My first week in the MTC has been AMAZING!! There have been hard moments in each day, but mostly it's been AMAZING!! Everyone said "The couple days are hard, just make it to Sunday." but honestly, I just had to make it through the second day.  I love it here so much. I feel like so much has happened in just a week, I hope I remember everything.

My companion (Tongboun) is Sister Terry (Dai Ji Muih). She's from Springville, and we have a mutual friend, Rebecca Morrison. She used to be a ballerina, but now she's the most dedicated missionary I've seen. At every possible spare second she pulls out her flashcards. She is an inspiration and an example to me.

So. Cantonese (Gwadongdong) is fun. Our teacher (Jong Hyun Dai, Brother Johnson) is soo patient with us. And he almost never breaks into English. I think we've heard him say 10 English words. And they were all words like "Modifier Particle" which I'm really glad he didn't try to say in Cantonese. Also, I thought that it would take a while for us to get crazy language stories, but I already have a ton.

-If I say the tones in my name wrong (Yu Ji Muih), instead of being Sister Hugo I'm Sister Fish. 

-And if I say my companions name with the wrong tones she ends up as Sister Fat instead of Sister Terry. 

-And Elder Song (Song Jueng Loh) said the "Plan of Chubby Cheeks" instead of "Plan of Salvation". 

-And the word for missionaries (Chung gao sih) is one tone away from being "Shovel horse dung". Who chose the word for missionaries?!

-In a lesson I said "God loves little girls" instead of "God loves little children". At least that one's not technically wrong, right?

-Oh also, I was using the wrong tone for God, so for the first half of the week I was praying to mountain instead of Heavenly Father.

So yeah, Cantonese is CRAZY! CRAZY FUN! It's definitely a challenge, but I think I'm having the easiest time out of anyone in my district. I just know that the Lord called me Cantonese speaking, and he knows me. He knows that last week I knew ZERO Canto. And he still called me. And besides, I'm not spreading my word. I'm spreading HIS. So He'll give me everything I need to teach by the Spirit. So I've been pretty calm about the language. It's still really hard, but I feel at peace about it. It's definitely the Lord blessing me.

At the end of Saturday class, our teacher bore his testimony to us in Cantonese, and it was amazing. For the first time, I understood EVERYTHING that he said. He talked about how we have been saved for this time, and we are going to Hong Kong to teach certain people. The Lord loves us, and will be on our right hand and our left hand bearing us up. We don't need to speak flawless Cantonese, we just need to teach with the spirit. I had been wondering when I was going to get the Gift of Tongues and I got at least a little bit of it right then. I'm so grateful to be here doing the Lord's work.

We have already taught 3 lessons to our investigator. Her name is A-Fish. Yep. Like the thing swimming in the ocean. I just take it as a sign that I'm supposed to teach her since my name is almost Sister Fish. The first two lessons we taught her we had the whole lesson scripted. We were afraid of going off script because we weren't confident in our language speaking or listening skills. For the last lesson though, we just wrote down some words that we might need and trusted in the Lord. It was amazing. There were still some moments when we had no clue what she was saying. But those all passed and suddenly we would understand. And we weren't fluent by any means, but because we were teaching by the Spirit, we got our points across even better than when we were scripted. I could feel the difference in the lesson, and it was amazing. We're teaching her again tonight after dinner, and then Thursday is our last day with her! I'm going to miss her so much. Teaching her is by and far the best part of my days here. I came on a mission to TEACH PEOPLE after all!! I just have to remember when I'm sitting in class with what feels like a million flashcards, and books open all around me, that I'm learning Cantonese so that I can more fully love the people. It's all about the Love. 

Our district feels like the forgotten Mission because everyone assumes we speak Mandarin. There are about, I would guess more than 100 Mandarin missionaries right now. And just 20 Cantonese speakers. It's really funny when someone sees our name tags and tries to impress us with their Mandarin. They'll go off for a minute speaking in what sounds like excellent Mandarin before they give us a chance to say "Lei ho" (Hello). Then they normally just go "Oh" and turn around and act like it didn't happen. At the devotionals, they've tried to say every language in the MTC and every time they miss us Canto missionaries. We've started saying "Many are called, few are Canto"

When we did service I got to where a backpack vacuum. I felt like a ghost buster for a little bit, but then I realized how bad of a design it was. It overheated on back constantly, and every time I leaned over there was a 50/50 chance that the vacuum bag would fall out. So you've got some time before the backpack vacuum becomes the latest rage.

We went on a temple walk on Sunday which was AMAZING!! I didn't know that we got to do that and it was definitely a highlight of my week. As my district was taking pictures someone counted down in Cantonese and another Sister on the other side of the fountain shrieked "ARE YOU GOING TO HONG KONG??!?!?" turns out she's from there and is preparing for a mission to Canada Mandarin speaking. We asked her some questions, but some we decided would be rude to ask. Like  "Is the acid rain really so bad that it will make your hair fall out?" Hopefully we'll figure that one out, but I have a good rain jacket so I'm no super worried.

At the Sunday Devotional, we talked about Jacob 5. Every servant in the vineyard asked for more time except the last servant. The last servant asked for more laborers. I am one of those laborers. It feels amazing to be bringing light the world, as it gets darker. This is the time when people are looking more earnestly for truth, more fully for light. And I have the power of the Sun behind me. (did you see the pun there? I'm pretty clever)

I think that's everything for this week, but it's pretty likely that I'll send out another email in 20 minutes with a bunch of stuff I forgot.

With all my love

-Sister Hugo

-Yu Ji Muih (Yu is my Chinese Surname, Ju Muih means Sister. I don't know how to type tones, but I doubt any of you would know how to read it anyway)