Last P-day in the MTC

This week, I'm drawing strength from Psalms 23:4, "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me." I'm need this strength, because I found out that the flight to Hong Kong is 16 hours. 16 HOURS!! Imagine waking up at 6, and sitting in an uncomfortable chair. All day. Until 10 at night. Now imagine, you only get scanty food, that's molten lava hot on the outside and frozen on the inside. Now, just to make it interesting, imagine that there will be movies, games, and music available to help keep you occupied. BUT you can't actually use any on if. That's why this plane flight will be my valley of death.

 ^Not quite blue steel, but it's so funny!!^

BUT on the bright side, I'll finally be in Hong Kong! I've been waiting to be in my mission field for more than a year, and waiting to be in Hong Kong specifically for 4 months. When we got our flight plans on Friday, we all literally screamed and did the happy dance (even though dancing of any sort at the MTC isn't allowed. Don't worry, we repented). So we're leaving the MTC at too-early o-clock in the morning, fly to Chicago, and then we'll spend the next 16 hours in hell. But I guess if the Savior is acquainted with sorrow, and I want to be like him, then I can't complain too much. On the plus side, this is probably the last time for the next 16 months I'll be able to nap. 

Since I'm leaving on Monday, this is my last P-day in the MTC!! Which means that starting next week, my letters are probably going to get a lot shorter. Most mission presidents only allow 1 hour of emailing on P-day, and I normally spend about 3 hours emailing.

This Saturday one of our investigators is getting baptised. Her faith has grown so much in the past month that we've been teaching her. This past week we taught her about some of the commandments like tithing, word of wisdom, and the law of chastity. Every time she would say something like "This is a really hard commandment........But I'll pray about it tonight. And if it's true then I'll pray for help to keep this commandment." That's amazing!! 

Our other investigator is less sure about the gospel, but he has also been growing. Apparently, his mom thinks our church is wicked, which we're not quite sure what to do about. We'll figure it out though. 

Jyu Jeung Louh had his birthday this week! We've been saving up the funniest things from the give-away boxes for 2 months, so he had a lot of gag gifts (like size 4 women shoes, and bunny ears).

 

I wish we had actual gifts to give him. He is so amazing, and I'm so grateful that we have him in our district. Since everyone in the two Cantonese Districts is going to Hong Kong, we'll be able to see each other decently regularly for the next year and a half. I can't wait! 

Our Elders have WAY too much time on their hands (I'm not sure how...). This week, they tried to use electrolysis to plate one of their rings in gold. Somehow, they half-way succeeded. They got the gold off of the coin, but didn't get it to stick to the ring. Again, I'm not sure where they find the time to do this stuff

Temple walk was gorgeous!! It's fun to return every week and see all the little changes that let us know that it's finally spring! 

I'll have lots of time for writing letters on the plane ride, so if anyone wants a letter, send me a Dear Elder and I'll make it happen. As soon as I figure out Hong Kong Mail that is. (Editors Note:  She has already left the MTC.  If you use Dear Elder.com, you have to now chose the Hong Kong Mission, not the MTC)

​Cantonese is coming along great. I still think I'm terrible, but maybe after Monday my Mom can tell everyone that I'm fluent. But the gift of tongues is real. And all I have to do is invite the Spirit. The Spirit's Cantonese is amazing by the way.

The Church is true, I promise. Now "Go your way, and sin no more!"

-- 

Love

Sister Hugo

Yui Ji Muih

Your favorite

Do you want to eat Jesus

Only one more P-day, and then I'll be in Hong Kong!! I get my travel plans this week, but I leave around April 25th....ish....hopefully

This week we had a fantastic lesson with our investigator Walter. I say fantastic not in the sense that he felt the spirit very strongly, or accepted baptism. No, this is more in the realm of fantastic failure. It was hilarious. But I'll tell about that later and just let the suspense build for a bit.

My district has been working on inviting EVERYONE to come unto Christ. Sometimes in the MTC it feels like we're not real missionaries yet because we don't do things like tracting. But we are already missionaries! So we need to start treating it like that. The Elders were walking to lunch one day and saw a man named Bubba sitting on a bench. They decided to sit and talk with him, and Bubba became an investigator. For the longest time Elder Parker was CONVINCED that he was NOT a member, but the rest of us weren't so sure. We know for sure now, that Bubba is in fact a member. How do you ask? Bubba has his own Mormon message! Not even kidding, go watch it right now https://youtu.be/2Lxz3GHP59Y When the Elders watched that video they got so excited. I just can't believe it, it's so funny and random. 

