Thursday, June 21, 2012

We had a really cool week this week. Humbling, but cool!

Hello!!!
Wow!  Crazy Day!  Sister H. isn't my companion anymore!!!!!! Sad!  But the good thing is my companion is Sister K.!!! (She's my friend C. G.'s roommate) I'm excited!  She's super sweet and we've been friends since my first day in HK.  Sister K. had to come out of Macau today, so Sister L. moved to Macau, Sister H. is now with Sister L.'s old companion and Sister K. is with me!  Macau is just the wild card in our moves calls!  Actual moves calls are next Tuesday.  I'm almost definitely staying, otherwise Sister K. would be off-white washing a 3 ward area!!! Nuts!  But we don't know what will happen.  Sister K. is going to try calling the Assistants to the President tonight to see to what extent she can unpack her stuff, so we might have a better idea then.  It is also her year mark tomorrow, so we went with her MTC district to an Indian buffet, it was sooooo yummy but I am STUFFED!!! (not an uncommon feeling in HK! haha)  Luckily, we don't have correlation at the Chan's tonight.  I thought I was going to be amongst a ton of old missionaries that I didn't know, and then I realized that these are my brothers and sisters in the mission!  They're just starting to go senior companion and train too.  They're only 2 moves older than me!!! Yikes!!!  
Speaking of Senior companion, I'm senior companion right now.  It makes sense because I know the area and such, but I'm a bit worried.  The best way to have a companionship is not to distinguish, but I realized last move that there is a responsibility that comes with being a Senior companion and I really could feel Heavenly Father leading our companionship sometimes.  I'm a little nervous about how to fulfill my responsibility as a Senior companion when my "junior" companion is 2 moves older than me!  Yikes!  As with the last move, I know Heavenly Father knows best and miracles are in the future!!!!

Ok, I'll do your questions first.  

1 – Are you still running?  
Usually, we rotate between running and yoga days.  I'm not sure what Sister K. will want to do, but luckily Sister F. wants to get into running, so I might still have a running buddy!  If it doesn't look like I've been running, blame it on the 3 wards who all have members who LOVE to cook good food!  hahaha!!
2 – Do you have to get up earlier to run?  You get 30 minutes to exercise, right?  
We usually get up 20 minutes earlier because it takes awhile to actually get downstairs so we can exercise.

Thanks for sending me the updates from everyone!  Everything back home seems SUPER foreign to me right now.  America, short houses, grass, BYU, everything is just weird, but I'm sooooooo happy! 

This is our last week with President Chan as the mission president!  Crazy!!! I'm sad to see him go, but excited to see how the new mission president runs the mission.  I've heard a lot of people predict that he's going to do a lot of re-aligning and changing.  I'm excited for the chance to improve even more!  

We had a really cool week this week.  Humbling, but cool!  We have a lot of investigators right now, but a lot of them are busy or hard to schedule so we haven't had a lot of lessons.  We've also been trying to build a stronger relationship with our Sha Tin ward.  So these were the 2 big challenges of our weekly planning.  As we planned I felt that we could find 3 new people to teach last week.  That was a high number considering we haven't been able to find  one for the past few weeks, but we set it as our goal.  We also realized that if our Sha Tin members were too busy to meet with us, the least we could do is try to run into them while we were out working.  We asked a ward member for some suggestions for where there were a lot of members live and plan finding time in those places.  Then before we went finding we prayed not only to find people to teach, but that we could see our members and that they would see us out working.  We made a goal to find for at least 15 minutes every day and practiced simple ways to testify of the restored gospel simply and powerfully.  That sounds simple, but I noticed that our finding was more effective, we weren't as tempted to stay inside and make calls if it was raining (which it did) we went out and offered to help people who had forgotten their umbrellas!!! (It was so fun!)  Our finding was more sincere because we really truly wanted every person we talked to, to feel our love and joy.  We taught 1 lesson the whole week. . .  BUT!!!! on Saturday the Mandarin Elders met with a couple and taught them a lesson, but realized their Cantonese is better and gave them to us to teach!!! That's 2 new investigators!!  Sunday night we still didn't have 3 so we made a ton of calls!! Finally at 9:45 we needed to stop and plan. I was thinking about it that night and wondered why I felt like we could have 3 new investigators but didn't, then I realized that my calls that night had been more successful than ever!  Instead of expecting people to hang up, I was expecting them to listen and some of them did.  Maybe Heavenly Father didn't want us to have this goal so we could find 3 new people, but so that we could grow and improve.  This was such a testimony to me that missions aren't about the numbers, but we constantly need to be striving to improve.  Also, Heavenly Father knows soooooo well what we need.  Honestly, we have no idea what's best for us.  The best we can do is to rely on him and follow His guidance through the spirit and we will end up better, happier and more blessed than we could EVER imagine!  

I know this gospel is true.  It has to be.  It is changing people's lives so much!  Heavenly Father loves us so much and has given us a plan so that we can be happy and return to live with Him after we die.  He doesn't expect us to be perfect, but expects us to do our best and improve every day.  Because we are not perfect he has given us His son Jesus Christ to suffer for our sins.  Heavenly Father has promised that if we have faith in Jesus Christ, repent and improve each day, through baptism promise to always remember him and then keep this commitment through our lives, we will be worthy to live with Him.  What a blessing!  He has given us soooooo much guidance along the way.  Through prayer, scripture study, going to church and of course the guidance of the Holy Ghost, we can always know how to be on the right path and do Heavenly Father's will.  I know this is true and it brings me such happiness because I really don't have to worry about anything else!!!

I love you all so much and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Kasey

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