Leih hou!

I hope everyone has been doing really well this past week! I have been doing pretty well! The language is still hard but I am slowly learning more and more. I try to learn around 20-30 words each day! It is very hard because a lot of the words are spelled the exact same but have different tones and mean completely different things. I have a little journal that I write down all my words in and its starting to become pretty big! I can only still talk about gospel related terms so it is very hard to understand what people are saying about their lives because I only know church words. But, I have continued to pray multiple times a day to be able to understand and speak the language. And I know that with hard work and trusting the Lord, I will be able to understand and speak Cantonese!

My week started off pretty great! On Tuesday we got to hear from Elder Cook which was really spiritual! He bore his testimony at the end and I cannot describe how I felt! So that was really sweet! After that everything seemed to be going really well! We taught our investigators and we asked one if they would be baptized and he said yes! So we have set a date for him to be baptized on October 13th! That was a really cool experience even though the investigator we teach is our teacher just role playing as an investigator! 

Tonight we teach our first Skype TRC lesson which is where we get to Skype someone that is in Hong Kong and teach them a 30-40 minute lesson! I am very excited about this but also kind of nervous for how it is going to go. I am afraid that I won't be able to understand the member but I know through the help of the Lord and the spirit I won't need to be able to understand the language very well; the spirit will be doing the teaching. 

Funny story of the week: on Sunday we get to watch gospel movies and to get to he good movies we have to sprint from the devotional to the movie building. We were with Elder Newsome and his companion Elder Brown who is a big guy and after the devotional Elder Brown sprinted as fast as he could to get to the movie and when we got there we didn't know what movie we were in so he stood up and yelled "EVERYBODY LISTEN." And the whole room went quiet out of fear because Elder Brown can be pretty intimidating if you don't know him. Then he said "what movie is this?" in a really soft funny loving voice and everyone just broke out laughing! 

This week Elder Newsome left for Guatemala which I was pretty sad about because we have known each other ever since we were way young, but I know he will be a great missionary! Guatemala is lucky to be getting him and Elder Brown!

Well Let me know how you all are doing! I enjoy hearing from all of you! Let me know how the sports teams are doing! I love getting those updates!

Ngoh ngoi leihdeih (Love you all) 

Gu Jeunglouh

 Elder Brown (Elder Newsome's companion)

 Elder Newsome the night before he left

 ​Everyone!

 When it almost started snowing here (Featuring Elder Siddoway)

 ​​The Cantonese to English Book of Mormon

 The Cantonese Hymn Book

​A few of the other Elders in my district! (Elder Paulsin on the left and Elder Frey on the right)

 Leih Hou! 古 角那个楼和

This week has been pretty good! Nothing new really happened this week! 

The spiritual experience of the week happened when we taught our TRC Lesson (when we taught members in Cantonese.) My companion felt strongly that we should teach about faith and use Alma chapter 36 which is when they compare faith to a seed. During this lesson the whole time it went really well and the member was responding really well and I was understanding most of what she said. Then I asked her to share her favorite scripture on faith. She shared 1 Nephi 7:9-15 and then explained it. Even though I couldn't understand probably about 70% of what she said, I felt the spirit way strongly! It was super cool just to see how much faith meant to her! I did understand one part she said though. She said that when she came to Utah for school, she was really nervous but she kept having faith in Christ and relying on him and she knew everything would be okay. That was really cool to hear. My testimony on faith grew a lot more after that lesson!

hou yiga ngoh wuih gong gwaanyu ngo ge tohmbuhn (now I am going to tell about my companion). Just a little bit about my companion: he is really cool and I love him to death! He is really good at singing and back in South Dakota where he is from people love listening to his music! He makes rap music but he can also sing. He is insanely good at singing! He knows like every song and he has a few songs that his family sent him that were of him singing. So every night we listen to music that he has made and we just jam out with all the people in our room. He also really loves Tech Decks so his mom sent him some and every where we go he plays with them and hes been trying to teach me how to do some tricks with them... but I am awful at it! 

Anyways I have been learning a lot at the MTC! It has humbled me so much as well! I am very grateful for this opportunity to go out on this mission! I have already made a ton of memories that I will never forget and I am so thankful for everyone here! Especially Douh Jeunglouh (Elder Siddoway) he has been a huge example to me and he helps me with the language a lot! He has shared his testimony with me a few times and I learn from him every time he shares! 

I would love to hear from all of you! Anything helps! I would especially love to get some score updates on soccer games that I will be mission in the champions league! 

ngoh ngoi leihdeih sih sih

Gu Jeunglouh

This is Elder Adams in our room

 I just felt like taking this before our Sunday class

 ​Elder Adams again

​This is what the lunch room looks like... we always cut infront of everyone to get food first

 This is how small our room is. (Elder Siddoway in the back)

 Just working on Cantonese (the dude in the back ground is one of the teachers)

September 11, 2017

I Don't Know What Week I am On

leihdeih gamgo singkeih hou mah? Ligo singkeih feiseun ge hou! ngoh yiga seung heui Heung Gong! 

