Growth

Mom! Dad! hello!
I love reading these letters. I read it over a couple times...which takes time away from writing back, but just makes me happy! What a fun new years! You know, I don't eat Singapore noodles much...but I'll keep an eye out for them now. Kowloon Tong doesn't have much street food...too poshy. And Cha siu faan was the big hit in Kwun tong (barbequed pork and rice). But I'll find it, no worries :) That sounds like such a fun skiing day! you all look so good! And I love that horoscope haha. especially the...Though you’re a loving person, you are absolutely not to be crossed and you genuinely enjoy arguing your point for hours. ...It's so true! that's embarassing. Slow progression, right?! I can do better with that eventually. This mission's already working wonders :) And please keep that Austin City Limits for the next year so I can watch it when I come home. Avett Brothers AND Nickel Creek?! what a present.

Things are going well. I just love the few people we're meeting with. We met Fiona yesterday, and she is the most incredible person. She's been researching a lot about our church, and ran across the word of wisdom. so she gave up tea and coffee over the weekend and told us about it at church yesterday. she say's it's hard, because she's so busy and tired. But she said she knows God can help her...even if it's through a nap haha. I love that girl. We had a few other new investigators at church with us, and she was so excited for us to find more new friends to join the church. Whenever we talk to her, she asks how our "new friends" are, if we have found any more new friends, where went missionarying that day, and what she can do to help our new friends learn more about the gospel and join the church haha. We taught her the plan of Salvation yesterday, and it really turned into her teaching the lesson herself. We had given her the pamphlet to read in preparation for it, and she came back to lesson pulling out scriptures she had found about it, and in full depth talking about deeper principles we usually don't go over with brand new investigators...so that was testing our cantonese a little bit haha. But she's amazing. She wants to be a linguistics professor iin America after she finishes her PhD. Has some PhD friends over at BYU right now....so who knows?!

I wish I could go over all the people we're working with right now. Seriously, you guys would fall in love with every one of them. We met an Asian Beyonce the other day - wish she would have been interested, because she would have been fun to teach. She looked exactly like what an asian version of Beyonce would look like. And she had on this huge white fur coat, and a tiny mini skirt with huge heels. Long straight beyonce colored hair parted in the middle...do you see it?! It was so her.  she smelled like shaving cream. I'm sure we'll run into her again. Odds are totally in our favor, right?

Actually, we very well might have run into her again when we went out finding yesterday. We were out at Morse Park, and a concert started going on. thousands of people started flooding the park over the course of 2 hours. And some fancy Chinese opera took over. Beyonce gone opera? It could happen. You could hear it throughout several neighboring chyuns. Chinese opera is interesting...it's like this super high pitch squeaky nasally woman's voice,and usually a nice sounding deep man's voice. It's gets your attention pretty harshly, but then it grows on you. I don't mind it haha. Old yeh-yeh's (grandpa's) are always carrying around with them little portable radios, so on our long finding days, we are in constant nourishment of our chinese opera. And usually they're all on the same wave or something, because as we walk around, the song connects from yeh-yeh to yeh-yeh. The simple things in life...

Speaking of which, thanks mom for sending that article. I love that idea of long obedience. I must be your daughter because I've been studying a similar thing myself lately...this idea of spiritual patterns. It's when we make those day by day, small righteous decisions that we can accomplish great, excellent goals. It's more of a habit than a one time event. I love President Monson's instruction that decisions determine destiny. I need to be better at establishing spiritual patterns. I feel like sometimes I have these spiritual spikes that I ride on for awhile until I get my next charge, and I want to change that. And when I think of other "spiritual spikes" or huge events that lead to conversion, such as Alma the Younger, I can't help but think of the steady constant counsel and teaching and firm correction from his father all those years. I think that was a crucial spiritual pattern that prepared Alma to grow and change from that huge experience that he had. Anyway, I too want to be better at long obedience. Having more constant firm growth. the discipline to do that is another story haha. We'll figure it out :)

I love you all! I miss you so much! Sorry to write you so much haha. I just get going.
Thanks for everything
Love hannah