zone conference was so good! We were combined with the Kowloon East and Hong Kong Island zones, and it was kind of cool to see how all of our trainings lined up with each other. The Kowloon East leadership talked about remembering who you are and what your purpose is, the Island talked about having a vision for yourself and setting goals according to that vision, and Lion Rock (aka us :)) talked about the authority that we have as missionaries and how we can make that authority lead to power. All super motivating stuff! It was good to set some goals and to leave ready to make ourselves even better. Goal setting is definitely something that I want to carry with me into post-mission life (and something you can all do too :)). It definitely was not a strength of mine before the mission, but it's something that I'm trying to get better and better at and hopefully I'll be really good at it before I leave. They increase your rate of growth so much and I've come to really appreciate what inspired goals and plans can do.
Okay, so this transfer Sister Risenmay and I are really trying to eat healthy, and for the most part we're doing really good at it, so please excuse these next few sentences about unhealthy foods because they make it sound like we're just eating junk food all the time but they were honestly too good to not mention. One of our cute members chenged us out to pizza this week! Get this: it was a barbecue pizza with peaches and cucumbers on it. And it was some of the BEST PIZZA I've ever had in my entire life. Also are Crispy M&M's a thing in America? They're all the rage here and they are SO GOOD. Okay, that's all. I could also rave to you about all the healthy foods we eat too, but that's not nearly as exciting, is it?
Anyways. I hope you all have a good week! Stay true to the gospel--there's no other way to true and lasting happiness. God will always pull through for you. Praying is actually the coolest thing, make sure you do that lots. Also read your scriptures. Go to church. Serve and love your neighbor. Feed the missionaries pizza. All good and noble things.
Sending you lots of love! Gayauh!
Sister Wasden
郭姊妹

Pics: Sister Risenmay and I (study room selfies are way too common on my weekly, I am so sorry) and some typos in my dictionary (it's so dumb but we cried laughing at it). I will get a camera soon and will send home higher quality pictures, I promise (not going to lie, I actually attached a picture from the MTC before my comp sent me these ones. Things are getting desperate)

This Week's Adventures

Leihdeih hou! This week was super busy, but I don't actually have a crazy ton to report?? Just lots of appointments and meetings and actually a lot of lessons (finally! We have a lot of really awesome recent converts that we love working with). A small miracle from this week: Sister Risenmay and I got to take out a baby missionary that had just arrived in Hong Kong for the night. We decided to go less-active finding (which is actually a huge portion of the work we do here in Tai Wai). Usually nobody is home at 90% of the apartments we visit (or someone is definitely on the other side of the door and we can see them looking through the peephole, but "nobody is home"). However, this time, we visited probably 6 houses, and someone answered every single door we knocked on! That NEVER happens. Most of the people had moved (which is still really good information to know), but we managed to make really good contact with some less-actives AND potential investigators. Baby missionary miracles, y'all. The other small miracle from this week: I ate pig's feet! And preserved eggs. And I managed to not die! The meat part of the pig's feet was actually pretty good (especially with the sauce it was served with). Wish I could say the same for the rest of it. It was fun to try it though, and our sweet member was so excited to see our reactions. Life is good here in Tai Wai! Thank you for all the love and support. Sending you lots of love! Gayauh! Sister Wasden 郭姊妹 Pictures: Okay, I still don't have a camera. I'm really sorry. No new pictures to send home. BUT I have this old picture of me mashing potatoes in our apartment from Thanksgiving time that I don't think I've ever sent. Maybe I'll throw a Big Buddha one in too. Am I desperate for pictures? Maybe. (Defnitely.) By next week I'll either have a camera, or I'll be sending home pictures from the MTC, hahaha.

The Weekly :)

Leihdeih hou! This week has been good! I was able to do some more exchanges (always fun), we did a zone find and I met a lot of spunky old ladies that I want to be best friends with, and then we also had MLC! We talked a lot about having faith, not only in Christ, but also in ourselves and in the missionary work here in Hong Kong. Sometimes it's easy to get discouraged about the work here, but we all left feeling a lot more motivated and optimistic. A good attitude really can make all the difference, so make sure you have one! Towards the end of MLC, President Lam left the room for a moment and then came back with the news of President Monson's passing. We were all pretty shocked. We all stood together and sang "We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet" and it was a really powerful moment. How grateful I am for a living prophet to lead and guide us today! That's one of my favorite things to teach people--we have a prophet who will never lead us astray. I'm so grateful for the amazing life that President Monson lived and the legacy he left behind, and I am excited to love and sustain our new prophet as well. Sending you all lots of love! Gayauh! Sister Wasden 郭姊妹 Pictures: 1. The sunset from our window 2. My cute comp in her natural habitat 3. One of our former investigators randomly came to church and brought us a cake! We were only too happy to eat it that night

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Leihdeih hou! Happy New Year! I'd love to brag that I got to celebrate New Year's 15 hours earlier than most of you, but as missionaries we don't get to party much over here, haha. Wishing you all a year full of love and prosperity and all that jazz. :) This past week has been good! Some highlights: Our ward mission leader Tanner left for Utah this week! To say goodbye, he made us the most fabulous Mexican meal. What a blessing he (and his food) is. If you see him hanging around Salt Lake, take him out to dinner or something, haha. This week we've been blessed to meet with some new people! I'm hoping that we can continue meeting with them. I already feel so much love for them and I can already picture them as full-blown members of our ward, haha. We've also been focusing on building relations with the ward, and holy cow, I love all of these people so much! The wildest, most interesting ward in Utah has nothing on the ones here in HK, but they all work so well together and I love each person here so much. This week I've studied a lot about miracles. I've been working on reading through Jesus the Christ (I'd definitely recommend, if you ever have incredible amounts of motivation and brainpower, haha. It's a tough read but it's so so so good). It struck me how sometimes people don't believe that something is a miracle because they can't understand it at all (like Christ turning the water into wine), and other people don't regard miracles as miracles because they can scientifically understand how that miracle worked, but in reality, a miracle is a miracle regardless of whether we understand it or not. It also reminded me of the talk in the last general conference by Elder Hallstrom about miracles, in which he talked about how sometimes the lack of what we perceive to be a miracle is actually a miracle in and of itself. We are definitely, without a doubt, surrounded by miracles every single day, and we just miss them because we either take them for granted or just can't recognize them. It's one of my goals in 2018 to be better at recognizing and being thankful for the everyday miracles that I'm privileged to experience, and I'd like to encourage you all to do the same. God's hand is in the details of our lives, even if we don't recognize that it's there. Sending you all lots of love! Thanks for everything you do! Gayauh! Sister Wasden 郭姊妹 Pictures: 1. Okay, so this one needs some explanation. Sister Risenmay and I accidentally matched, and then artsy Sister Risenmay noticed that we also happened to match the pink buildings and blue sky outside, so we tried to get a picture to show that, but the lighting was bad so you can't see it. So now it's just a picture of us sitting in our cluttered windowsill, hahaha 2. We had a weird day and there's nothing better to fix that than face masks 3. Our ward travel day was today and one of our sweet members bought us these treats! Frozen strawberries with a sugary syrup and rice paper over them. SO GOOD. Me, Sister Risenmay, Ying Ying (one of my favorite 7 year olds), and Sister Leung (our fab YW president)