Call me a sushi chef

大家好! Happy Monday everyone!

This week was pretty normal but there were some good things that happened so here's the rundown 😁

On Monday we had kind of a busy pday because Sister Ho and I went on a sort of wild goose chase looking for Sister Santos' bye bye book. So that was fun 😃

On Tuesday we didn't do anything crazy. We just had our studies and some finding which were both pretty normal. We tried to have a lesson with a guy that we found from call finding the other day but he never picked up :/ We did get to have an impromptu lesson with a less active member that we randomly called though so that was pretty good.

On Wednesday we tried out a new sort of idea for finding that President had. Basically we went on our normal walk but also tried to pass out ECG cards while we did. We only passed out one unfortunately :') but we got to wave and say hi to a lot of people which was good. Later on, we called a lady that the elders before us used to teach and we briefly got to know her and bore our testimonies. She seems really nice so I hope we can get to know her more! Other than that, I organized and updated our physical area books a ton and then we had our ECG! This week we taught about countries and travel which was super fun. We got to teach everyone different famous things from different countries and all sorts of obscure words that go along with them.

On Thursday we had district council which was good as usual. We talked about some different gospel questions and discussed how our areas are progressing. Then that night we had 3 lessons in a row! The first one was with our less active friend Lam Hingdaih where we shared the story of Captain Moroni fortifying the, previously weak, city of Noah and how it can be related to us needing to fortify our own weak spots. Then we had a lesson with Gwok sinsaang where we talked about church and the importance of it. He still hasn't been reading and praying because he's been busy :( so if you guys could pray for him to remember to do that, that would be amazing. Lastly we had a lesson with a member who just moved into our ward named Kyut jimuih. She's originally from Taiwan so her Cantonese has a Mandarin accent but her Cantonese is so good considering it's not her first language! We shared with her about Nephi in 2 Nephi 4 when he's dealing with all of these stressful things but has peace because he trusts in God. We talked about how God will support us through every hardship and trial, we just have to trust Him and let Him into our lives through things like daily prayer, reading the scriptures, and listening to the Holy Ghost.

On Friday we taught our new friend George which was really interesting. We wanted to teach the first half of the Restoration but we only got to the third point, about prophets, because he asked so many questions. They were good questions though so it was good. We talked a lot about President Nelson, the Priesthood, the Book of Mormon, and all sorts of things. Later that day we also had a district language study and finding. In the language study we played a fun game where we made up a story in Cantonese and it turned out to be pretty strange haha. Then for the finding we called some of the elders' potentials. After that I had my LPO where I taught the 10 commandments for the first time. It was really stressful but I did quite well! I'll definitely have to do it again next week but I'm proud of the progress I've made 😂. We were supposed to have a lesson with our friend Pam that day but unfortunately she forgot :/. But the good news is instead we got to help out with a phone call that the Mandarin sisters had. This guy that they're teaching loves to sing these old Chinese songs so Sister Ho kept coming up with songs and he would sing the whole thing to us. It was fantastic. Then we sang I Am A Child of God in Mandarin to him so that's epic.

Saturday was pretty crazy as usual with all of our activities. First off, President Chan is putting on this advanced Cantonese class for the natives to improve their Cantonese so it's more refined and they can be good candidates for MTC teachers. Sister Ho was doing it so I got to sit in with her and I was suprised by how many Americans wanted to join because this class is pretty advanced. Basically President talked about how we need to use less slang and lazy pronunciation in our speaking. It was interesting to hear the natives try to talk without saying the casual ending particles like "la" or "aa". Who knew. Then later on, our first activity of the day was for sushi making! The member who taught it is Sister Tai, the wife of one of the members of the 70, Elder Tai. Sister Tai is Japanese and is really good at making sushi so it was fun to see how the pros do it. Making sushi is actually soooo simple! All you need is some cooked rice, sushi vinegar (which you can make with regular vinegar), some seaweed, a mat to roll it with (or some tin foil), and then whatever toppings you want to put inside. We put imitation crab, cucumbers, and spicy mayo in ours and it was soooo good. Sister Tai also taught how to make sushi egg which is this sweet egg that you put in the sushi but none of us really wanted it enough to make it at the time haha. All I know is that homemade sushi slaps and I will definitely be making it again when I get back to the US of A. The next activity we had was the dance activity which was so fun! Sister Chung and Sister Bills taught the class this week and we learned another really fun dance! That class always whips me into shape 😂 Next was the game activity and only one person came :') so sad. I would say you guys in America should join so we have more people but 1) it'd be at like 6am your time and 2) that's not the point. We played a game called Avalon which was pretty interesting and then played some rounds of pictionary which always hits. Then, after we finished, it was time to teach one of my favorite people, Sunny! We taught him and his brother about temples which was so sweet!! They're the best :')

On Sunday we had stake conference which was pretty sweet. The first hour and a half was a lot of great short talks and testimonies and then the second half was a Q&A for the youth of the church. I may or may not have fallen asleep for the second half but listening to a foreign language for that long is really tiring 😅 Sunny went to the whole thing though which is sooo awesome! Everything else that day was pretty normal. We did our studies and had a lot of meetings but it was all really good! Then at the end of the day we got to have an English lesson with Jens as usual which is always fun.

That's pretty much it for the events of this week! Pretty chill, pretty fresh. And now for an even chiller and even fresher ~spiritual thought~

So this week I had the priveledge of studying in 1 Nephi about Lehi's dream and Nephi seeing the dream himself. After reading their accounts, I watched the church produced Book of Mormon video about the dream and, first of all I always feel the Spirit so strongly when watching those videos, but also everything about the dream in general just hit me so powerfully this time around. I realized what an amazing vision it is that Lehi was shown and even more amazing is the meaning behind it all. And the fact that we are blessed enough that God had it be written down for us to read and study today?? It's so incredible. Essentially, in Lehi's dream he is shown how straight and narrow the path is that leads to eternal happiness and living with Heavenly Father again and how few people actually reach that. There are so many other places they go, wandering in a cloud of darkness, drowning in a filthy river, or even entering into a large building full of others laughing and mocking those who reach that eternal happiness. The cloud of darkness is temptation, the river is the depths of Hell, and the building is the pride and vain imaginations of the world. Are these places where you want to be? Are you going to let the temporary gratifications of the world distract you from the one joy that will actually last? I know that life is hard, it wasn't meant to be easy, and sometimes you will be tempted to turn a different way, but I urge you to remember, remember what your true desire is. If that is eternal happiness, don't let yourself fall off the path, and if you have, come back to it. I can promise you that it is where you will find the most joy and peace, in this life and forever.

If you haven't read this story recently, I encourage you to go back and read it again (1 Nephi 8, 11-12).

I love all of you! My email is always open if you ever need someone to talk to :)

丁姊妹

Sister DelHoyo