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

Too Many Miracles to Handle!

IT'S TRUE! Life is crazy over here! It's been amazing to see the changes that have happened this week, in our finding, in our teaching, in everything. Ah I just can't even believe it. Heavenly Father loves us so much!

Finding
So. Ever since last week when Sister Pearl and I did a training on following the Spirit, Sister Tidwell and I have been trying to do it. IT'S BEEN WORKING! Not even kidding you. One day we had 30 minutes to find -- that's it! -- and so we said a prayer and went to work. Every time we had to choose which direction to go, we stopped. I would say, "Right or left?" and then we'd just listen. After we chose a direction -- EVERY SINGLE TIME -- we would talk to a super prepared person, or get a phone number, or something. It was one of the coolest things that's happened on my mission. That half hour was so amazing! The Spirit really will guide us! It's been cool to learn how to listen for it and follow it.

At the end of our half hour, we saw this lady. At first she totally ignored us. Then we kept on bugging her and talking to her, and finally just offered her a flier with Joseph Smith on it. She started talking to us, we started sharing.... she ended up crying and telling us she had some hard circumstances in her life and how good she felt talking to us. It was so awesome! We were able to teach her a street lesson and say a prayer with her. Blessings!!

Teaching
F is TOTALLY making her January 26 baptismal date. I'm so excited! She went from thinking that Heavenly Father is a demon, to repenting and feeling the power of the Atonement and wanting to come closer to God. She's been such a testimony builder for me. We actually saw her this morning and taught her the Law of Chastity. It was so good! We're so excited for her! On her BIRTHDAY, even! Ah! It's just so amazing!

We haven't seen J JM in a while and we've been a little bit worried about her. Sister Tidwell miraculously scheduled her for Saturday and we went over with our RS president, Sister Lee. We started the lesson (we planned to teach about baptism) and followed up with her, asking her if she was reading the BOM and praying. She said she was but it wasn't really helping her. She said when she feels sad, she'll just drink so she won't have to think about it anymore. It was really sad. I bore testimony that every time she had a problem she didn't want to think about, she needed to get on her knees and give it to the Lord. I told her that I knew He would take it away for her. The Spirit was so strong. But wait, it gets better!! So then we showed her a clip of the District (those missionary training things I was supposed to watch before I went into the MTC, ya know?) about the Robles Family, a family that gets baptized and IT WAS THE BEST. Seriously. So awesome. J JM was feeling the Spirit so strong. We committed her to be baptized onMarch 9 and SHE ACCEPTED! But wait. She hasn't been able to come to church yet because of H Y (her 8-year-old daughter)'s dance every Sunday morning. We've been praying and fasting like CRAZY for her to find a way to come to church. So I said, "We know you haven't been able to come to church because of H Y's dance..." and she says, "Oh, she doesn't have dance tomorrow." And we're like OKAY THAT'S AWESOME! And then Sister Tidwell says, "So does she have it next week?" And J JM says, "She doesn't have it on Sundays anymore!" THE SPIRIT SMACKED ME IN THE FACE. That is a straight up miracle! Nothing short of a miracle! I gasped and just started crying right away. I didn't even know what to say... "J JM! That is so wonderful! I can't believe it! What a miracle!" We told her how we'd been praying and fasting for her and she started crying too. Sister Lee had to pass around tissues haha :) It was probably the coolest lesson I've had on my mission. Heavenly Father answers prayers. I knew it before, I know it now. I know it with everything I am. Ah! I'm so excited for her little family to be eternal!!!

Well... there are like 1200 more miracles this week but I don't have time to write them all. I LOVE this work! I am so happy to be a missionary. It really is the best kind of life. I'm learning so much and loving every single second. The Lord is blessing us so much! I couldn't be more thankful or more happy!

Have a great day and a great week! Smile! Look for the miracles! Love every second! Love everyone! :) Remember I love you!!!

All my love,
Sister Gwok
xoxoxo

Learning Lessons - over and over :)

Leih hou! How are you all this week? I bet it's hard going from Mexico/Christmas break to school and work and boring stuff like that. But ga yauh! (add oil!) Remember that Heavenly Father wants our success!

This week was another slow week. We had a LOT of meetings to attend because this week was Mission Leadership Council and Zone Training Meeting, so we went on exchanges a LOT (because Sister Pearl and I are STLs together, but we're not companions). It was kinda crazy but really great. I learned so much at MLC.... I always do.... and I liked doing exchanges with Sister Pearl. I learn a lot from her. I'm so lucky I've lived with her my whole time in HK! Craziness! We did a good training for our meeting on Friday. It was based on a talk that I AM DEFINITELY sending to all of you. It's so good. It's on personal revelation and it CHANGED MY LIFE. So look forward to that in the mail :) and make copies of it, and give it to all your friends, and use it in your lessons, and read it over and over and over again.

We haven't seen a lot of investigators this week.... everyone's coming back from Mainland slowly but surely.... so we went finding a lot. Sister Pearl and I's training in ZTM was on finding and doing it by the Spirit. A lot of times I feel like a headless chicken, running around, trying to contact people and get them interested in what I have to say. Street contacting is hard. But if I walk slower, follow the promptings in my heart, and remember to "be still", then Heavenly Father will bless us with promptings that will lead us to prepared people.

