One of the best weeks of my life!

Hey, is life as good in Utah as it is here in Hong Kong? I don't know how it can be. This week was one of the best of my life. I'm loving everything about this new area, this new ward, my new companion, my new transfer. I miss everything how it was before, but the past is to be learned from and not lived in, in the words of Elder Holland (who I will see in person TOMORROW! I cannot wait.)

Highlights of the week:

Our investigator, Connie, passed her baptismal interview yesterday! So she's getting baptized next Sunday! What a way to come into a new area! :) She is awesome. She's been going to church for 2 years (so long that everyone thought she was a member, even the bishop). When the missionaries found her, she jumped at the chance to be taught and she's on fire! So excited for her!

Tuesday we had Zone Conference and learned tons about Joseph Smith's First Vision. It hit me hard -- what a miraculous way to open this last and greatest dispensation. A young boy, innocent and naive, had the faith to say a prayer that changed the world forever. One of the Chinese elders said, in his Chinese accent, "I just love that boy." It was funny but I realized that he was being completely sincere. And I agree. I just love that boy.

We had an awesome ward BBQ on Saturday night and there were so many investigators and less actives and potentials there, we didn't even know where to start! It was so fun. And so successful! Some LAs that haven't been to ANY activities in over a year were there. Miracles. Ah, Heavenly Father loves us!

This is Sister Fife! She is in our ward and she's AMAZING. She married an American when she was at BYU Hawaii and now they live here with their 4 adorable kids! Her husband doesn't speak Canto, and she speaks perfect English and is just an awesome fellowshipper. They help us so much. She brought s'mores stuff to the BBQ because Chinese people don't believe in stuff like that, so we were stoked about eating s'mores!

This is me at the BBQ with our investigator, Kami (on my left) and another investigator, Mrs. Cheui (on my right) with her son, Gary. So cute! So fun!

We've been so busy 4 out of 7 days this week that we didn't even know when we were going to eat meals. WHAT?! It's awesome!!

This year marks 65 years of the Church in Hong Kong. We're partying. Last night was a devotional at the Asia Area Headquarters Office in Wan Chai (down on HK Island... so far from me) that was broadcasted everywhere in HK. It was AMAZING. Elder Holland spoke as well as Elder Hallstrom from the Seventy and it was absolutely incredible. Elder Holland said, "We celebrate the pioneers of Hong Kong, but guess what? We're all pioneers. Because this is the first dispensation that isn't headed for apostasy. What we're headed for is greater than anything else -- the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior. We're the first dispensation that isn't going to flee Babylon, or Jerusalem, or Palmyra. We're going to stand our ground and conquer Babylon." It gives me the CHILLS to think about it. THIS is the greatest dispensation! THIS is the FULLNESS of times! We are helping God hasten His work! There isn't anything more exciting in the entire world!!

Dang it. I'm totally out of time. I love you all so, so much. I love this work. I LOVE this mission. I love everything about what I'm doing. I don't ever want it to end! I love what we as missionaries have been commissioned to do. I want to let it forever change me.

I love you all! Have an awesome week!

Love always,
Shay
xoxo

FREEZING in the boonies!!

Hello dearest family and friends! I hope you're all having a wonderful President's Day! (Someone reminded us that today was President's Day in america and it felt weird. Just another regular day here with no thought of good ol' George or anything)

Anyway....

I GOT TRANSFERRED!!!

I want to tell you all the deets, so I'm sorry if this email is a little on the long side....