One of our MTC teachers only has 4 ties that are conservative enough for the MTC (I think my dad has zero) so we see them all very often. We teased him about it on Friday and when he taught on Monday he had a new paisley tie. My companion Sister Terry commented on it by saying "Wow! You got a new ham tie!" My Aunt thought that paisley were tiny whales, and my companion thought they were tiny hams. I'm not creative enough to see anything weird I guess. 

All the sisters in my district go to choir practice twice a week. The first couple weeks we had an argument about whether or not the director had an accent. Sister Terry and Sister Crockett were CONVINCED that he had some kind of accent, but the rest of us thought they were crazy. A while ago they went up and awkwardly asked him after choir practice where he was from. They said  that he was from Belgium, and we all accepted defeat. BUT this week a new sister came in who was excited to go to Choir practice because she used to be a section leader for one of the other choirs that he directed. I said something like "While you're catching up with him, you should ask how long ago he moved to America, his English is impeccable I can't even hear his accent"

"What are you talking about?"

"You know, he's from Belgium"

"....I am positive that he's from Bountiful Utah"

Sister Terry and Sister Crockett LIED TO US!!! We've been teasing them about it ever since. 

In Cantonese, "have" is "yauh". Normally you add "joh" on the end of a verb to make it past tense. But you can't do it with helping verbs like have because it changes the meaning completely. The elders found that out this week because instead of asking their investigator if she had something, they told her she was pregnant. 

Cantonese is a tonal language, which means that if you use a different tone on a word, it could have a completely different meaning. So this week instead of saying "Do you want to get to know Jesus?" we said "Do you want to eat Jesus?" Our investigator was very confused, and made sure to ask us all individually if we liked to eat people.

In one of our lessons we shared a Mormon Message about how Jesus died for us with our investigator Walter. We asked him how he felt while he watched the video, and he talked for about 5 minutes. But we have no clue what he said. Well, that's a lie. He said the words "see" "Jesus" and "sad." When he see's Jesus he feels sad? I tried to ask if he felt guilty? when he saw Jesus, but nope, that wasn't even close. So our investigator could have had a very strong spiritual connection with that video. Or he could have said something like "I don't like seeing this actor play Jesus. It makes me sad because he is so ugly" We'll never know.

We taught a member in Hong Kong over Skype this week (we call it TRC. Maybe it stands for Terrified missionaries React to real Cantonese) and it went much better than it did last week. We all felt the spirit so strongly as we shared personal experiences of feeling the Saviors love, and testified that he will never leave us. Well, almost. We forgot ONE TINY WORD so instead of saying "Christ will never  leave us" we said "Christ will always leave us".

Oops

Isn't it a good thing that we're not actually the ones teaching? We're just there to invite to spirit to teach this people. If we taught, there would be a LOT of false doctrine. The good thing about this is that there are some mistakes you only make once. This is one of those I think.

Now, let's talk about our fantastic lesson with Walter.

First of all, our teachers challenged us to use at least one object lesson this week. Sister Viazzo remembered an old object lesson her mom had used. You put salt on a plate and say that it represents all of your good choices. Then you mix in some pepper and say that it represents all of the bad choices. You can't go through and pick up every single pepper flake, so it seems like you'll never be clean ever again. But if you rub a balloon on some carpet to charge it up, and hold it above the salt and pepper, all of the pepper will be lifted up onto the balloon. That is the only way to become clean again, just like using the atonement to repent is the only way to become clean again. So that's what should have happened, and what happened when we tested it at lunch. But it is not the way that it worked in the lesson. 

We set up talking about repentance, and everything was going fine. Then we charged up the balloon and held it over the salt and pepper. Nothing happened. .......We tried to charge it up again and this time one tiny flake of pepper came up to the balloon. Our investigator was so confused, and I just about died laughing. My companions apologized and explained what was supposed to happen. "So this demo didn't work.....but we PROMISE that repentance does work"

I was confused why the demo wasn't working so I charged up the balloon some more while my companions spoke. I held it over the salt and pepper and this time ALL OF THE SALT AND THE PEPPER came up onto the balloon. This confused our investigator even more, but we couldn't do any damage control because we were all laughing so hard. I think that we might have eventually changed the analogy to "repentance will completely change us", but I was no help. 

Again, I'm so glad that I'm not the actual teacher.

Tuesday Devotional was amazing. In preparation we were supposed to read Matthew 25, but I read Matthew 15 for some reason. It was still wonderful of course, but I just kept thinking "applying this to missionary work will be a bit of a stretch..." but no, I am just going crazy. 

Anyway. 

The devotional was amazing. Every week I get recommitted to giving this mission everything that I have, but this devotional especially. In Devotional review, Sister Viazzo made an awesome comment. In Cantonese you say "Gaai Yauh" for just about everything. It directly translates to "add oil" (very Chinese) but means something like "Keep up the good work." We say it all the time, but we also make fun of it just because it's so weird. But Sister Viazzo said that now every time she says it, she'll think about the 5 foolish virgins who needed to add oil to their lamps, but it was too late. We need to "Gaai Yauh" every day, even if it's just a drop. We're all doing so well, but if we can just do a little more, we'll be even better. 