This week has gone by pretty quickly! Not much has changed in my schedule! We still wake up at 6:24 and we still have to wait in lines to get food. 

This week my companion and I were made sacrament coordinators. Basically if anyone makes us mad or annoys us we have the power to make them bless the sacrament (in Cantonese), make them pray (in Cantonses), or make them pass the sacrament. So we always joke around with the people in our district about that! 

Then on Tuesday, Elder Dallin H. Oakes came to speak to us for the weekly devotional! He taught us about being missionaries. He told us about the importance of being set apart as missionaries and having a "mighty change of heart." Only when we have a change of heart and convert ourselves can we start to be successful missionaries. I thought this talk was really cool and it was exactly what I needed to hear!

We have been teaching our investigator all  about the gospel. And he is starting to open up more to us and tells us that what he is feeling is good. He's been reading the Book of Mormon and praying about it. So the next lesson, Elder Nesbit and I have decided that we are going to teach him about baptism and as him to be baptized! I can't wait for that lesson! 

My Cantonese is coming along slowly still. I can hold simple conversations but I am learning more each day and I know that through the help of Christ and working hard, I can learn this language! 

We had some fun by chilling in our rooms and just making our own music and just singing songs! Elder Nesbit is really good at singing! He has made a few songs and he showed them to us! He is really good! 

I'd love to hear from all of you and what you guys are up to! Continue keeping me updated on how life is on the outside world and how all the soccer teams are doing!

Also another funny thing that happened to us is one of the Elders in our room was sleep talking in the middle of the night and he was yelling way loud and then all of the sudden he started yelling in Cantonese! It was pretty scary but I thought it was way cool that he was yelling in Cantonese in his sleep! From that I can tell that we are somewhat improving on our language. 

Ngoh Ngoi Leihdeih (I Love you all)

Gu Jeunglouh

 

We took this picture at the fountain of the Provo temple on our Sunday church walk!

 All the Elders in my district!

 ​The Provo Temple

We were "studying Cantonese" in this picture.

ALMOST HALF WAY DONE WITH THE MTC (week 3)

Well we just started our fourth week here which means we only have 5 short weeks left until we can finally fly to Hong Kong! The days here go by slow but the weeks seem to go by fast which is good! Not too much happened this week. 

One interesting thing happened: we taught our first TRC. A TRC is when we teach real members in Cantonese! So, Elder Nesbit and I were pretty nervous on the day before we taught. We prepared a short lesson and called it good. The next day we went in and taught and the lessons couldn't have gone any better! The guy that we taught asked us for our emails because he wanted to hear about our adventures in Hong Kong and then he wrote us a really nice note saying that the lesson that we taught was perfect for him because he was going through some tough trials in life and our lesson that we taught was about enduring to the end and having faith that Christ will help you overcome your problems! It was really cool! He also said our Cantonese was really good for only being in here for about 3 weeks! That was really good for me to hear because I thought that we haven't really been improving! But I know that if we just keep praying and working hard on the language then we will eventually be able to keep learning more and be able to speak more clearly!

Other than that, my schedule was basically the same as last week! It was pretty fun though! The nights are the greatest part about being in the MTC! All the people speaking Chinese on their missions gathered in the main area of the dorms for an event that they call "saucin." They brought out the hot sauce (it was smokin' hot) we all put a drop of it on a cracker and ate it! People were crying after they had eaten it! One Elder even jumped in the shower with all his clothes on and just sat there drinking the shower water!! I wish I would have gotten picture of it but I was too slow! Saucin was a good time! Then another night a few of the Mandarin missionaries are leaving on Monday so we had a huge ceremony that "has been past down from our forefathers" or just passed down from the other missionaries that have left the MTC. That was pretty cool and funny! 

That's about it for the week! The food here still sucks. Its the same food every week and I am getting tired of it. But we only have 5 more weeks of it. 

I'd love to hear from all of you! Anything at all would be cool! Here we are cut off from all communications from the outside world so i'd love to get updates on how the English Premier League is doing or anything going on in the world! 

Ngoh Ngoi leihdeih! (Love you all!)

Elder Gubler (Gu Jeunglouh) 

This was one of the Elders in my district that was crying after he ate the hot sauce for the "saucin"

 This was the hot sauce we ate! Its called: Da' Bomb

 I got to see my cousin who is going to Philippines, Cebu mission! Honestly so good to see him!

 ​These are the two Cantonese teachers I have. They both served in Hong Kong! They are both way smart and I love them both! The one my left side is a freaking genius and is creating his own clothing company that he says will rival Supreme!

 These are all the Elders in my district!

Saturday is for the boys! This is after Aidan got his tooth surgery! ​