District meeting when they announced moves calls was torture. I could feel that something was changing but I didn't know if I was going to move, or just get a new comp, or what. They announced me very last because I was bouncing up and down in my chair getting super nervous. And they said, "Sister Wilcox is going up to the New Territories to Tin Shui Wai!" {New T's is the boonies of HK}

Okay, pause. So this is where the really cool part comes in. Sister Yeung (that I have lived with for 6 months of my 8 here in HK and that I love so much!!) is from Tin Shui Wai! AND her mom is not a member. AND a few weeks ago, Sister Yeung was applying for BYU-Hawaii. She needed some stuff from her mom, but we had no idea if her mom had sent it or not yet, and the deadline was coming up. So I got permission to call her mom and talk to her about it. I don't know if it's just because I love Sister Yeung so much, or what, but when I talked to her mom on the phone, I instantly loved her to pieces. I got off the phone with her that night, and when I was brushing my teeth I was thinking how BADLY I wanted to go up to Tin Shui Wai and meet Sister Yeung's mom and help her get baptized. (She is really against seeing missionaries right now and didn't want Sister Yeung to go on a mission). SO NOW I GET TO HELP HER! I am so excited! I even called her the day before I left my old area to "schedule" her. I'm taking some stuff of Sister Yeung's back to her house for her. It's Heavenly Father's plan! GOSH I CAN'T EVEN GET THIS TO MAKE SENSE. It's SO amazing! I'm ssooooooooooooo excited. This is truly God's work. He knows how to help soften people's hearts. It's a crazy amazing miracle that I'm here :)

I miss my old area like crazy. It was so sad leaving it :( I LOVE Cheung Sha Wan ward and I always will! Our cute RS President was so sad I was leaving. She sent me a text that said: "I have so amazing time with you. May the Lord lead you and bless you forever. We love you very much!" She's the CUTEST. Ah, I will always love them. But I know that they'll keep on being awesome. Fantasy will keep on being a fantasy and everything will work out how it's supposed to. It's God's work, not mine!

Anyway, my new companion is Sister Aguilar from West Valley! She's awesome! I'm facebook friends with her, haha, so you can stalk her if you'd like :) I'm junior companion again and not a sister training leader anymore, but that's okay! I'm loving it up here in the New T's!

Fun facts about this new world I'm in:

-The taxis are green up here. In Kowloon (down in the city) they're red.
-I can't find the people up here..... we walk to the church and barely see 10 people. IT'S SOOO WEIRD!
-There's a little farm that we see from our office window in our apartment.
-There are lots of stray dogs....

Story time. I almost died. And I'm not kidding. Yesterday after church, we did a district find in Hung Shui Kiu, which is the area next to ours. It looks like this:

That's someone's house/yard. No joke.

So is this! Look how cute it is! That gate with the red thing on it is their front door. This cute little man told us we could take pictures on his front porch, haha, so we did!

So we're finding over here in this crazy place that looks like South America somewhere, and we're running into TONS of stray dogs. Big ones. Scary ones. We managed to avoid them and we were walking back to the church when suddenly, we rounded a corner. The church was in sight. But between us and the church, laying in the middle of the street, was a big dog. Sister Aguilar and I grabbed each other and said, "Okay, it's okay, we're fine..." The dog got up and ran over to us, barking its head off. I was freaking out, but we just stopped, holding on to each other like we were going to DIE. Then, as if one dog wasn't bad enough, three more big black ones came out of nowhere, snapping and snarling and growling and barking. We started inching our way backwards and we were hyperventilating. I started crying. HA, embarrassing, but it's true. Just a little bit of tears in my eyes because these dogs were MEAN and big and they were going to eat us. But then, they stopped chasing us. We backed up all the way down the street, way too scared to turn around and run for it or let go of each other. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. Writing it down makes it seem lame, but it was SCARY i tell you!!!!!

Anyway, I LOVE this area. There are sooooooooooooo many things happening, I can't even handle it. After weeks and weeks of slow moving in Cheung Sha Wan, I got up here and I can't BELIEVE how many investigators we have. It's amazing.

I'm totally out of time. I love you all SO MUCH! This work is real! I love what I'm doing! I may be in Boonies, HK but I know what I'm doing is real and good and right and not about me. That may be the biggest thing I've learned out here: NOTHING is about me. Everything is about everyone else.

I love you all! Have an awesome week!
Love always,
Sister Gwok
xoxo

And the Apostle is...

Oh WOW. Okay. So. We've been hearing for about a week now that we get a General Authority to come speak to us on February 25! So that was cool. But then, the other night, we got a text. It said:

Elders and Sisters: We're pleased to announce that the General Authorities who will be coming to visit us on February 25th are.....

