Requested at the Door

Happy Birthday Jack! I cant believe you are 14! You are a teacher. That's so awesome. It sounds like you and Danny had a great high adventure trip. you all have so many great experiences. It's great to have so many great leaders. And thank you for the pictures! I need one of Camilla and C
Dad! You all look great. Who's wedding was Tommy at? He looks great! and you and Abbey look like you're having a really great summer together. It's fun to hear about all the adventures your doing.

We got to go to the Temple last week, and guess who I finally saw?!...Chan Jiumuih....Nana and Gump's friend from Canada. I walked past and sat down, and then another cute missionary sister from England comes in and tells me that I am "requested at the door" ha. So that was cool in itself to be requested at a door. But I walk back out and the temple worker quietly asks, "Are you Hannah?" I don't think I can write exactly how grateful I was to see her. It was just a flood of sweetness and warmth when I heard her say my name. So she gave me a big hug...cheek to cheek, and and we exchanged a few words before I sat back down again. But if you ever talk to her, please tell her how grateful I was to see her. It felt like a piece of home. And Canada isn't even my home. But I like to think I can claim it, at least. It completely made my month. Little experiences like those come every once in awhile and those feelings just keep you going. It made me so happy.

Later we had interviews with President Lam. It was so different! But so great! President Hawks is 15 minutes early for everything. President Lam was running an hour and a half behind schedule haha. He just couldn't get separated from talking to all the missionaries! So a lot of missionaries this week didn't have time to buy groceries, so that was kind of funny. But President and Sister Lam are so caring and down to earth and so humble. He just rambles. He'll stand up at the front and ramble for as long of time as he has...but it's amazing to see how led by the Spirit he is. He is a great example of having the word embedded into his heart. He just speaks whatever comes into his mind, which is usually scripture or quotes form prophets, and jumps from one subject to another, and somehow everything he says connects in the end. It's great! So our interview was about 12 minutes. I said the opening prayer, and then just listened ha. I think I got 30 words in toward the end about the area, but he just spewed out direction and instruction and it was great. So the mission is staying exciting!

Not much has happened since Thursday when I emailed you, but I'll think of some things. Sam! Sam passed the sacrament yesterday. And he was sustained as the Teachers Quorum President. It just made me feel so proud. He and all the Young Men had Youth Conference this past
weekend, they all wore khaki pants and these matching dark red ties. They also have these matching basketball uniforms they bought together for when they play at the park. They're hilarious. They're quite the group. I'm not sure what they call themselves...but anything containing Butterflies automatically elimantes any form of toughness, so it's fun to watch them try haha. (Because we're the Butterfly ward.) He has been asked to give a talk in sacrament, so he snuck up to us after church to see if we had time this week to help him write one. It's going to be an awesome talk.

And we also met a new friend named Molo. I should tell you about him. We were out on the pier and had about 10 minutes before we had to head to the church for a lesson. So we decided to to do some finding. We usually start with a prayer, but figured that by the time we finished praying, half the time would be gone so maybe it would be best not to. But then we did it anyway. I asked specifically in the prayer to help us recognize in the short time we had, someone prepared to learn about Jesus Christ. And then we started walking. Not far off was this man on the right, awkwardly posed in his really short running shorts overlooking the ocean. And then a more fully clothed man on the left walking towards us. hmm. ok, lets go for the guy on the left. We get to the two of them at about the same time, and then for some reason, foregoed our plan and said hello to the man in the short shorts. There was a wind surfer guy doing cool things in the ocean, so we made small talk about the ocean, and he had no idea what we were saying, so we just layed down that we wanted to teach him about Jesus Christ. He asked us to sit down a while, which we did, and shared about prayer and God. He was willing to reschedule. He ditched us a few times, but then last night gave us a call and met us at the church. We had more time to get to know him. He is a huge jockster. He chews gum like nobody's business. He's 30 and loves soccer and not much else. But he has things he wants to improve in his life, so when we told him the Savior has power to improve our lives, he was willing to find out how. He was fun to teach. He acts like he has absolutely no interest in anything we say, and just smacks his gum the whole time, but you can tell when he feels something or has interest in something because the gum smacking stops ha. It's a great indicator of what attention we have. We shared about the Book of Mormon, and explained it. He was willing to read it, and pretty excited too, especially considering he's not big into reading. It was a fun lesson. He especially liked Moroni. In Chinese, Moroni sounds like Mololai. So we're going to start calling him Mololai. He loved it haha. I admire the people who agree to come meet with us. Aside from Sister Jiu, everyone we are teaching is a man. It must take a decent amount of humility and desire to come to a church with huge windows and sit and talk about God with two white girls. So good for them ha.

This week is zone training and we've been planning like mad. nothing seems to stick. We have so many great thoughts and we're filling up our buckets with alot of great stuff, but nothing solid or backbone to it. But today we found this mormon message, called Lift. Have you seen it? It's so great. It's very easy in the mission field to always be evaluating and specifically pulling your skills or abilities or what ever you have, down. Especially when things don't work out, the finger always points inward, and you have some misconception that every other missionary or ward member is judging your performance and your quality of missionary self. And it's complete trash. I love that talk 2 conferences ago about confidence. Anyway, it's a real struggle in our zone right now, a lack of confidence. And we all now that we perform at our best when we have confidence. I kind of just want to show the sound of music, but I think that's mdak haha. I'm just kidding. But we're focusing on this idea that we have the right to call power from heaven to assist in this work. Especially in the form of Spiritual gifts. We have strengths, and they are different. and specific. And I love this Lift video - on Mormon Messages. It has a lot of principles we're working on...I'm working on. And it's good to know that the only opinion I should be seeking for is Heavenly Father's. Any other opinion that really matters would be in line with his. otherwise it probably doesn't matter all too much.
Alright, well, I love you all. Have a happy birthday Jack! I sent a package for the family a while ago. But I sent it by sea because it was cheaper, and they said it would take at least 2 months haha. ya, sketchy, I know. Hope you get it eventually.

Have a great week!
Hannah