Temple and Exchanges!!

We got to go to the temple this week! I can't believe how blessed we are to be able to go so often. This will be my last time going to the Hong Kong temple for a while. I am going to miss it so much. It covers so much of the world, that overtime I go I get to meet amazing people who worked and scraped for years to be able to come. The members here treasure this temple so much, most are temple workers and come twice a week. I have been able to see so clearly how the temple blesses everyone involved. Someone told me once that every time a temple ordinance is being done, it blesses 4 people. The person on the other side, the person doing the ordinance, the person who is receiving the ordinance for the deceased, and the person who did the genealogy.

​The pictures as a district don't fit in the email, but I forwarded them to my parents. Actually it's just half the district because the elders abandoned us. We discovered that one of my talents is being to open my mouth ridiculously wide. I know that if I hide my talents then they will be taken away from me. So here you go!! This is pretty much the face Sister Peck gives me half the time. "Let's go 'OUCH! Your umbrella poked me in the eye finding!!" *insert face here*

Got to go on exchanges with Sister Frandsen!! She speaks fluent Mandarin, and tried to teach me some, but it just kept coming out as Cantonese. Oh well. I am in love with street food and she had never had one of my favorites. "Gaak jai beng" which must be Cantonese for Diabetes. A waffle, with butter, sugar, peanut butter, and sweetened condensed milk. 

Delicious.

Got transfer calls for my last transfer here in Hong Kong. I am staying her in West Point with Sister Peck, but Sister Percival is joining us in a trio!! Sister Percival was my first companion when I came down here to West Point. It is going to be so good to be with her again!! Trio's are always either so much fun, or a terrible mess. But the three of us are so good!! It's going to be a party. My last 3 weeks are going to be so good!!

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Love

Sister Hugo

Yiu Ji Muih

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Extra Pictures:

​The sisters in our district!! The elders abandoned us for some reason, so no full district pics

I love going to the temple!!!!

Time Warp

This week I did a really bad time managing email time. Oh no!!

Time for pictures!!

Last week we went to infamous "Monkey Mountain". We found this lady who was feeding them fruit from giant trash bags. By the end of feeding time, we counted 40+. We were afraid they would start fighting so we started the hike  to get away for a bit.

Our group, so much fun!!

It was so nice to get together with a bunch of my friends :)

(Sister Frandsen, Sister Thomson, Sister Grover, Me, Sister Woo, Sister Peck)

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This week we also threw a birthday party for a less active family this week. It was so much fun!! There was food, a newspaper "snowball" fight, and then just getting to "chin wag".  Unfortunately, one of the kids stole my camera and so all the pictures I have are fuzzy and/or are pictures of the ground :P 

About every 2 months, or stake puts on a giant activity called "gas yauh jaahm", which means "gas station". It's just a pun to go along with the "add oil" saying. It's an activity to get all the members pumped (heeeheeehee) about missionary work. We're in charge of the August "gas station" activity, and we are SOO EXCITED! It's gonna be "day in the life of a missionary". "How fast can you button up a shirt?" "Can you selfie with a normal camera?" "How fast can you find out someone's name, job, and phone number on the subway?" "Can you teach repentance with 5 minutes prep?" It's gonna be so much fun. Yay for activities!!

I ran out of time, which just means that next week's spiritual thought will be extra good, okay? Sounds good. 

Love y'all

ADD OIL!!!

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Love

Sister Hugo

Yiu Ji Muih

Your favorite

Big Buddha

Last week for P-day we went to "Big Buddha"! It's the largest sitting Buddha in the world! Unfortunately it's also a giant tourist spot. Sometimes locals call it "McMonastery" 

 
^This^ picture was taken a little under a mile away.

These were the stairs up #legday

The gang. Sister Fransen, Me, Sister Thomson (who I was with in the MTC and am now serving with as a sister training leader!), and my baby Sister Peck!
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Big Buddha was pretty cool. But I still think that it's not nearly, not even 1%, as beautiful and meaningful as the temple is to me. 

This week we had the Fourth of July!!! Which meant that we had to be the Red-White-Blue AMERICA Skittles!!! And brought out our english hymn books to sing all the Patriotic hymns for companionship study. We had mission leadership council on the Fourth of July which means that we sang The Star Spangled Banner together. I may or may nor have cried. Just kidding, I definitely cried.

At MLC we made some super exciting mission goals!! I love goals so much!! It starts with the vision, then goals, then action plans. I have goals and action plans for pretty much everything these days, Sister Peck teases me about it. 

This past week we have been really pushing to talk to EVERYONE!! We have been able to meet some REALLY cool people!! I met a man from the Philippines who went less active because he has to work on Sunday and didn't know we have church every day of the week! He's in contact with the Phillipina sisters now. Isn't that so exciting!!

I've been studying this week about the power of the gospel to change us. It really is so cool! The world works from the outside--in, but Christ works from the inside--out. But we've got to let him in. Which can be really hard sometimes!! Sometimes in means giving up something that we really like, or value; but in the end we find out that we never really needed it and that what we got in return was sooo much better. What is something that you could give up or take on to let Christ change you more? For me this week, it's been waking up 15 minutes early to read the Book of Mormon, and washing the dishes for my apartment mates more. It's crazy to me that such simple small changes can make such a big difference in my day and in me, but that's the power of Christ!! 