At this point, I was grabbing Sister Tidwell, completely freaking out. We were walking out of the MTR station looking like maniacs, totally grabbing each other and hyperventilating because the next words were:

ELDER HOLLAND!!!!! (okay, it wasn't capitalized like that, and I don't even remember the other one that's coming, someone from the Seventy)

WE WERE FREAKING OUT! It was one of the most exciting moments of my life. Like, it ranks up there with opening my mission call and being born and making a PR in a xc race.

Okay, joking. Sort of. I'm pretty stoked to have Elder Holland come to speak to us though! I only get to hear one Apostle on my mission, and it just so happens to be my FAVORITE ONE! :D I think he'll totally remember me from days at the good ol' Store in Midway ;) hahaha

Anyway, this week was great! SLOW. We're coming out of Chinese New Year and so everyone is still coming back from Mainland/still too busy to see us. But we're having miracles! And we had a great week!

Tuesday we had a cheng out at the Yim family's house. I just love them to death. Sister Yim gives us a giant bag of fruit every week, and she invites us over for every big holiday. So far I've been to her house for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and now New Year's. She's AWESOME! And she even secretly found out it was my birthday (from Facebook) and made me a cake!! I'm telling you, she's the best.

Wednesday was Mission Leadership Council. It pumped me up so much! It does every month. I LOVE going to this meeting. It makes the other stresses of STL worth it by a long shot. My favorite part was when President Hawks said, "Elders and sisters, the Lord said, 'I will hasten my work in its time.'.......Evidently, it's TIME." It gave me the chills. I feel so incredibly blessed to have the opportunity to serve a mission now! At the time when they changed the ages! At the time when the Lord really is hastening every part of His sacred work! At the time when everyone is getting so excited about sharing this gospel! There couldn't be a better time to be a missionary! I LOVE every single part of what I'm doing!!!

Sunday we had an AWESOME day. The elders had a baptism and so we invited Fantasy to come and bring her friend Stephanie (the one she brought to her own baptism!) Fantasy is AMAZING, by the way. She's so great. She paid tithing yesterday like a champ, and wore a new skirt to church that she bought specifically for church, and shared scriptures with Stephanie during church, and asked us, "So, if I wanted to share the book of mormon with someone, what part should I have them start reading so they understand it?" GOLDEN. Ah, I love her. We also had a "My Conversion Fireside" last night (for all the missionaries that are going home, they invite their recent converts to bear their testimony and then Pres and Sister Hawks share their testimonies). It was SO good. Fantasy and Stephanie came to that too. I'm so excited for Stephanie! She's getting baptized next, I know it. Downfall is, she's not in our area :( we passed her to the Tseung Kwan O sisters last night. But she's going to progress and have an eternal family one day! Just like Fantasy! Ahhh!

Stephanie, Sister Tidwell, me and Fantastic Fantasy!

Well, I'm totally running out of time. But I love you all SO much! This next week is moves, so we're getting nervous! I don't know what will happen because I've been here in Cheung Sha Wan for 6 months now! I could move, I could not move... .we'll see! I will go and do whatever the Lord has in store for me next. I've trusted Him this long and He hasn't failed me. I will continue to do so!!

I love you all!

Love always,
Sister Wilcox
xoxoxo

Happy Birthday/Chinese New Year Week!

HELLO!!!!

Real quick: there's a guy next to met at the library watching anime. Oh, we are in China alright!! :)

Anyway, I had SUCH a great birthday week! It was seriously awesome. It started off with getting a package from Mina May with THE SCARF IN IT!!!!!!!! Basically the best thing of my LIFE! And she also gave me a TON of stuff for my birthday! thank you melina! i loved EVERYTHING! :) :)

Let me tell you some things about Chinese New Year:

• They give away red pockets (red envelopes with money inside) as good luck!
• Lots of people get new hairstyles... like perms. I'm talking a LOT of people. It's the time for new beginnings!
• Everyone buys orange trees. It's like Christmas trees but oranges.
• Everyone also buys flowers!
• They eat tons of food -- fried cakes made out of turnips and lots of expensive chocolates
• Everyone wishes each other health and good luck and "may you get rich"!
• Kids wear traditional looking Chinese clothes
• EVERYTHING is closed.... shops and stores and libraries and everything
• EVERYONE goes to Mainland. Literally every single one of our investigators. So there weren't a lot of people around this week....

