Leih hou!!! (or as Park would say, Lay who. haha)
How are you all this week?? I miss you so much! Thanks for sending me letters from the family reunion! I loved getting them! I hope you guys had NO fun at all without me and Ben there. I know you didn't ;)
Can I just start this email out by saying.... I LOVE THIS MISSION! I love what I'm doing sooo much. I love my companion, I love my mission president, I love this branch, I love Macau, I love these sisters I live with, I love our investigators, I love the two senior couples, I love the people we walk by on the street, I love everything about being here. I can't imagine being anywhere else or doing anything else. This is the best thing I've ever done in my whole life. It's so rewarding and SO happy! :) It's tough, but man. COMPLETELY worth every tear I've shed :) haha.
I wasn't on earlier because guess how we spent P-day today?? With Gou Mama. I can't believe I haven't written about Gou Mama yet. She is the best lady in the entire world. She's 79 years old... and she's taking piano lessons from Sister Welling (senior couple) and she comes to teach member present lessons with us ALL THE TIME, she invites the missionaries over to eat all the time, she's taking classes from Macau University... she's just amazing. I want to be Gou Mama when I grow up. Anyway, she invited the sisters over for lunch today and we were there for 2 hours just hanging out at her house! It felt like going to grandma's house. Except this grandma speaks Chinese :) it was so awesome! We played her piano and then she played the simplified version of "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" that she's learning and we all sang. It was so awesome :) best P-day ever! She is my idol. I will send you a picture of her so you can appreciate how cute she is. She's the best :)
SOOO! The "dark transfer cloud" as Sister Hawks calls it is upon us! We find out the transfer news TOMORROW! So I find out tomorrow if I'm leaving Macau or not! I can't believe it. I could be leaving this wonderful place with all these wonderful people that i love! WHAT. It's crazy. I'm so sad. but also so anxious about where I'm going I can't handle it! Sonext Monday I could be emailing you from some new place in Hong Kong! If I leave, I will leave on Thursday. CRAZINESS! Guess you'll all have to wait until next week to find out!
Okay, this week was just awesome. I wish I could better put it into words. Actually, I wish I could just film me telling you all about this week and then send it to you. That would be better. ANYWAY.
Monday: We had P-day, shopping and stuff. And then we had a lesson with B that night. Oh my goodness it was an amazing lesson. We decided to have a little testimony meeting with her. It was so powerful! We all cried. Then we challenged her to get baptized. She immediately started shaking her head and saying she couldn't do it, and I said, "Stop. Before you decide you're not going to do it, pray about it. We felt strongly that we should invite you to be baptized. We want you to think and pray about it. When I decided to go on a mission, I was terrified. I've never wanted to serve a mission before in my life, but when I made the decision, I knew Heavenly Father would provide a way. And look at this. I'm here, in Macau, learning Chinese. I don't know how, but Heavenly Father has provided the way for me to do this. He will provide the way for you too." It was really powerful. I really hope she gets baptized sometime soon, but even if it takes her a little longer, I know she will someday. She's sooooo awesome. Ah. I just love her so much. I told her like 50x in our lesson. "We love you. We really love you. Did you know that? We REALLY love you." She was like, "I know! I know! You love me!" haha we were all laughing. Ah. Love that girl :)
Thursday: There we were, in our apartment. Dinner had just ended and we were going to do some more weekly planning when our cell phone rang. I said, "who is it?" like I always do and Sister Lau said, "OL!!" I almost DIED. Remember OL? How she hasn't called us or answered our calls/texts for 3 weeks now?? SHE CALLED US! I was acting like a crazy person. I jumped out of my chair and started hugging everyone, on the verge of bursting into tears and crazed spurts of laughter. I couldn't stop laughing/crying. I kept saying over and over again, "I'm SO happy!" (like Morgan, hahaha) and I was dancing all over the apartment. OL told us her popo's been really sick and she's had to take care of her the past 3 weeks! She hasn't had time to answer the phone or call us back, but she's read our texts every night. EXCEPT this week we decided to give her a break. So ever since last Sunday we stopped texting her. She said, "Why'd you stop sending me the texts?" Sister Lau said, "We thought you didn't like us anymore!" She said, "No no!" OH MY GOSH. I can't explain this happiness. I was beside myself. I felt like Ammon. You know, when he got so happy about converting the Lamanites he literally passed out? I about passed out too :) There is so much joy in this work! It's the most wonderful thing in the world! I LOVE OL!
Okay, so I'll try to answer your questions now:
A typical day for us in Macau: we get up at 7am, do 30 minutes of exercise. We usually go running or else just do exercises in our apartment. I like running more because I get more of a workout. Then we get ready for the day and eat breakfast. Then we do an hour of each: personal study, comp study, and lang study. Then we have appointments or finding or LA finding or whatever else we do during the day! Once a week (on Sat mornings) we have correlation with the missionaries and the ward mission leader. He's really awesome. We don't go to ward council but the zone leaders do.
It's about a 10 minute walk from our apartment to the church. We are SO lucky here. It's not like that in Hong Kong.
Macau is a special place because the whole entire island of Macau is our area. In Hong Kong, only like 4 MTR stops is an area so it makes it a little more complicated. We have to ride buses or walk here though. No MTR in Macau.
No, I haven't had to speak in church but on my first Sunday here all the new missionaries bore their testimonies. That was scary haha. but that was a long time ago. Every time I go to a new ward I'll bear my testimony the first Sunday I'm there. No lessons in church either. Although I make comments sometimes in our Gospel Principles class! That's always a little scary! :)
No, most of the members don't speak English. Or if they do they're not very confident. So we speak Cantonese pretty much! And a lot of body language! Haha!
My companion is straight up British! She doesn't speak with a Chinese accent haha :) she speaks in a completely British one! She thinks my British accent is awful. Dang it. I thought I was pretty good haha. We speak... mostly English... although we are trying to SYL more. Actually I'd say we speak mostly Chinglish. I am getting pro at my Chinglish. Throwing in random Cantonese words all over the place. It's awesome!
Tell Uncle Tyler I could understand his message to me in Mandarin! "Hello! You are a very good missionary!" I can understand some Mandarin! Like, a very little bit. Like shi shi ni and ni hao ma and chuan jiao shi haha. But I wonder how much of it I'll be able to understand when I get home. Tyler, Mikell, Kaden and I could have secret conversations!! That would be cool!! :)
Well fam, it is time for me to get off now. I love you all SOOOO much. I hope you have the best week ever. I really love you guys. Thanks for keeping me in your prayers. I need them! I'm loving this work though. I love the Lord. I love being a representative of Jesus Christ. I love every minute of every day here in Macau. And I really, really, really love YOU!
Love always,
Sister Gwok
xoxoxo
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