"Katch Eye Bang"

Note from Barbara:

If you would like to send Kasey a letter, her mailing address is posted on the right side of this page. It costs $0.98 to mail a letter. If you would like to send a short message to her, then post a comment to this blog and I will send your comments in next week’s email. To post a comment, click on the word "comment" at the bottom of each post. I will not be posting the comments to the blog, just sending them to Kasey.  She would love to hear from you!

Hi Everyone!

I'm so glad that the ward Christmas party went well!  Sounds like you got creative!  We have a gingerbread house competition next week so I'll have to remember your ideas!  Thank you so much for the Christmas ornaments in advance!  Wow!  I'm soooo excited!  There are several people I can think of already to give them to!  It is finally started to click, and I am really learning to love these people.  The past few lessons we've taught I've just been overwhelmed with the love Heavenly Father has for these people and I want so badly to teach in a way that they can feel the Spirit and want to accept this Gospel.  Not only that, but I want to be able to serve and help them and understand them better.  Even more motivation to learn the Language!!!  We're hopefully having our first baptism on Christmas!!!  Sister A, her sister was baptized about a year ago.  Her family might be going out of town, so we might have to move it, but I hope not!  I am so excited for her!  She has an amazing testimony!  She shared some of her thoughts about reading the Book of Mormon the other day, and I was just blown away!!! She is awesome!! We are also working with this lady who was baptized last year; we talked to her yesterday about enduring to the end and the importance of the temple.  Next week we're going to walk around the temple grounds with her.  She was so excited when I invited her to come!  Now, I'm so excited to go!  The temple is such a great blessing!  Heavenly Father really is preparing ways for His Children to hear His gospel!  We just started teaching Sister Ae, she has two sons who have a lot of energy so the first two lessons with her were a bit difficult, but last Tuesday we were able to teach her at the church while her sons were at school.  As we were teaching I realized we could help her by teaching about Joseph Smith and the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ exactly the way we practiced teaching it during our companion study the night before!  It was incredible!  We try to teach each lesson to meet the needs of everyone we teach.  That can be hard, especially in a different language, so it really was a miracle that we had already practiced before! There are so many amazing people here!  I'll tell more at the end of my e-mail if I can!

It is really really amazing to have so much support from everyone back home.  Seriously, it means so much to me, I'm sitting in this small Indonesian travel shop in Hong Kong, almost crying, but I'll try to hold it in, it might freak the Elders out. . .

I'm trying to decide what I want to tell you about from the week!  Aaaiya!  I already told you about the people a bit, so food!  We had Pizza Hut last week!  I like it better here than in the US!  It's fancier. and there's more options.  We had a pizza with shrimp, scallops and some other kind of fish, it was really good! Sunday, we visited a family and they served us a sweet red bean soup that's kind of a desert here.  Sister C. said most foreign Missionaries don't like, I didn't think it was too bad, although at the end, my mouth was a bit dry so it was hard to swallow.  My intestines handled it too!  I was worried about eating that many beans at one time! Last Thursday, we went to Wankok (sp?) it's where all the touristy cheap shopping is.  While we were there Sister C. bought me something that sounds like "Katch Eye Bang" obviously not actually that, but it was a waffle with peanut butter, sugar and sweetened condensed milk folded in half to make a sandwich.  AHHH!! soooooo good!!  I've been craving them all week!  I've been really lucky so far, the members haven't force fed us, I've heard they do though and they LOVE making the white people eat!  Sister C. says she always gets out of it because even though she's not from Hong Kong, she's Asian, so I'm in for it sooner or later! 

Saturday we have a Stake Christmas musical!  The missionaries are singing Joy to the World, and I'm in a group of 5 missionaries singing "Who would Send a Baby."  I'm excited it will be good!

This week we also had exchanges.  I was with Sister Ch.,  who is from Hong Kong, but I surprisingly understood her Cantonese better than anyone so far!  I guess it's good to be able to understand a native!!!  It was good!  I learned a lot!  Especially since we stayed in TKO.  There are so many things that I didn't realize Sister C. always did and!  Wow!  I'm going to have to be more on top of things!

Language Success Stories:

1) Yesterday I made 2 phone calls on my own and scheduled both people!  They didn't even use English!  Another call though, Sister C. was listening with me, and then would tell me what to say, problem was after the call, I had no idea what I said!! haha

2) I understood more at coorellation meeting this week than I did last week!  I'm improving!!

3) I had a converstation in Sign Language on the bus yesterday.  It was a man and his wife, he had spent some time in the US, so he knew some ASL, and they were from Britain traveling in HK, I think. . . but I was able to understand quite a bit!! More than I can Cantonese, but that's ok.  It was sooooo fun!  

Well, I've got to go!  I love you all and hope you have a great week!!!!

Love,

Sister Nelson