Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!!!!! I hope that everyone had a very merry Christmas! I know that I did - being on a mission during this time is so special because I really get to embrace the greatest gift of all, the gift of our savior Jesus Christ. We spent Christmas day by giving others this gift too and doing missionary work! Yay! I also got to call home! It was so great to hear from my family - they are so awesome and I love and miss them so much! But, it's because I love them so much and am so grateful that I have them that I am on a mission! The Lord has blessed me so much and I want to spread this joy to others!

So on Christmas, and every day leading up to Christmas, we did "nativity finding". Right inside the big glass doors of the big church building/skyscraper where we have church, there is this really big nativity scene.  It is in the middle of a really busy part of Hong Kong called Wan Chai. Lots of people really like to stop and take pictures with it. So, we pulled out a big TV and played "He is the Gift" and stood outside and talked to people by the nativity. It was so awesome. We met so many amazing people from all over the world! Everyone was drawn in and wanted to learn more about the true meaning of Christmas and about Jesus Christ. It was so great! Lots of Christmas miracles!

Also, this week Rebecca was officially confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! Yay! She is so awesome. I am so excited for her. She has a wonderful testimony of this gospel. She knows and loves her Father in Heaven. I am so grateful for her friendship and her awesome example! I'm so happy for her!

So yeah this week has been great! And Happy New Year! 

Baptism!

This week has been wonderful! Many great things have happened!

On Tuesday we had transfers. Sister Tse and I are still the same (yayyy!) but we were assigned to be sister training leaders for our zone! I'm excited! It's a bit weird because I'm the newest sister in our zone and I'm still doing my 12 weeks in field training...but whatever! I'm excited!!

On Saturday we had our branch Christmas party! It was so fun! There was sooooo much yummy food. Half of it was Chinese the other half traditional Christmas dinner. Lots of people were there - including members, less active members, and investigators. Each of the auxiliaries were supposed to do a part in a "talent show" type thing - missionaries included. So we did this really awful dance thing. The point was to make is seem like the missionaries are actually fun people......  So yeah the Christmas party was great!

And then, Sunday was like the absolute best day ever!!!!!!!! First, President and Sister Hawks came and spoke in our branch sacrament meeting. Yay! They're awesome! And then after church we had Rebecca's baptism!!!!!!!!!!!! So exciting! She is so awesome and I am so lucky that I have gotten to work with her. We have developed such a great friendship. After the actual baptism and at the end of the baptismal service she bore the sweetest and most awesome testimony ever! It just made me so happy to see her making the absolute best decision ever! She is so great and is such a special daughter of our Father in Heaven.

So yes, this week was great! Those were definitely the highlights of it! The church is true and I love being a missionary! Merry Christmas to everyone back home!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sister Tse, Rebecca, Alex (local YSA who baptized her), me

I Love Sharing the Gospel

Sister Sharp doesn't know when to quit!

Another great week!  By the end of this week, I will have been here for two months ... super weird.  Time is flying by!  I can't believe it's already time to email again.

Last Monday, Sister Tse and I had some excellent bonding time and spent our P-day shopping and getting yummy mango bobba (not sure how to spell) drink things.  Sooo good.  We also bought matching scarves which we wore to district meeting on Tuesday.  We also bought matching cat sweaters.  They're awesome!  (And Mom and Dad, they were like 5 bucks (or less) each! Yay for cheap Chinese clothes!)

Sister Tse, myself, and the Mandarin-speaking Elders

This week was really busy with lots of turnovers with other missionaries.  We have turnovers when other missionaries on Hong Kong Island (either the Mandarin Elders or any of the Cantonese missionaries) have met a Mandarin person and need us to teach her.  So then we have turnover lessons!  Sometimes they work out super well and other times they are really awkward.  We had some of each this week.

We also had the interesting experience of teaching a lady (in a turnover with the Chai Wan Elders) who currently practices a very different Chinese religion (I don't remember the name of it...)  But the lady was really nice! and we had a good lesson introducing the gospel to her and stuff!

