Paint and Tons of Group Pictures

Leihdeih hou!
This week has been the craziest week of my life! I'm pretty sure last p-day was probably 3 years ago. Let's start with a story...
Let me paint a picture for you (slight pun definitely intended, please hang on). A paint can, full of white paint. Innocent enough, right? Wrong. This paint can has a tiny little hole in its side, near the bottom. Now picture a water balloon with a small hole in it. You know how the water shoots out of it? Yeah, that, but with paint. This was the start of my week. I was hopelessly squatting next to this paint can with fear in my eyes and terror in my soul, just trying to keep this thing plugged up. I felt like the Little Dutch Boy in that Hans Christian Andersen story, the one who sticks his finger in the dam to keep Holland from flooding. "How did you get into this situation?" you may ask. Well, let me take you back about four weeks to an apartment leader (aka the people in charge of making sure that everyone in the apartment does their chores) meeting. "Apartment Deep Clean Day!" Daaih Chou, one of our office elders, announced. "February 12th! Two-One-Two! Easy to remember!" So here we are on Two-One-Two, and we've got a problem on our hands. Oh boy, has our apartment been deep cleaned. We've scrubbed the floors too many times to count, reorganized the kitchen, and we even did a little feng shui magic to make our tiny living/bedroom feel a little bigger (the secret: we moved Sister Risenmay's and my portable closet to our study room. It made our study room feel about 8 times smaller but it's a sacrifice we are willing to make). Our apartment was now the cleanest it's been in at least a year, and Sister Risenmay and I got a little (over)ambitious and decided that our apartment walls needed some serious TLC and more than a few touch-ups (actually, we decided that they need to be repainted entirely but as limited missionaries who only had until p-day ends at 6:30, we could only do so much). So yeah, we decided to paint the walls and our paint can decided to paint the floor (hence scrubbing the floors too many times to count). Realizing that I couldn't keep up this Little Dutch Boy gig for much longer, as fun as it was, Sister Risenmay and I moved the paint can to the shower, which left a trail of paint splatters behind us. Artsy, but messy. Thankfully Sister Kimball is a quick thinker and thought to spray the paint on the floor with cleaner to prevent it from drying until Sister Bannagao could come through and swipe it up. It was a messy maneuvre, but once the paint was safely draining in the shower (along with a ton of water to rinse it down), our lives got a little easier. Convinced that although we may have lost that battle, we could still win the war, Sister Risenmay and I armed ourselves with kitchen sponges, dipped them into the leftover paint, and got to work on a couple of spots. I don't know a lot about makeup, but the three tips I know about blending foundation really came in handy here. After about three spots we gave up. We lost the battle and we lost the war. Our walls are still gross. BUT the rest of our apartment is so nice and clean! May it stay that way for at least three weeks.
This was a great start to a great week. It's been Chinese New Year for the last few days, and while missionaries can't see a lot of the festivities, I did get to witness a Lion Dance from my window. They also have Chinese calligraphy artists outside painting these red sign things (to bring good luck), and they give them out for free. They gave Sister Risenmay one about having a prosperous life and me one about always smiling, and then they insisted that we try to paint our own, which was so fun! If anyone was wondering, I am absolutely awful at Chinese calligraphy. Thanks to New Year's, all of our investigators went to Mainland or were otherwise completely unavailable, but for some reason that made all of our members available, so we got to eat with so many different families this week! I love this sweet Tai Wai ward. For one cheng out (member meal) the family (and their less-active friends, who are SO NICE) took us to see a flower market (it's tradition to buy a ton of flowers for your house for New Year's). We only had time to see a little bit of it, but there were so many sights and sounds and snacks and people and I'd love to go back. So sweet!
This week we also had zone conference. All of the trainings were so great and President Lam talked to us a lot about the enabling power of the Atonement and how that can--and does--help us in our everyday lives. I mean, I definitely couldn't learn Cantonese on my own. That's a testament in and of itself. We (the Lion Rock zone leadership) gave a training about having a positive attitude and loving the work, even when it's hard and discouraging, and I think I learned way more from preparing for that than anyone else did by listening to it. Great things are ahead, only if you let yourself think that they are.
The other really exciting news from this week: MOVES CALLS! I can't even believe that this transfer is already over. It has completely FLOWN by and I can't even wrap my head around it. Big news! I AM GOING TO.... stay in Tai Wai! Yep! By the end of this transfer I'll have spent half of my mission here and I couldn't be happier! There's always a surprise in every transfer call though, and here's ours: right now it's Sister Risenmay and I covering my beloved Tai Wai and Sister Kimball and Sister Bannagao covering Sha Tin. However, Sister Bannagao is moving to the international zone and they're not sending anyone in to replace her. Sister Risenmay, Sister Kimball, and I will all be in a trio, covering both Tai Wai AND Sha Tin. That means that we get to figure out all the weird logistics of being in a trio (we're now shopping for three, cooking for three, and we have to figure out how to make our tiny study room work for three) and all the weird logistics of covering two areas (we have twice the area to cover, two wards, two sets of elders to coordinate with, and so many other things like that), all at once! It will be completely chaotic and a big change. It's a ton of responsibility for sure, but I'm excited to see what happens! Tai Wai has got my whole heart, but I guess I can share some of it with Sha Tin too. :)
There's just a piece of my crazy week! I'm loving the people, loving the work, and loving where I'm at right now, and there's only room to go up! As is my motto right now, "Let us not be content with where we are, but neither let us be discouraged" (Elder Christofferson). Life only gets better as long as we're keeping our sights in the right place and keeping ourselves centered on Christ.
Love you all so much! Gayauh!
Sister Wasden
享姊妹
Now for the loads of group pictures (sorry):
1. Well, actually not a group picture. But here's me with some rice cakes our Bishop's wife made for us! Rice cakes are a traditional New Year's treat. :)
2. Aaaalso not a group picture. Sorry again. Here's my trying to paint my name. They were really impressed that we can write characters (I literally only know my name, haha), even if it was really ugly.
3. Us and the painting people. I think they were really excited to see white people.
4. Us at the flower market!
5. The Tai Wai squad with Justin and George, our ward mission leader and ward missionary. Elder Stansfield is leaving (so sad) so obviously we needed a photoshoot.
6. Our barbecue with some members today! Chinese barbecues are so different from American barbecues. I almost got attacked by a monkey. Monkeys stole some of our corn. It was great.