I had a conversation on the phone with my district leader last night when I was reporting our numbers. We were talking about that, and he said, "you know, it's funny. In the MTC they pounded this into our heads, so by the end of the MTC, i was like 'i know, i get it, i get it.' And then I get out here and I forget it all. And I have to learn the same lessons over and over again. Why don't we just get it the first time?!" I was thinking... probably because we're mortals. Mortals are dumb. Ha. I feel like I'll be learning lessons for my whole life over and over again. The only thing I can say is, Heavenly Father is SO patient with us. I used to think He was up there, slamming his forehead, going, "Oh Shaylee.... you just learned that a few months ago! Why are you messing it up again?!" But then I remind myself, He is my perfect Father. Which means He's perfectly patient. And when I mess stuff up over and over again, He just smiles and helps me learn the lesson again. What a great blessing :)

Pray for F! Idk if I told you about this cool story. A few weeks before Christmas, she thought that Heavenly Father was a demon, right? Remember that? Well, after that we helped her resolve that concern, and then we had a great lesson with her where we talked about baptism. We extended her a date: February 23. And then we read Alma 7 together. By the end of reading/discussing, I was feeling like Feb 23 was a long way away for her. She said it too: "hou yuhn!" (so far!) So then we knelt together and prayed about a new date. At the end of the prayer, we were pondering about it, and we said, "What about January 26?" and she said, "That's my birthday!" And I almost started CRYING. How happy is that?! What a perfect birthday gift and the perfect day to start her new life! Pray for her that she can make it! :)

I love you all so much! Sorry time is short! Until next week! :)

Love,
Shay
xoxoxo

Food Poisoning!!! :(

Dearest family and friends,

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2014. I was thinking about how weird that is. Somewhere at home I have a time capsule that I made in Primary that says, "Do not open until 2014." And now.... it's 2014. I still have to wait until October to open that time capsule haha. But I can't believe that it's already here! Time is FLYING. It's insane.

Sooo.... I guess I'd better tell you about the subject of my email first, yeah? So Friday, we went to lunch with the elders and their recent convert, Steven Lau. Steven is loaded so he took us to an American restaurant -- a steakhouse. I was STOKED out of my mind to eat steak. The elders ordered halibut and us sisters ordered steaks. So they bring the steaks out, right? And they bring out what looks like half a cow to EACH of us. We were like, uhh.... elders? Help a sista out! haha :) so we split up our steaks. I gave half of mine to Elder Arrington, and Sister Tidwell gave half of hers to Elder Liu. Life was great. The steak was delicious. And all was well in Zion.

But THEN.... Friday night rolled around. Literally spent half the night in the bathroom. I felt HORRIBLE. It was the worst night I've ever had. When we got up in the morning, Sister Tidwell said she felt totally fine but I've never felt so awful. I called the elders and guess what? Elder Arrington was sick too! But not Elder Liu. DANG IT STEAK. :( so we had a slow weekend to say the least. I took a nap and spent my Saturday in the bathroom and Sister Tidwell did a bunch of calls and records, poor girl. We went to a Christmas concerton Saturday night but I wasn't feeling so hot. I drank some "tummy mint" herbal tea -- I'm turning Chinese and I think herbal tea is the BEST THING EVER. And it helped my stomach feel lots better. The end :)

So Christmas was AWESOME! I loved being able to talk to you guys!!!!!!!!!!! We have the best family in the world. I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you .... :)

Christmas was wonderful! We opened up all of our presents together on Christmas morning and it was so much fun :) went to our ward Christmas party and had an AWESOME time! We had a lot of people there -- investigators and potentials -- which made us really happy. Us missionaries did a skit... Elder Arrington dressed up like Santa and played his guitar, and the rest of us hung upside down from a table with a curtain over our bodies/faces and sang Christmas songs as chin people. The ward LOVED it; they were laughing so hard. Ah Christmas :)

We've been having some slow weeks the past few weeks. It's been hard for me, to be senior companion, to see our dips in numbers. It makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong. But then I look back at the rest of my mission and remember.... the Lord gives us ups and downs all the time. He is trusting me with some challenges right now so that I can improve myself and grow. It's been hard, but good, to have to rely on Him and remember that there's no way I can do this work without Him. It humbles me so much. I love what I'm doing. The good and the bad -- it's all the best experience I've ever had.

Can you believe it? This week marks my HALFWAY POINT. Whaaaaa?? I've been out 9 months. I have 9 months to go.I can't believe it! I don't want to go home. I want to stay and serve here FOREVER. I love this mission. I love these people. I want to help them my whole life. I want to serve my Savior like this my whole life. I can't believe it's going so fast!

I love you, fam! and friends! You are what keeps me going! Thank you for your support, your love, your encouragement, your smiles, your prayers, your jokes, your righteous examples. I love you all so much!

Have the best week and HAPPY 2014!

Love always,
Shay
xoxoxo