Rebecca is doing awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!  We are getting her all prepared for her baptism this next week!  And she is just so excited!  She loves the gospel!  She really loves hearing about eternal families and I know that she has such a strong desire to be sealed to her family forever.  Rebecca is just so amazing!  I can't believe that I am lucky enough to work with someone like her!

Yesterday at church we had the primary program!  Oh my gosh - sooo cute!  All the classic primary songs but sung by the cutest little group of Chinese kids!  Everyone in the congregation was just like "awwwwwe" the entire time.  Our branch definitely has the cutest primary ever.  The only way to make it cuter is if Hazel, Lilly, and Emmett were in it!

Do you remember Elder Wong?  He is the one who spoke in General Conference this last October in Cantonese.  Well, he is a Seventy and he came to our branch yesterday ... and he yelled at me :(  Well, kinda (actually not really).  Here's the story: I always get asked to be our back up conductor during sacrament meeting if our regular chorister isn't there.  So yesterday they asked me to do it and so I went and asked our pianist (who is one of the young woman) what the songs are so we could go set the numbers up on the board.  So we went together and she was helping me do that and then Elder Wong came to us and was like "You don't both need to do this.  One of you go play the piano." It was really scary!  Like I'm sure he's a lovely person but it was scary!  But, I guess it's cool that I got to meet him!

Anyways, all is going so well! I love being a missionary! I am so excited for Rebecca next week! And I'm also so excited to be helping lots of other people come unto Christ too!

A Miracle

This week has been soooo good.  On Wednesday we had a miracle!!!!!!!!!!!  So, Rebecca who is just amazing has been progressing and really building a testimony, but she has been scared to get baptized because she is not sure if her parents will give her permission.  SO she has told us that she will ask them in person (she is currently going to college in HK and her parents still live on the mainland) when she goes home to visit in February.  BUT on Wednesday we met with her and she told us that she decided to call her mom, and her mom said that if she felt it was good then she can get baptized! We were so excited when she told us this and she definitely is too!  We talked about it and decided to set a date for Jan 4, but then after a few minutes she was like "So is there really no time when I can get baptized sooner?"  I about fell out of my seat when she said that.  I was soooo excited!  Like she really does have a desire to follow Christ and build a relationship with her loving Father in Heaven!  I feel so privileged that I get to help someone as awesome as her!  So now she is set to be baptized in two weeks!  We were so happy and excited for Rebecca that sister Garlitz and I skipped all the way home from the meeting.

Thursday was a good and bad day.  I said Goodbye to Sister Garlitz (she is home now) and said hello to my new companion Sister Tse ... who is AWESOME!  She is from California and is fluent in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese!  I know that we are going to have the best time together.  This week was so miraculous.  Not only did Rebecca decide to get baptized but we also started teaching three other new people!  And they are all just awesome!  I already love them so much!  And we were fed by members like three times this week!  Which is amazing!  I am so grateful for all that they do to try and help us!

Fun fact: I had chicken feet at a member's house last night.  They are very squishy.  You have to like put the whole foot in your mouth and then you rip off the toes, chew the squishy skin/meat stuff and then spit out the bone and toenail.  And apparently the paw is the best part because its realllly squishy

So yeah this week has been great! Sister Tse and I are off to a great start together and I am so excited to be working with her!

Goodbye Sister Garlitz!!!!!!

Food Miracles

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

I think that the best word to describe this week was food ... and definitely food-miracles. Since it's the end of the month and our funds are running low we bought really bland groceries last week and did not expect to have much fun with food this week. We could not have been more wrong. We were so blessed with lots of yummy food and so many opportunities while eating yummy food to share the gospel!

Korean BBQ

On Monday for P-day we and 3 of the 5 other Mandarin sisters decided to use our personal funds to treat ourselves to Korean BBQ! Sooooo yummy!

On Tuesday our Branch President finally had time to meet with us.  He took us out for delicious Japanese pork chops and we got to discuss how we can help the members of our ward.

Wednesday, Gracie, one of the recent converts was having a little birthday dinner with all the other YSAs (most of which are also recent converts). And they invited us too!

