Shout Out Blessings

Fiona! 

Leih hou. San lihn Faaihlohk!

So good to hear from you all. The personal breakdown about the family sure is fun to read. Let me start with a "Happy Birthday Abbigale!"  I'll get danny next week :)  You are 18?! are you KIDDING ME?! weird! yes, I was in fallon at a track meet eating BJ's garlic chicken pizza with haydn as we prepared for the 400 m (coach maw's present haha..the race, not the pizza). We secretly loved it. What are your plans? San Francisco?! you lucky girls. that sounds so fun. dont party too hard out there. I wish I could even just witness the car ride over...what a blast :) just stay away from that dog day's song for dad's sake haha. Good luck with BYU. Decisions are fun. and hard. and I'm better than anyone at making the wrong ones ha. I've made a lot of different life plans, but it's comforting to know that Heavenly Father loves us enough not to let us completely screw up our lives, right? so keep making them :)  and ya! I'm impressed with Camilla's travelling accomplishments this semester with school and work! She knows how to be busy, and she does it like it's nothing. She amazes me. And Tamara is this mystery girls name. That's fun. I tried to make a good joke about the other way I'm most familiar with that name, but I felt like it would be too presumptious. oh fun, it's a riddle...guess what's in my head. winner gets the first hug when I come home. after mom. and dad. what a prize haha. sorry, I couldn't think of anything.

Well, it was Chinese New Year's this week! so that was fun. And lots of people went to mainland, so kind of sparse, which was strange. But the sparse here is most likely equivalent to not sparse back home. I think that will be the weirdest thing to adapt to. It will be either really lonely coming home, or like absolute freedom. who knows .There are a lot of fun traditions. Everyone wears red, and lot of people wear more traditional robe things. people just shout out blessings at people, but there are really only like 3 or 4 that or most common.  The conversation in english with random strangers on the street goes something like this, -"Happy New Year"...-"Happy New Year!"...-"Healthy body"....-"get rich"....-"your dreams come true"...-"peace"....like that. But seriously, that soon becomes all you say, all day long. And it loses meaning real quick. And since we walk around all day long and yell these things out to people, we needed to get more creative with our blessings. Which was tricky, because it could easily become offensive:  "grow taller"..."more hair to you"....and so it goes. The Chinese are so blunt, I know they wouldn't have a problem saying them to us, but as missionaries we were careful. And it ended up being a big hit haha. So we essentially spent the week walking around the streets yelling blessings at people. And it was fun. We built up a good reputation I think haha. And to be honest, that's more than half of what finding is for us...establishing reputations. Missionaries have pretty bad reputations as it is right now for maahfaahning people on the streets...annoying inconveniencing.  that kind of thing. So we're changing that the past few months. and things are changing. People will recognize us when we talk to them, and are a little nicer. So things are good. 

Hey! and speaking of decisions, will you think of a few options and ideas for me to do when I come home?! haha...ya, big question. I know. I'll talk to President Hawks about it next week to start looking around online at schools. but I'm not sure really what to do. Brother Shaffer's idea sounds cool though. I dont know. I need help. 

Sorry, short letter. But here's a picture of Fiona real quick! 

 

love, hannah