Week 21 - Tim is so strong; Korean Fried Chicken; Hong Kong Island, Christmas Party, Chinese traditional medicine

Not too much to report for this week. Our friend who is close to baptism, Tim, is still going strong. We taught him about the Word of Wisdom on Tuesday and he totally was immediately willing to live it. Tea is a big issue for people around here because it is such a huge cultural thing, so I started to explain that there are some things in the Word of Wisdom that we just need to have faith on, like coffee or tea, because we may not know exactly why we are commanded not to consume them. He cut me off and was like "Oh, no, that makes sense. People can get addicted to those kinds of stuff too." Elder Finklea and I were just like "Great!" What a kid. He's always surprising us. Tuesday, before we even finished saying hello, he pulls out his copy of the Book of Mormon having read 7 chapters ahead of where we asked him to read and had all of these awesome questions. That was soooo awesome to see. He's real about it all. 

Wednesday, nothing too special happened. One of our new friends who came to church last week canceled his lesson with us so that was a bummer, but a member took us out for Korean fried chicken. It was super tasty so it made up for our friend.

Thursday, we taught Tim again about tithing and fast offerings. No issues there either. The only thing that makes him cooler is the fact that he's super into boxing. 

Friday, I went out to Hong Kong Island with Elder Finklea for another choir performance in a mall. It was super awesome, I got to hand out a lot of pass along cards with candy to passersby. People loved it and took lots of photos and videos. Some people wouldn't even stop walking on their way and would just snap a photo as they walked. Pretty funny. 

Saturday, we had our ward Christmas party which was a blast. We had blasted our potentials list with texts about it hoping to get some new friends to come. Three said that they would and zero actually showed up. We had a fun time nonetheless. The only bummer really was that afterwards, I got really sick to my stomach. 

Sunday, I woke up feeling not so great but forced myself to go to church. Once we got back, I slept for 5 hours and then tried not to throw up as I did studies. Elder Kwok tried to do some Chinese medicine on me by having me rub Mentholatum clockwise on my stomach and then having him pinch and pop my back.  I'm feeling alright this morning after sleeping really well but I don't know if it was that or the clockwise rubbing or the back pinching that fixed it. 

Nothing too special besides those things this week. I'm getting pretty excited for Christmas even though not much will happen. We will do something to make it fun though.

Week 20 - Tim, Sister Phillip's Interview, Service, Fancy Foods, God Loves Everyone

I don't really know how to start this email this week, but hopefully I'll think of something clever and witty so you think I'm funny and not just funny looking. 

This week was a pretty darn good week, but a really tiring week. We have been hitting our finding windows pretty hard having almost two a day every day. Nothing special to report there. We go out. Say a prayer. Try to say "hi" and stop some people. They're always too busy. What else is new. Every once in a while we'll get to share a quick message and hopefully exchange numbers, but so far they either aren't willing to give us anything or block us immediately. That's why I'm so grateful that we have Tim to teach. He's super amazing. On Monday, we taught him the principle of obedience and the first few commandments. This is always the scary part of teaching because people usually have a lot of questions about the commandments or have trouble understanding obedience. But Tim's a legend and totally was like "Yeah, makes total sense. I'll start now". Gotta love the guy. We are meeting with him twice weekly now that his date is coming up. 

On Tuesday, it was time for regular interviews with President. To save time though, he only interviewed the people who he didn't get a chance to interview 5 weeks ago when we came in. Bummer, but I got to have a "Sister Philips interview" instead. It was so much fun, she is the nicest lady. She asked about Christmas traditions and things so that she could try to make the Christmas celebrations at least somewhat like home. She also told me to not worry about making mistakes in the language because when she was learning English, she learned it was okay to let people know she couldn't understand them and then they'd be so much more open to helping her learn. I've been trying to apply that and it has been super helpful. 

