Hong Kong is Awesome

Whohoooooo!!!!  I'm finally in Hong Kong!  We arrived in HK Tuesday night.  We met President and Sister Hawks at the airport.  They are both so nice!  And Sister Hawks likes to feed us yummy food!  We had orientation all day Wednesday and a bit on Thursday.  On Thursday morning I met my companion and trainer, Sister Gartlitz (Ge Jiemei).  She is from Utah and only has 6 weeks left of her mission.  We moved into our apartment, but then found out that we were gonna be moving to a new apartment the next day.  In our first apartment we lived with 4 other Tagalog sisters (fun fact...there are more Tagalog sisters than Mandarin sisters in HK) in a part of Hong Kong island called Wan Chai.  So yeah, on Friday we moved into our new apartment.  We live in North Point on HK Island.  Since we are Mandarin our whole area is HK Island.  It's HUGE!  But, we are lucky! because, unlike all the Cantonese missionaries we get to go to tons of different places.  Our apartment is tiny (as expected), but it's cute!  This morning we came out and found a huge cockroach just hanging out in the hallway outside our door.... We live on the 14th floor so we have a fun view!

North Point, Hong Kong (random picture from the internet)

On Thursday night we had my first lesson!  It was with a lady who had been found by some Cantonese sisters, but since she spoke Mandarin they turned her over to us.  We did the first lesson and it was great!  We have another meeting scheduled with her tonight. 

On Friday we were trying to contact a referral, but when she wasn't home we decided to try a former investigator that no one had been able to get a hold of for like 6 months ... and she was HOME!  Her husband is less active and they have the cutest baby boy!  She was so excited to see us and we had a great lesson with her.

On Saturday we were out finding.  We went to somewhere (I still don't know the names of anything) ... but basically it is a waterfront promenade.  As we were walking we went by this lady and I noticed that she was teary and kept wiping her face.  We said hi, but nothing else and then she sat on a bench and we kept walking.  We kept going down the promenade and I just kept thinking about her.  I told Sister Gartlitz that if she is still there when we turn around then I was gonna give her a hug.  So later, when it was time to turn around we passed by her and so we went up and we asked if she spoke Mandarin.  She said no but that she can speak English (Cantonese is her first language).  So i asked if she was alright and I asked if I could give her a hug.  She said yes and when I hugged her she just kept crying and held on for a long time and kept saying "thank you thank you".  We talked with her a bit and shared a nice message and tried to comfort her.  She was so nice.  She kept saying that she felt like God was trying to teach her something (she didn't really tell us what was wrong, just that a bunch of stuff was going wrong at the same time).  Eventually we had to go, but we prayed with her and the spirit was just so strong.  I hope that we keep in contact with her.  But, even if we don't she called us angels and I know that whatever we did helped her.  That's just one example of how I have already (in my 4 or 5 days out in the field) seen the spirit leading us!  It's amazing!

On Sunday we had church!  We go to an all Mandarin branch!  It's pretty fun.  We had an investigator with us at church.  She is awesome!  She is a college student from China here in Hong Kong.  She loved church and then afterwards we had a lesson.  It went great.  When we gave her a Book of Mormon she was so happy.  She was like "Wow really! for me?" and then she hugged it!  She is great and I really look forward to meeting with her again!

Basically, Hong Kong is awesome!

Have You Seen Our Dad?

(Post from Dad)  Today is the big day ... Hannah is traveling to Hong Kong!!!  She will be calling home sometime today from the airport but there will not be a blog post.  Instead, I present one of my special treasures from Hannah from Father's Day in 2006.  Hannah was 10 and Lilly was 18 months (and come to think of it, Hazel was almost 2 and Emmett would have been been 1 day old!)

Poles and Plans

This week has been another great week at the MTC! 

Let me start with the best news .... I got my travel plans!!! I leave next Monday morning and will arrive in Hong Kong on Tuesday night!  I am soooo excited! Unfortunately, when I got my travel plans, we also got some bad news.  Turns out all the people going to Taiwan are going to be reassigned to temporary state side missions because their visas haven't gone through yet.  They were all pretty sad when they found out, but they all have good attitudes.  They should find out their reassignments this week

Also, this week I got my new name tags! It is all in Chinese!  I can't read it but I know that it says "Sister Sharp" and "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints"

At church on Sunday Sister Teng (our Branch President's wife and also the cutest lady ever) was giving a talk and she started tearing up a bit and she made a Miss Congeniality reference and said "I really do just want world peace." It was so funny! Though, I'm not sure all of the Elders got the reference.

I had a bit of an accident this week.  The MTC is going under a lot of construction and renovations right now.  So, I was walking and had my head turned looking at all the construction when I walked straight into a HUGE metal pole.  I hit it with the side of my face.  My cheekbone and jaw were so sore that I couldn't chew all day so I had soup for lunch and dinner.  Obviously, I blame my companion for this accident because she should have been taking better care of me...just kidding! 

I hope that my grandmother sees this and knows that I am super grateful for the GIANT box of cookies I got from her on Saturday!  It made my day!  There were enough cookies in there to be shared with almost all of the Mandarin speaking missionaries.  And, many of the Elders told me to make sure I told my grandparents thanks and that they were delicious!

So yeah that's about it!  Life is good!  And in less than one week I will be in  China...so I'm pretty happy!!!

Conference Weekend

I accidentally ate wasabi flavored edamame - yuck!!!

It has been another great week at the MTC.  Time is really flying by and I can't believe I only have two weeks left!  I should get my travel plans this week!

On Wednesday we got new Sisters.  It was so exciting!  They are just all so awesome!  Sister Cutler and I really enjoyed doing orientation and stuff for them.

Brother Zhanglao's (MTC instructor) birthday was this week!  So, of course we just had to celebrate.  We made him a birthday hat and sign and everything. 

This weekend has just been the best!  I have always enjoyed watching General Conference, but watching it as a missionary was so so so much cooler than ever before!  I never got bored in all 9 1/2 hours of it!  I think one of my favorite talks from Saturday was Elder Holland's.  It really made me want to be more charitable and Christlike.  I also really enjoyed Elder Bednar's talk on Sunday.  He really explained the reason for missionary work. Which, obviously, is really cool for a missionary!  Saturday night during the priesthood session all the Elders got to sing in the choir.  They did so good! If you watch it and look at the nametags closely you will see all of my mandarin Elders! 

Sunday night for devotional we had this really fun guy speak.  He was the first Tongan football player for BYU and then he went on to play in the NFL until he retired and is now a sports reporter.  He had some really great stories about missionary work.  

Classes and everything are still going well.  I really love our teachers! They're just so great! 

Everything at the MTC is great! We are almost at 7 weeks. It's kind of weird how long we've been here because the time has just flown by so fast!  Love everyone!!!