Nimen Hao —
(Hello Ya’ll)
Or my new personal favorite: Ni hao’dy
My Chinglish has been progressing very well! But my Mandarin has been progressing even better! With how [Sunday worship services] work at the MTC, every missionary prepares a talk and then has the chance of getting called on. However, they don’t know until it’s time to speak. So this week I had to prepare my first talk because the first week all the new missionaries get a pass. Fun fact: It also has to be in Mandarin. So I wrote my first 5 minute talk completely in Mandarin that testifies of my love for this Gospel, the importance of faith in Jesus Christ, and the role of the Atonement in my life. It was one of the most simple talks I’ve ever written, but it was also one of the most meaningful.
Also in terms of the language, my companion and I have become so much better at being able to teach lessons. We have completely changed our approach. Before the change, we would walk into lessons with every sentence written out word for word in the exact order we wanted to say it. This week as we went in to our lessons, we only had a general outline. We were able to teach with the Spirit and actually listen to the needs of the person we were teaching. I loved this change, and I’m so excited to get better at teaching through the language of the Spirit! This week we taught our first real lesson to people who weren’t our teachers. When we were told that it had to be 20 minutes I started to get a little skeptical because I didn’t think I knew how to talk for that long in Mandarin. However, it went SO SO good! The people we were teaching said they were able to feel our love and Christ’s love for them as we taught and my companion and I’s Mandarin came out perfectly good. 🙂
One of our district’s goals has been to create greater unity. So as the sisters in the district we have started looking for little ways we can serve the elders. This week, lots of the elders were facing inadequacies, challenges, and self doubt, so before class one day, us sisters placed brightly colored sticky notes all over their desks filled with comforting and motivational scriptures, quotes, and Mandarin phrases. They were all super happy, and I felt so good about it!!
The oldest district in our zone left today and it was actually pretty sad! We have gotten so close in the last 3 weeks. That means we lost 23 elders and sisters and on Wednesday this week will be getting 8 new elders and sisters to be the newest district. That makes me now a part of the middle district! Time here feels fake and kinda like we’re in a time machine. Days feel like weeks, but the weeks feel like days. So at the same time that I feel like I’ve been at the MTC my entire life, I also feel like I just got here. It’s strange, but I love it!!
Spiritual thought of the week is from a poem that was shared during a devotional:
“Come to the edge,” He said.
“No. We’ll fall”
“Come to the edge,” He said.
“No. We’ll fall”
“Come to the edge,” He said.
So we came, and He pushed us…
And we FLEW.
I know that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us!! He will always pick us up, even when we fall and be there to help us fly again!
Funny things that happened this week at the MTC:
1. One of the elders had his banana stolen during dinner while he was saying his prayer. It was hollowed out, filled with mashed potatoes, and then sneaked back onto his tray. When he went to open it he was like what the heck, and we all laughed for a very long time about it.
2. One of the days when we were supposed to be individually studying Chinese during class and the teacher was out of the room, we decided what Harry Potter character everyone in our room would be. For some reason I got assigned Luna Lovegood. I was also told by the Mongolian elder that I could be a minion from Despicable Me.
3. We found out that in Taiwan, if people have their kids with them and they don’t want to talk, they will lean down to their children and say, “Say buh-bye JieJie”. We were told that our response always needs to be… “HELLO!!!!”” So now we all walk around saying that to each other all the time.
I love you all so so so much!!
An Jie Mei
Sister Kara Andersen 