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