Elder Chapman, rocking the headband he stole from us

This is what happens when you put a bench outside of a single stall bathroom, that is used by 30+ sisters. A party! It's actually nice that we have a place to congregate and talk to sisters from other districts and zones. Once the elders tried to steal the bench, and we didn't tolerate it.

We buy out the store of flashcards pretty much every week. They were getting to be too much, so we bought a giant ring. Now we all look like janitors, except instead of keys we have flashcards #missionaryprobs

Sometimes we go a little bit crazy in our tiny room. This week we invented Canto. pictionary, which is actually more helpful than we thought it would be. It's hard to forget a word when you lost because of it.
​

I'm sorry I don't have more pictures with me in them, but I didn't go on the temple walk this week. 

These are the sisters in my district...having fun without me.....*tear*

Nah, I got the better deal. I stayed behind with Sister Langley (my new Best Friend, she's amazing). 

I'm trying to take more pictures......but I'm running out of ideas.......maybe next week will be a #selfieoverload 

--
Love

Sister Hugo

Yui Ji Muih

Your favorite

PS. Some Bible verses are very useful out of context for random not-gospel-related arguments. My dad uses Prov. 17:17 to excuse his arguing with his siblings. After this week, I'll use Matthew 15:20 whenever anyone gets mad when I forget to wash my hands before a meal :)

April Fools!!

We got our new name tags!! Because so many people in Hong Kong speak English, we get split name tags. We were so excited! But because of General Conference we didn't have a temple walk on Monday, which means instead of getting Pinterest worthy pics, you get the selfie I took in the classroom. Selfies on a regular camera are an acquired skill, turns out. Also, do you think it's sacrilegious to take a selfie in front of a picture of the last supper? At least Jesus wasn't in my Selfie I guess.

As I think we all know, I am the most competitive person in the world. THE MOST COMPETITIVE! Unfortunately, Sister Crockett seems to think that SHE is the most competitive person in the world. We have a goal of being able to do a full pull-up before we leave the MTC. So that's where some of our competition comes in, but mostly, we compete about the DI buckets.

Our residence is built like a hotel. And in the social area next to the vending machines, there are the DI buckets and the sharing shelf. Whenever sisters are leaving, they put things they don't want in the DI buckets, and food they don't want on the sharing shelf. At first we thought it was weird, but I get at least one nice thing a week from the DI buckets, and we have an endless supply of candy from the sharing shelf (don't worry Mom, I only get things that are sealed). But you have to get to the buckets before anyone else does. And therein lies the competition. At first it was subtle, just going earlier in the evening than the other person. But now, anytime we go back to the Res, even just to pick up a notebook, both of us BOOK IT to the buckets.

 

We race there at least 5 times a day, including at 6:29 am. That's right. AS SOON AS WE WAKE UP we JUMP out of bed and SPRINT to the buckets. It's nice because it wakes us up, but more important than that is that I always win. Don't listen to Sister Crockett.

In one of the care packages from my mom, I got a little basketball net and little plastic balls, and a tiny catapult. That's the newest thing that we're obsessively competitive about.

It's deceptively hard! I've only ever gotten 3 baskets, but Sister Crockett has only gotten 2 so I'm okay with that.

April Fools day was amazing. We wanted to plan pranks, but we also wanted all of them to be missionary appropriate, so they all just turned out being the lamest pranks ever. 

• We switched out the Hong Kong flag in our classroom to the Macau Flag
• When we got to pick what song to sing, we chose Hymn 276, Come Again to Sunday School
• We put a sticky note on the bottom of the computer mouse so it didn't work
• We purposefully used terrible tones for class. We planned on making it the whole way, but only made it about 30 seconds
• Sister Viazzo made Sister Crockett's bed

The last one actually turned into quite a big deal this week. Sister Crockett was so confused that her bed was made, that we started making her bed everyday. We'd say that we were going to the bathroom, and then go back to the Res and make her bed. Yesterday she finally figured it out, but it was still soooooo funny. #worthit #MTCpranksaren'tactuallyrealpranks #mydadwillbeashamed

During personal study one day, I decided to do family history and I actually found a lot of names to bring to the temple! I found 26 names for sealings to parents, and some names for baptisms that I sent to my family. Part of me is nervous that after I bring the names to the temple my Nana will write me saying I did everything wrong somehow. But for now, I have names to bring to the temple today!

We asked our teacher Jong Hendai if we're his favorite class. He said "every class is different" 

Are we the funniest? 

"every class is different" 

Are we the most distracted? 