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Love

Sister Hugo

Yiu Ji Muih

Your favorite

Bonus Picture of a Dork Fish 

Fixed Camera

I finally (re) fixed my camera!! Which means in an attempt to make up for the months without a working camera, I am taking a ton of pictures. Also, in the excitement of getting a working camera, I am taking a lot of ugly selfies :)

(I'll send a pic to my parents and they can post it hopefully :) )

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This week was the celebration of the reunification of Hong Kong and China! It looked like so much fun! We can't go proselytizing too close to big festivals, which meant that most of our classic finding spots were off limits. Yay for exploring!! We found a tiny little park that is so pretty! It had these little "Hobbit arches" that were so cool! 

To motivate myself in language study, I let myself study characters if I finish vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation for the day. 

The mission gives us these cards, and they are numbered from most used to least used. But sometimes I just pick up characters from maps, or buildings, or from doing "what does this say" finding. One day I went through all of these characters because I had already picked up most of them. YAY! Characters are soooo cool but also soooooo annoying to learn!! One stroke can make it a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WORD!!

This is me and Sister Yuen! We've been helping her and her family develop a habit of daily scripture study, which means daily short visits. So much fun! She is sooo sweet and is really loving learning more about Christ through reading the Book of Mormon :) The gospel is so cool

Love y'all!!

​This Book of Mormon Challenge has been so amazing! It feels like I am rediscovering the Book of Mormon for the first time. 

Love

Sister Hugo

Yiu Ji Muih

Your favorite

Another Testament of Jesus Christ

Another one of those weeks where we were so busy, but then you think back and feel like you have done NOTHING!!!

hmmmm

We had Mexican food at a members house. And lemon raspberry cheesecake. And they bought us some groceries. We are soooooo spoiled!! #MyMembersAreStillBetterThanYourMembers

That night with that member and a non-member aunt we shared about eternal families. It was basically just us sharing our testimonies and how much our families mean to us. Sister Peck has dealt with a family death within the past month, and I drug up some memories of my father's deployment. The members then felt prompted to share their own experiences. It was one of those experiences that I am so grateful that it is the Spirit that teaches, and not us. I worked with Sister Peck all day on the grammar and vocabulary so that when the moment came she could just focus on her feelings. She did so well!! I am so proud of her hard work and courage.

At Zone Conference, our training went super well! Which is good because they moved up the time from us having a week to prepare, to having 24 hours. AAHH!!! Our training focused on this quote from an old Liahona (I may or may not have a habit of borrowing the old Liahona's from our library at church. They have ensigns from the 1960s in there!!)

At the end of a cultural seminar in Greece, author Robert Fulghum asked the organizer of the event, Dr. Alexander Papaderos, “What is the meaning of life?” Dr. Papaderos responded by pulling a small, round mirror from his wallet. Then he said:

“When I was a small child, during the war [World War II], we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place.
“… I kept only the largest piece. … I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine—in deep holes and crevices and dark closets.
Reflecting light into inaccessible places became a game for him. But when he became an adult, Dr. Papaderos realized that his childhood game was a metaphor for his life’s mission.

“I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light—the light of truth, understanding, and knowledge—is there, and that light will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.
“… I can reflect light into the dark places of this world … and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.”

Isn't that so cool!

President Lam gave a training on the Book of Mormon and how AMAZINGLY COOL IT IS!! Then he challenged us to read the Book of Mormon and highlight every mention of the Savior. our whole mission has just been DEVOURING the Book of Mormon since then. There are so many mentions on every single page! As I've been reading I've been trying to imagine that I know nothing about Christ. It's been amazing to realize how often, simply, and powerfully the Book of Mormon teaches about our Savior. 

We saw Jenny again!! She's our American born Taiwanese less-active that I am convinced is the nicest person in the world. We shared a verse from the Book of Mormon, and she just kept pouring over it. She said "I've read this verse a hundred times, but I've never understood it like this before!" As we testified of how this Book of Mormon challenge has been changing our lives in just a couple of days, her whole demeanor softened and just seemed to bask in the light. 

I used to think that missionaries had to be be bold in the way that they would rain down hell-fire and brimstone, but that is definitely not what we do. We just state simply, and clearly, what the Lord's standard and gospel are. And then (my favorite part) is when we just get to testify of how it is changing our own lives. Sometimes I think that we all have a tendency to get a little proud of where we are on the journey. Why? The goal is perfection, and with that as the goal, are any of us really that much farther than anyone else? Is 100 that much bigger than 3 if we compare it to infinity?

I think those might be the two things I love most about my mission. Testifying, and just been able to draw closer to my Savior. I just keep thinking "It can't get any better than this. This is so amazing!" But you know what, it just keeps getting better!!

So I stand as yet another example of Jesus Christ. He lives, with all of the beauty and grace that that statement implies. He was born for us. He lived for us. He died for us. He was resurrected for us. And He lives for us. Because of him, are successes can be permanent and our failure temporary. Because of His love and power, we can do anything that is required of us. Because of Him, we can have peace and joy in whatever circumstances we stand in. 

John 16:33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

Love you all!!

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Love

Sister Hugo

Yiu Ji Muih

Your favorite