🍞好多包🍞

 大家好，我希望你哋又好好嘅星期! 今個星期好忙。

This week was really long but I feel like I made some good language progress! I have a little mini notebook that I always keep with me and anytime I hear a word in Cantonese that I don't know, I jot it down and study it later. It might be annoying for the other sisters and my companion who I always ask questions to, but it's been very helpful haha.  Sister Santos and I also have been having what we call "SYL" (speak your language) days. We try to speak in the language as much as we can for that whole day and it's been very good practice for my speaking skills. My listening skills still need work but we're making progress little by little :D

Me during some outside finding!

We had district council and LPOs this week. District council was kind of funny because it was just us and one other set of elders. Because there aren't many missionaries in the mission right now, the districts and zones are pretty small. The zone is just four companionships and we make up two districts. Basically all we're doing right now is preparing for zone conference on Wednesday so we just went over the things that President Chan wants us to prepare. Other than that, LPOs were kind of hard this week. I have a new partner since I'm in a new area and he's a lot more quiet than my last one. I couldn't understand him very well in the LPO and he made it kind of hard to talk with him so it caught me off guard. I can admit I'm disappointed with how it went but I suppose all I can do is prepare the best I can for the next one and give it my all.

Comp lunch! I made my special teriyaki chicken 

So Sister Santos is on the social media team here which makes me also on the team now and we had a meeting for that this week. Basically there are a lot of posts that we need to create and prepare for the coming weeks so we talked about how we're going to divide up the work. Since none of us really know how to use photoshop or Adobe premiere, we're going to meet together again after zone conference and hopefully figure it out. Fun times :D

It was Sister Peterson's birthday this week! It was really fun. Sister Santos and I secretly bought a cake for her the day before and kept it in our fridge and then we surprised her with it! There was actually another signal 8 typhoon on her birthday so we couldn't go out for dinner, but we made some homemade pasta so that was fun haha. The cake was also super good. Then the trio sisters surprised me back, when I walked out of a room, by singing happy birthday and giving me little notes and presents. It made me really happy that they went out of their way to do that for me even though my birthday was last week. I love my apartment mates🥰

Sister Santos' 1 year celebration!

Other than birthday celebrations, it was also Sister Santos' one year mark on Saturday!! It was so sweet, the trio put a bunch of post it notes on our door that said "Happy one year mark Sister Santos". For dinner we all got takeout from different places and ate together at home while watching a movie on our moniter. It was one called Suits on the Loose and it was realy funny 😂. For dessert we had carrot cake (Sister Santos' fav) and Sister Peterson even let us have some of her cheesecake too which was awesome!

As for my email title, I've had a LOT of baau over this past week haha. Baau (包) means bun like a bread bun and you can get them easily here. There are bakeries everywhere and they usually sell them for around HK$9 or less! That's like US$1! I've been keeping track of how many baau I've had and so far I've had 7 this week 😅 This includes a different variety though. My favorite baau is 菠蘿包 (bo loh baau/pineapple buns). They don't actually taste pineappley, the top of them just looks like a pineapple because of the way they cut them. Sister Santos' favorite is 雞尾包 (gai meih baau/cocktail buns) and those have like a coconut sugar filling inside of them. I think those are good but I'm definitely still bo loh baau gang ✊ I've had 2 regular bo loh baaus, 2 red bean filled bo loh baau (so good!!), 1 bo loh baau with butter (good, but they added to much butter), and 1 bo loh baau with custard filling (kind of weird, the custard was more salty than expected). I also just bought another red bean bo loh baau and regular bo loh baau two days ago so I could snack on them yesterday and today 😅 Should there be any reason I gain weight here it WILL be the bo loh baau.

Hong Kong temple still under renovation

Aside from all that fun stuff, we've done actual missionary work as well haha. We've been doing a lot of calling former people and that has been a bit hard because it's almost always in Cantonese. It's okay though because I've been getting better at it! I messed up a few times but I just have to get more used to what I have to say and to what they usually say in return. I went from not really speaking at all to speaking a bit to speaking a lot more so...progress😁.

As for our lessons, they've been pretty good! Last week we had a lady named Ms. Chan or Chan síujé come to church to watch General Conference and this week we got to meet with her again! We taught her about prayer and the Godhead and in return she gave us some apples! It was really sweet 😊. She's very happy to learn about the gospel and even came to church yesterday as well! I think she has a lot of potential and I'm excited to be able to teach her more! 

 Beautiful park we went to for outside finding

We're also teaching a lady named Mrs. Yip or Yip táai. She's very nice and loves reading scriptures with us but is still taking things slow. We do her lessons over phone call and usually its like 40 minutes of Sister Santos and her chatting in Cantonese and then 20 min of us actually teaching a lesson. Yip táai always likes to tell me 大膽啲 which basically translates to "be braver". I really want to be able to talk with her more but I just need to increase my vocabulary and improve my ability to understand first. I'm looking forward to the day where, just like at the end of The Best 2 Years, I can just casually talk with someone in Cantonese.

Yesterday we got the opportunity to meet with a guy named Arnold who is Filipino and honestly it was really nice to be able to teach a lesson in English again haha. We planned to teach him about the Plan of Salvation but he had a lot of questions about the Book of Mormon so we ended up just having a discussion about that and how it connects to the Bible. It was honestly a very good discussion and I could definitely feel the Spirit. We invited him to read the introduction of the Book of Mormon and I truly hope he tries and starts reading because I know he will feel the Spirit when he does. 

That's pretty much how life has been in Hong Kong so far! It's an adventure every day and I'm just so excited to be able to continue seeing more! I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week!

丁姊妹

Sister DelHoyo

1 Nephi 4:1

1 And it came to pass that I spake unto my brethren, saying: Let us go up again unto Jerusalem, and let us be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord; for behold he is mightier than all the earth, then why not mightier than Laban and his fifty, yea, or even than his tens of thousands?

I know that even though our challenges and troubles may seem so mighty, through God and our faith in Him, we can overcome anything!