The One Where Mindy Talks About Her New Companion

Lovely email from our lovely missionary! few days late, but better late than never, eh? hope you enjoy! she's killing it out there is Hong Kong :)



My Companion Ate a Whole Fish Today

Hellooooo! How are you all?

Sorry I didn't send out an email last week. I got to skype my family and then didn't really have time to send out a big email. But here am I, safe and sound and loving Tsim Sha Tsui. I don't really have any new pictures for you all because my camera has been dead for the past two weeks and I haven't had time (or the will) to buy batteries yet. Sorry. 

Let's see... what fun thing can I share about the mission this week? Sister Mendoza and I are still trying to get a feel for the area. We've actually only been able to see about half of our area because it's so big! We have most of the population of Hong Kong living in our area, so there's a lot of souls to save! ;) We're hoping to be able to see the rest of it in the next couple of weeks. 

Sister Mendoza and I are having a lot of fun. I've been teaching her english idioms and she's been teaching me how to be a better cook, a better person and a better missionary. I definitely get the better end of the deal in this companionship. In China (and apparently the phillipines), people eat the whole fish, except for the bones and fins. It's been a fasinating experience for me to watch just how much of one fish people can eat. I wish I'd taken a picture of the fish that she ate today before she ate and then after so that you could see what I mean. It was quite impressive (I'm not a fan of fish so I just watched her eat it while I ate my pasta. To my credit, I did try a couple pieces). 

Sister Mendoza and I have three solid investigators that we are teaching, one is a grandma, one is a 10 year old and one is a mom. We've got quite the wide range. I'm learning a lot about planning and teaching lessons according to needs and circumstances. It's VERY easy as a missionary to get in the habit of teaching according to your lesson plan and your knowledge, not based on the promptings of the Spirit and the needs of those you teach. Teaching by the Spirit is so necessary when you are trying to help people become truly converted. You truly cannot bring people to Christ without it. 

I'm grateful to be a missionary when I have so many tools available to me and I'm grateful for all the trials, fun times and crazy things that are helping me grow and become more like my Savior. 

Adventure of the week: I actually have two. Hong Kong has some interesting people in it, to keep it short and sweet, a pohpo hit me with her umbrella this week while we were less-active finding. The other one is that while I was trying to send this email, the internet at the library went out and after waiting 45 minutes for it to work, we were told that the internet in all the libraries in Hong Kong is out right now. We then sprinted across the city to an internet cafe. All the adventures of being a missionary in Hong Kong. :) I'm loving every minute of it. 

I hope you all are embracing your adventures and that you are taking the time to listen to the Spirit and letting it guide your life. It's just as important for you to become more deeply converted through the Spirit as it is for my investigators to become converted through the Spirit. 

Love you all! 

Sister Adams

The One Where Mindy Got Her First Transfer

Sorry i haven't posted this yet! it's almost time for this next week's email. i know, i'm a slacker. but hey, i'm on vacation, so cut me some slack.
anyway, here is this last week's email from our beautiful missionary! enjoy :)

Surprises, surprises.... but never coincidences.

Hello everybody!

To start out, I got moved areas in the last transfer call. I'm now serving in Tsim Sha Tsui with Sister Mendoza, who will be going home after this transfer. I don't know how I got so lucky to be companions with two people going home but I'm not even being sarcastic when I say that I love them with my whole heart and it's HARD to send a companion home.

So, Tsim Sha Tsui. Sister Mendoza and I are actually opening the area for sister missionaries, which means that we will be re-establishing sister missionary work here in the ward and area. The elders that have been serving here are absolutely amazing. If I were their mom, I would be so proud of them. They were taking REALLY good care of the area and all the investigators, members and less-actives. The ward is VERY excited to have sisters back in the area and is already setting up plans and actions to feed us and help us meet their friends. Sister Mendoza and I are stressed but blessed (which I think is going to be the statement that describes this next transfer, or better yet, my whole mission).

Tsim Sha Tsui is where the true heart of Hong Kong is. There are A LOT of people here, a lot of apartment buildings, a lot of businesses, a lot of museums and just a lot of everything. Sister Mendoza and I are having fun trying to get everything organized and trying to figure out the layout of our area and the Elders have been a huge help.

I'll be honest, when I found out I was moving areas or in reality, when I found that my previous area, Sham Shui Po, was being shut down for sister missionaries, I cried HARD. Sham Shui Po is a unique area because the missionaries that take care if it are also the Office Elders and the Assistants to the President (aka: VERY busy Elders). Those elders already have SO much to do during the day that I really didn't understand how they were going to be able to take on our work as well as their own work. I honestly didn't think I would ever cry while I was on my mission but when that love and worry for your area and the people in it hits you like a wall, there's no holding back.

I have full trust in Heavenly Father. He wouldn't ask Sister Mendoza and I to open an area if he didn't trust us and he wouldn't ask the elders to take on the entire Sham Shui Po area if he didn't think they could manage it all. I also know that Sister Mendoza and I cannot open this area on our own. We are relying heavily on the Lord's help and on the help from the ward. I'm grateful that Heavenly Father has put so many wonderful people in my life to help lift me and

My week has been full of looking at files, goodbyes, meetings, greetings, exhaustion and a new witness that God knows His children perfectly and He knows how to help us progress, even if it's through hard things.

Funny of the week: While explaining to the Elders in Sham Shui Po about one of my investigators, I said "You can be bold with her when asking her the repent" and one of the Elders thought I said " You can be bold with her when asking her to WEAR PANTS" and he said, "Wear pants??!? What kind of situations are you getting us into?" It was really funny. I think being bold with both situations is the best thing to do ;). We were all a little over-tired this week.

There have been other funny moments because my new companion, Sister Mendoza, is just as awkward and silly as I am. She's from the Phillipines and is VERY loving. I'm incredibly blessed to have her with me. I can already tell we're gonna have some fun together. She used to serve in Kowloon City which is right next door to Tsim Sha Tsui, so she already knows most of the members really well and they have been asking her to come serve in their ward for months. I truly know that the Lord answers prayers because one of the most said phrases by our members is "We've been praying for sister missionaries to serve here for months!" God answers prayers on HIS time, never doubt that He's got it all figured out for you.

I love you all so much. Here's a picture of my cute Pohpo investigator.