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.
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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 :)