Thursday was Thanksgiving!  I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner! We were fortunate enough to have TWO! The first was with our zone.  We were assigned to make pies (apple and lemon) though we helped with making lots of other things.  It was sooooo yummy! I was so surprised by how well a bunch of missionaries could cook! We even had turkey! A couple hours later we went over to a members house for Thanksgiving round 2! It was soooooooo goood!  They even found American sweet potatoes (which is pretty much impossible here...).  Plus, we got to talk to them about missionary work and they gave us referrals and everything so that was great!

Zone Thanksgiving - I am obviously the tallest sister. All the Philippine sisters (everyone but me and my companion and the other two Mandarins who are from Macau and Korea) call me "Sister Taylor Swift".  At least 3 people a week tell me I look like Taylor Swift!

Friday we met with a  recent convert and took her to the family history center! We are working on getting everyone started on family history! We are also preparing them all to go to the temple! There is a trip on the 20th of this month and we are so excited for everyone! After that we met with Rebecca and we watched The Testaments together and ate cookies (it was a bit cheesy...but it is really good for helping people to picture the Book of Mormon! Plus it is really funny to watch in Chinese).

On Saturday we went to English class.  So fun. We had a family from Pakistan come and I was working in a group with their 7 year old daughter. At the end of class she went up to the board and wrote "Sister Sharp is the best teacher ever."

With Elsa and Anna!

Sunday we had church! So good! And Sunday evening one of our recent convert's friends invited us over to her home for dinner and we were able to teach her a bit about her relationship with God and Christ and our recent convert told her about why this is so important to her. It was just a really great meeting.  She also made us Chinese style Italian food.  They both have little girls named Sunny and Jessica.  They spent the whole time dressed up as Elsa and Anna from Frozen (everyone here loooooves Frozen!). 



So yes, it has been a very good week.  My companion goes home on Thursday so I will get a new companion this week! Good bye Sister Garlitz! I love ya!

I bit into this pear - yuck!

The Gift of Tongues

This week I definitely learned that the gift of tongues is real! Yay! Chinese is so hard, but there have been several times when I found that Chinese was not a problem at all. For the first part of the week my companion was not feeling well at all.  Just a good old cold.  On Wednesday evening after dinner, we were getting ready to go out and she was like "I just need to rest for a few minutes". So she crawled into bed ... and then she did not get up until the next morning.  I was like "uhhh....what do i do????" even though she is sick I'm still supposed to do missionary things. So, I decided to organize our area book and make calls. Ahhhh sooooo scary! I have always avoided calling people when Sis. Garlitz asked me too. Even in English I don't like speaking on the phone. But, i did! I was so scared! I called a bunch of former investigators. Before and after every call I would just pray so hard that I would be able to understand what they were saying and be able to respond appropriately! And it worked!!!! I even set up an appointment for this Wednesday!! I was so excited I was like jumping up and down.

Saturday evening we had a meeting with a with all the Mandarin missionaries and some other members.  It was all in Chinese. and I understood everything!!!!!!  Just during the whole week in general I found that when I am talking about the gospel or bearing testimony or using the spirit or whatever, Chinese is so easy!

 

And then on Sunday our branch president asked me to say the opening prayer in sacrament meeting!!!! Afterwards one of the investigators that we had at church and one of the elders were like "Sister Sharp your Chinese has improved so much!" I know that I have so much to learn still but I know that the Lord is really blessing me! I am so grateful that he trusts me enough to learn this language.

We did not have too many appointments this week.  Something about the last two weeks of November makes everyone really busy. Most of the people we talk to are like "yeah, I'd love to meet...how about in December?" Sooo ... looks like we will be busy in December! Yay!

But, on Sunday the Kowloon sisters had a baptism! It was for a lady and her 9 year old daughter! It was right after church and it was awesome  The person who performed the baptism was himself a recent convert and he is just awesome! We met with Rebecca afterwards and she told us that it was the 2nd baptism she has been to (there was another one before I came that she went to) and she said that every time she sees one it increases her desire to also get baptized! She is just so awesome. She really does love the gospel and cant wait until she too can follow Christ's example and get baptized! 

So yeah, this week has been great! Happy Thanksgiving!