It was a slow week, but it was so much fun! We did a lot of things that we don't normally get to do and had a great time. We did some district finds, in and out of our area, which was super fun! We took some new family displays that the office elders made and handed out cards. It was great! The elders took sneaky pictures of us while we were doing the display haha. Here's Sister Tidwell and I in ACTION!

Last night we went to a cheng out at the bishop's house for the new year. It was fun! They had a cake and had me cut it (with their daughter's wedding knife! haha) for my birthday. It was fun :)

Deep clean is also a big tradition. The Chinese people believe that if they do a deep clean before the New Year, it brings them good luck! And it sure does! It was the most intense deep clean ever, but it was awesome! I loved it. It felt so good to clean our apartment. I even studied cleanliness in personal study that morning and then we got to talk about it while we cleaned. We had my ipod on all day, music and talks galore, and Sister Pearl and Sister Yeung bought some food that we don't usually get to eat for my birthday! We ate junk but it was so fun :) we had french fries (with fry sauce!!) and ice cream for lunch, and pizza and homemade (thanks to Sister Pearl!) cookie dough for dinner! It was AWESOME! They also bought me some cute stickers for my b-day, and Sister Tidwell gave me some new earrings that i LOVE :) It was one of the most memorable birthdays ever!

Here's some pics of deep clean:

Life is great. It couldn't be better, in fact. I miss all of you TONS, but I am so happy to be here doing God's work. It is His work and so important. I love serving Him with all my heart. He is blessing me and lifting me to higher places and I couldn't be more grateful.

I love you all so, so, so much! Keep your prayers coming our way! They mean the world! :)

Love always,
Shay
Gwok Jimuih
xoxoxo

Baptism Deets +

Dearest all of the people I love so much,

Happy Chinese New Year! (at the end of this week!) I hope you all celebrate and do something fun! Today we're going to a new year's festival! This week for new year's, everyone and their MOTHER is going to mainland. So we'll be finding a lot of new investigators! But we need them pretty desperately, especially since we lost one yesterday because....

....she got BAPTIZED!!!!!!!! :)

Here she is, our dear Fantasy :) isn't she the cutest thing ever?! We love her to pieces. Her baptism was so special. She didn't have a skirt, and she called us on Saturday night freaking out because she didn't have time to buy one. So we borrowed Sister Pearl's (no way Fantasy could fit into mine... taai feih.) and she wore it on Sunday. The baptism was AWESOME! Guess what... I played a piano solo for it! Finally putting my skills into action! (okay, so actually like 2 months ago I started playing the piano in RS every week. yay!) Anyway... We had lots of people from the ward there, it was so awesome! So many more people than I expected, and a lot of people I thought for sure wouldn't be there! Our ward is so great. It was also Fantasy's birthday, and they brought TONS of food and a cake to eat after the baptism. Ahh :) it was so good! I LOVE HER.

She even brought a friend to her baptism. That's how cool she is :)

Hahaha, so the elders wanted to get a picture with us and Fantasy. So we go over to get set up, Fantasy puts one arm behind me and one arm behind Elder Liu.... and we all yell "MH DAK!" which is like "NOT OKAY!" It freaked her out but then we were all laughing so hard.

What else happened this week? ..... I can't remember. haha. OH YEAH. I wanted to tell you about my interview with President Hawks. It was like 2 weeks ago but I keep forgetting. I went in and this is what happened:
Pres: "How are you, Sister Wilcox?"
me: "Great! So great."
Pres (after looking at me for a few seconds): "No, really. How are you?"
me (after a pause): "I'm doing pretty good. It's been kind of a hard bunkeih (transfer)."
Pres: "I know. I've seen it in your face. I want you to know that I've been thinking a lot about you this transfer, and I have been praying for you specifically. The Lord loves you so much, and we do too. Your struggles haven't gone unnoticed."

