So this week has been pretty great overall. A few exciting things, lots of less exciting things, but I always feel the Spirit and I learn more Chinese everyday! So here goes.
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| Flowers! It's almost springtime! And they're purple, which is awesome. |
Last Wednesday I think, after I e-mailed, an Elder in our district gave us gifts from his parents. There's a bit of back story to this actually. His dad is an orthodontist, and like the second week we were here, he talked about how he scrapes his tongue when he brushes his teeth. I was like oh yeah, I brush my tongue too, but he said no, I scrape it. I was a little confused, but then he described how his dad invented a "tongue scraper" and how it's a legitimate thing, and that he could get us one if we wanted. Naturally, my companions and I just laughed at him, because that's ridiculous. But a few weeks later, I found that it sounded cooler and cooler, so he had his parents send us some. They're pretty much amazing. So every night now, I scrape my tongue. It gets all of the bad breath germs off. It's super nasty when you do it, and I'm pretty sure all of the Sisters on our floor are judging us big time for it, but my breath has never been fresher!
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| The key to fresh breath has arrived. |
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| My Chinese and my English name tags on my beautiful polka dot scripture case. I'm so excited to one day wear it! |
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| Me with my Chinese name tag on! It's so awesome yay! |
On Thursday for TRC, we got to teach a family! It was pretty much the most exciting thing ever. I didn't realize how much I would miss associating with anyone who's like not a young adult. It was this dad who went Chinese speaking on his mission and then three of his kids who are in a Chinese immersion program at school. Half of the day they speak Chinese and half the day they speak English, so needless to say I got one-upped by a 12 year old with my Chinese. But it was really fun to teach them and they were just so cute! We were talking about revelation through church attendance and they liked telling us about Primary and their "xiao ke", little class. Also, the little seven year old was talking about how he's excited to be baptized. We asked when his birthday was and guess what? He's my twin!! On December 28 he'll turn 8 and get baptized and I was just so excited I might have scared him a bit. But it was cool. I hope I have the opportunity to teach families in England a few times!
Sometime this week, I can't remember when, it was either Thursday or Friday night at like 10, we were going to the vending machines in our sushe (dorm) and just chilling, eating our snacks, when the fire alarm went off. Sister Biancardi and I screamed because it was loud, and then we were like wait what do we do? Our sister training leader was like just walk outside, go down the stairs, let's go! And we didn't have shoes on, we were in our pajamas, and we had nothing but our vending machine snacks. So we go outside, with all the sisters in their various states of dress, some in robes, some in PJs, and we're huddled together, freezing, with no idea why we're doing it. Some nice employee let us into 19M, the gym where we have devotionals, and so we just hung out in the gym until like 10:20 when they stopped the fire alarm and checked to make sure everything was okay. We think the cause was that someone on the second floor burned their popcorn. The second floor is where the Yingwens (English speakers) live. Makes sense, dui bu dui. (yes or no). It was exciting and probably the most adventurous thing to happen to us since... well since being here really. :)
In class the other day, we listened to a part of my favorite talk from Ezra Taft Benson called Beware of Pride. I remembered reading it when I was younger, I think it was a topic for one of my sacrament talks or we talked about it in FHE one time. It is so amazing, and it really helps you see that almost everyone has an issue with pride. I know it's something I struggle with really bad. President Benson says that pride at its core is an issue because of competition, we want to compete with others. It's not that we have something special that makes us proud, it's the fact that we have more of something than someone else that constitutes pride. I would encourage you all to go listen to it or read it, it is just so amazing!!
So Monday was St. Patrick's Day. We ate donuts with green sprinkles on them for breakfast! And then my companions and I were trying to all wear green, but we realized that none of us has anything that is straight up green. So we were looking for something kind of green, and ended up arguing about colors for 15 minutes. Haha, it was pretty funny, because Sister Price has a BLUE sweater that she just insists is teal, while Sister Biancardi and I were telling her, no, that's blue. And then I was wearing like a sea foam-y green shirt I borrowed, and we argued about that, and then we were trying to distinguish green from teal from blue from turquoise and it was just really hilarious. We still don't agree on the colors, but we agree to disagree. The funniest part was that we asked the Zhanglaomen (Elders) and they were like "this is blue, this is green, what is teal, I don't know colors because I'm a man." It was great. Oh! And then at lunch, there was a table set up in the cafeteria where you could decorate a shamrock sugar cookie with frosting and sprinkles! It tasted like a brick, but it was a festive brick and I loved it!
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| Our St. Patrick's day cookies! And my companion's shoe, because she wanted to be in the picture. |
My companions and i have recently been rewriting the lyrics to songs from animated classics, like Frozen and The Swan Princess, to fit situations as a missionary, at the MTC and in the field. In the Swan Princess, there's this one song that talks about how all the prince does is practice because he wants to find the princess (naturally). So we took that line and made it "Day after day all that we every do is ROLE-PLAY, ROLE-PLAY, ROLE-PLAY!" Because it's totally true. And then with Frozen, we love singing "For the First Time in Forever" because it talks about how the windows and doors are open, and for the first time in forever there will be actual real live people. We don't even need to rewrite those ones. It's all true. Except for the whole finding romance part, that's a big BU KEYI (can't do that). At any rate, we need some way to stay sane and this is our way of doing that!
The Chinese is coming along pretty well. The most frustrating thing is the stupid tones. You say one word a different way and it means something totally different. For example: xianzhi first tone first tone means prophet. Xianzhi fourth tone fourth tone means limitations. Heavenly Father loves us, so He gives us limitations, no wait, prophets. Ugh it's so frustrating. But we are trying to SYL more and more and I think we're getting better.
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| This is Elder Johnson with his "batman" mask he made one day. That sums up his personality. |
On Sunday we got to watch Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration. I love that movie. Mostly because I love Joseph Smith, he's my favorite prophet. I love how he always put his trust in the Lord, how he wasn't quick to anger, how he loved everyone and saw their eternal potential. He is one amazing role model because he was one amazing man. We memorized Joseph Smith's First Vision from Joseph Smith-History so we can tell investigators about it. Every time you tell an investigator about the First Vision, it immediately invites the Spirit and testifies to them of this powerful moment. It changes their hearts and their views on what the church really is. We are always encouraged to find a "main message" of our lessons, one word that describes what it's all about. I believe that the message of the Restoration is love. Heavenly Father loves us, so He gave us this earth so we can one day become like Him, if we work towards doing so. Jesus Christ loves us, so He suffered for our sins so that we are able to overcome physical and spiritual death. I love the message of hope as well that this gospel brings! I think in the D&C somewhere, possibly section 25, it talks about laying aside the things of this world and hoping for the things of a better one. I constantly have that hope in my heart, especially on a mission where things are hard and I get frustrated, homesick, and lonely. I know that all of this hard work that I do will pay off one day, and that I can find joy in the journey now.
I love you all and I hope you are having a marvelous week! Remember to keep love in your hearts and keep being nice to the missionaries in your area! They love and appreciate it, I know it! I'm so grateful for all of the prayers offered on my behalf and on behalf of missionaries everywhere. Honestly, I think that's how we manage to get up and go to work everyday. Wo ai nimen!
Ai,
Sister Larson :)
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