"every class is different" 

Do you even like us? 

"every class is different" 

That's his favorite phrase. BUT! Then we asked Lao Ji Muih and she said that we are her funniest class, and her most distracted class! She wouldn't answer if we were her favorite class, but her face said it all. 

The devotional on Tuesday was amazing. The speaker said exactly what everyone in my Zone needed to hear. But the most memorable part about it was that halfway through, somehow a bat got in the room. At first just a few people noticed it flying around, then more and more. After maybe 2 minutes the speaker said "I see I have some competition" at which point the cameras switched from the speaker to following the bat. The speaker then said "Let this be a lesson to you. Sometimes your investigators will be distracted and you have to think of a creative way to get their attention back on you." His way was to begin speaking in French, which was a good enough distraction for an employee to catch the bat.

General Conference was AMAZING!! I won't even pretend my eyeballs were sweaty. Those were straight tears. One of the sisters who left to Taiwan last week left us a challenge. She takes "pretty" notes. She writes as if she was creating a Pinterest masterpiece. She said that she used to take bullet point notes, and she gets so much more from her notes when she takes them this was. So she challenged us to "pretty" notes. I met her half way and took normal notes on one page and pretty notes on the other. I loved it! Some of my favorite talks were given by Elder Arnold, Elder Hallstrom, and of course Elder Holland. When he stood up to talk and said "Do you have any idea....do you have any inkling..." I thought he was going to call us all to repentance. I was so ready too. But then he said "How much we love you" and my heart melted. That was exactly what I needed to hear. 

After Conference and Dinner, we had a special secret devotional. We didn't know who it was till 5 minutes before. Any guesses? It was Vocal Point! The devotional was amazing! They each picked a word and spoke about it for 2 minutes, and then they would sing a song. Their last song was "Nearer My God to Thee" which is my favorite song of theirs (you should all look it up and enjoy it for me since I can't for another year and a half). I realized halfway through the devotional that this is the best music I'll listen to for another year and a half. There's no music in the MTC, and my Hong Kong Mission President only allows Hymns sung by the Mormon Tabernacle choir. Which means that for the next 18 months I'll be listening to myself sing :)  

After such deep rebellion as listening to songs sung by someone outside the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, we went a step farther. Every Sunday we get to watch a movie, and we chose to watch Legacy. The movie was fun, but even better than the movie were everyone's reactions. Imagine a room full of maybe 200 missionaries, who get to watch a movie, which includes 3 whole kisses! The horror! Actually, the hilarity! There was so much cheering anytime two people even looked at each other. And then there were scenes with conversations like

"You're working 2 days in 10. Twice what Brother Joseph asked for us to finish the Temple"

"Yes"

"Eliza and what's his face are waiting till it's done to be sealed together"

"Well maybe I'll slow down to 1 in 10 then"

Watching that movie might be my favorite memory at the MTC. And I haven't even told you the best part! We watched the first 15 minutes in Cantonese!! They forgot to change the settings, and so for the first bit the movie was in Cantonese! It was actually a little bit disappointing because for the first 5 minutes we were debating about what language it was, Japanese or Korean. Then they said "sinji" which means prophet and is one of the words we know best. At first we were so excited!! But then we realized how bad our Cantonese must be if we were debating whether it sounded like Korean or Japanese. But rest assured, if I land in Hong and someone says prophet, I will KNOW that they are speaking Cantonese.

During General Conference, I was thinking about missionary work. I was writing down "Everybody needs my help" because they do. I am an authorized representative of Jesus Christ, and so while not everyone needs Joanna Hugo, everyone needs Sister Hugo. I was going to continue by writing "except Jesus and Heavenly Father, but I will never teach either of them" when I realized that I was wrong. I might not street contact Jesus, but they both need me. It is not Heavenly Father's plan for our Savior to appear to us all at this time, so they need us. They need missionaries (and every member a missionary) to bring about their work. At the second coming every knee will bow and everyone will know that Jesus is the Christ. Part of that is that they will see the prints in his hands. But maybe another part is that everyone will have been taught. I know that sometimes it can be daunting, but the Lord NEEDS US. He needs us to be brave. He needs us to not shrink. He needs us to live in such a way that others come closer to Him by knowing us. He needs us to open our mouths. MY Branch President shared a quote from Brigham Young with us this week. Don't quote me on this, because I'm already quoting someone else quoting someone else, but the essence was "If you preach this gospel with all of your might, the Lord will bless you as if every person who heard you testify of Christ accepted the gospel." 

I love you all so much. I pray about you every night. Which should mean a lot because I give up sleeping time to do it :) You're all so loved. I hope you realize that. I hope I help you realize that.

--

Love

Sister Hugo

Yui Ji Muih

Your favorite