Chapter 10: Meagan's first week in England-- Salvation is not a cheap experience

Dear jiating he pengyoumen,

I'm finally in England!!! It was a long, boring journey, including a 6 hour layover in the London airport while I was jetlagged and running out of stuff to do, but I finally made it to the mission home around 2 in the afternoon on Wednesday. I was picked up by the two APs and did some business, then was driven about an hour east to Hull, my first area! My trainer's name is Sister Huang, she's from Taiwan and so speaks fluent Mandarin, but she's also very fluent in English, so that's wonderful. We live in a flat between two pubs, or like night club things so weekend nights are very interesting, with two other Sisters, Sister Tafengatoto and Sister Pacis. They are English speakers but are from Tonga and the Philippines. 

Everyone who wore polka dots to travel!
Me, Elder Moore, Sister Kwan, Sister Berrey

So this week there is so much to say, I'll have to restrain myself. First, there are accents everywhere! This area is less posh and fancy, there's lots of druggies and single moms and teenage partiers, so that's been interesting to get used to. I'm the foreigner now, and people automatically are like "oh, you're American" and I just smile like Yup. They sometimes think it's cool. Unless they're Mormon, they don't know where Idaho is. So, that's always fun to explain. British people, as you know, use different words than I do, so when I say trash can, they're like no, it's a dust bin or a rubbish bin. Among others. They also drive on the wrong side of the road. I've almost gotten in to member's cars and the driver's side when they told me to go sit in the front. So that's been interesting to get used to as well.

Our study room in our flat! Our flat is really narrow
and has stairs all over the place. It's weird.

So far, we've visited a few members, and now we're mainly working with less actives and recent converts. One of them is Vania. She was baptized in December I think and is Chinese. We go to her house for lunch or tea (tea appointments mean like dinner appointments, so tea is dinner). She works with music and music mixing, so we're trying to help her keep her standards and we're also trying to get her to go to all three hours of church, about every other week she only comes to Sacrament meeting. We also have FHE with Suki and her son William every week. Suki is older and has two older kids, but she also has William, her 7yo at home with her. She speaks Cantonese and Mandarin and not much English, but William speaks really good English. He was shy with me at first, but now he likes to give me stickers and show me stuff on his mom's phone. He's great. They come to church every week, so that's awesome. 

We also have a sort-of, almost, kind of, new investigator. Her name is Winnie, and she is a street contact from a few weeks back. She likes singing, so Sister Huang was going to invite her to church choir but didn't know when the practices were, so she never set up an appointment or anything. So when I came, we had the idea to ask Winnie to help me with my Chinese since it's terrible, and she agreed. Saturday evening we went over and I was like, okay I'll say some stuff and you correct my grammar and pronounciation. So then I taught her the first lesson in chinese, with her correcting me. At first, it was all about the Chinese and not really listening to what I was saying, but at the end when we were talking about praying and the Holy Ghost, she actually had questions and wanted to listen to us. It was awesome! So we're meeting her later today to help check her essay (another way we try to get to talk to Chinese investigators - I love English grammar and I'm good at it:) and hopefully we'll get her to come to the YSA FHE they hold here every Monday night as well. 

I think the hardest thing to get used to so far is not being afraid to talk to people, be it members, investigators, Chinese, English, strangers. It's pretty hard for me. It's also hard to go to Chinese appointments because they just jabber to Sister Huang and I don't really follow the conversation. My Chinese will come in time, and during that time I can work on developing patience!

One funny thing that I didn't really know the English had was squash. It's like liquid fruit concentrate juice stuff that you add to water to make a juice drink thing. It's pretty weird, but it doesn't taste too bad.

British money! 10£ note, and then 1p, 2p, 20p, 50p, and 1£ coins.

Well I know that was a way long e-mail, sorry about that, but I love my mission so far! It is so so hard, so different from what I was expecting, but I do love it. The ward is great, they're all very nice and willing to feed us and help us out. I know the Lord is watching over us! This work is hard because, according to Elder Holland, "salvation is not a cheap experience". It is so true! We are trying to help change people's lives, which is not easy and never has been easy. But I think it will be worth it. I'm excited to see what I will learn and experience here in England. I love you all, especially you missionaries! Keep working hard and reading your scriptures!!

Ai,
Sister Larson