Well gosh! I teared up a little bit but I managed to suck most of my tears back in ha. I LOVE President Hawks. Having him tell me that made me feel so much better, because it has been a hard bunkeih. It was a straight up answer to prayer that my mission president cares about me, and he even cares enough about me to pray for me specifically by name! Heavenly Father loves us. When we don't get the message from Him, He tells us through other people and in other ways. :) He really is so aware of us and our needs. Isn't it amazing?

Okay I gotta go. But wait!! .....

I DYED MY HAIR!

I love you all! Have the best week EVER! Happy Chinese New Year! Peace and love and prosperity and good luck! :)

Love all of you always!
Sister Wilcox
xoxxoxo

A Baptism!

(Letter from Jan 22)

Okay, so not yet! But coming up on SUNDAY!!!! More deets later.

First off, I'm super sorry I forgot to tell you about temple day today and that i wouldn't be emailing last Monday! FORGOT. My bad. But your probably figured it out, yeah?

Second off, I have THE funniest story ever. I got the Christmas card this week! I loved it! :) so cute. Anyway, I keep it in my BOM now and whip it out all the time to show everyone my fam. So I show my investigator Fantasy (she's 28). And she takes one look at Parker and says, "Wow! Leng jai!" which means "pretty boy" and basically means she thinks he's a little hottie. I started laughing my head off and said, "He's 16." And she got SO RED in the face and so embarrassed. She kept saying, "16?! Are you sure??" It was the funniest thing ever :) Parker. Quit being so cute!!

But yeah! FANTASY'S GETTING BAPTIZED ON SUNDAY!!!! She is so amazingly prepared and so willing to keep all the commandments and everything! I just love her! She passed her baptismal interview no problem and is so excited! I'm so excited too! This will be my first baptism! (how crazy is that?) But I'm thrilled about it. It's like a fantasy or something ;)

Crazy thing is, on Sunday she didn't show up for church. In fact, no one did. Sister Tidwell and I were SO sad. It was so hard. In RS they announced Fantasy's baptism and she wasn't even there :( we got home from church and the first thing we did when we walked in the door (after a prayer) was just bawl our eyes out. It was kinda nice ;) but really pitiful. I wanted her to be baptized so bad and we didn't know why she hadn't been at church! Her phone was off, no way to reach her.... it was so scary. But then we figured out that she had been in Mainland for work, and had gotten off work so late on Saturday night that there were no more trains going to HK! So she literally COULDN'T come! We were so relieved! So, long story short.... she's getting baptized. Oh man, do you just smile saying that word? baptized. baptism. baptism. BAPTISM. ahhhhhh i love it! :)

In other news....
We got to go to a visitor baptism the other day! Visitors are from mainland, they come to China and get taught all the lessons in one day and then get baptized at the end of the day (since they can't get baptized in china). It's SO COOL! I loved seeing her happiness after her baptism. What an awesome thing!

I don't know if you guys regularly check out lds.org, but you definitely should! The Church is SO COOL!!! They're seriously doing so much technology-wise to further the work. Whenever I get on to do facebook, I get stoked out of my mind to come back and be the best member missionary ever!!! I love it! I love being a mormon! We are so cool!!!!! :)

I straightened my hair for the temple today. It's long.

My birthday is soon :) 21! yippee! Also, in tradition for Chinese New Year, we do a "deep clean" of our apartments that takes one whole entire day. And guess which day it falls on? February 1! My day of birth! I'm actually so excited about it. I love cleaning things :) Our apartment will be clean on my birthday! yay!!!!

I'm learning so much about so many things.... I wish I had time to write them all! I'll write more on Monday... only 4 days away! I love you all so much! Keep smiling!

Love your favorite missionary,
Shaylee K
xoxoxoxo