Thursday, we had our usual Crossroads service. We dug into some more shipping containers taking stock of toys and school supplies and things. It was pretty fun but one container had a ton of spiders just chilling on all the boxes. Thursday was the day of way too much food, because when we got home, we got invited to dim sum with the Elder's Quorum president and some people from the ward. The other missionaries in the area also got invited. It was super tasty but I probably ate too much. I'm really learning to like the fish dumplings that they have here. They are super popular. Then, after another lesson with time which went super great, he's got no problem keeping the Sabbath day holy, we had another meal invite. This time, it was our friend Andy from two weeks ago who wanted to take us out for dinner with the mandarin Elders, a couple from the office, and the Philips. He took us to a waaaay nice place. It was fun to talk with him again and the Philips. We ate roasted baby pig, roasted goose, shark fin soup, lobster, and a super fancy cake from a nice bakery. I've probably never had such a rich-person meal in my life. Absolutely crazy. I did feel bad about eating the shark fin soup but I couldn't just refuse when he was paying so much. Now the sharks are going to come back to get me someday. 

Friday, I did some finding in an area that our MTC teacher used to live in and showed us on Street View. That was cool.

Saturday, I went with Elder Mumford and Elder Kwok for most of the day while Elder Finklea went to two choir performances. We had a lot of fun finding down at the pier together. A very fine lady is now praying for us each and every night to stop corrupting the bible. So that was fun. We celebrated our exchange and the end of the week by getting Taam Jai (hong kong ramen) and mango drinks. So good.

Sunday we had a friend who texted us earlier in the week come to church. He has met missionaries before but only now can meet with us. So that was cool except he stayed for the Sunday School lesson about the book of Revelation and Joseph Smith Translation. Yeah... instead of milk, this guy got straight into the gristle. But he still wants to come back so that was good. Then I had to follow Elder Finklea to two more choir performances. It was really cool, but I mostly just sat there or turned pages for the pianist.

Today, we got some more baau. My favorite is the coconut covered honey butter filled one. Can't be eating those very often though. Now we are picking up my film and getting my camera fixed.

It has been a good week to be a missionary. I really have got to feel the love that God has for everyone. And when He says everyone, He MEANS everyone. Sometimes I'll not want to talk to someone because they don't look like the kind of person who would be interested, but Elder Finklea will talk to them and have a really good spiritual conversation with them. Your background or circumstances really don't matter that much. Everyone is invited and everyone can experience His love. 

See you all later!

Week 19 - Andy, Our Canadian Friend; Harry staying strong; Crossroads Service with school supplies for Syrian refugees; Quizlet; Choir and Professional Beatboxing Elder; 4 Meals on Sunday and Talk on Faith - "Well you gave it your best shot!"

This week has been a pretty interesting week.

P-day, we hung out with our friend named Andy. He lives in Canada usually but comes to treat the missionaries everytime he comes back to Hong Kong. He's not a member but basically knows everything about the church and loves it. He goes to church every week both here and in Canada. He loves to take the missionaries out to eat in both places to very nice restaurants. He took us to HKU to meet his accounting professor friend who is a member from Utah that has been living in Hong Kong with his family. So cool. They wouldn't let us go into the college however because of the craziness going on. Then he took us to a an "American" Steakhouse type thing where he got us lamb, pork chops, and sirloin steak. We thanked him very profusely at every opportunity, but he always just tells us that we should talk less and eat more. What a guy.

Tuesday, we had an... interesting morning. We go eat breakfast with this very old man in our ward that lives in a tiny government apartment. He is not very mobile but somehow takes care of himself. We go over, he makes us breakfast and we help him with stuff or teach him some English words. This time though, he pulled out some English words that previous missionaries had given him and asked what they were. These dumb missionaries had taught him a bunch of different potty words and he had forgotten what they meant. We did not enjoy trying to teach him what they meant in two-year-old's 

English. We did some finding, a turnover lesson with the other Elders in our apartment, and then got Mexican food from a stand in the mall with a kid from the ward.

Wednesday, Elder Finklea had a really long choir practice so I went on a split with Elder Sloan, my Canada roommate, in my area. It was fun to be the one who knew where to go and what to do for a few hours. We just did some finding in a spot I knew. We also met a recent convert that has been less active recently named Harry. Harry is one of Elder Finklea's converts from this area and Elder Finklea was super worried that there would be some big problem with the church that he would need to talk about. Luckily, he still has a strong testimony and wants to come to church, but his tutoring starts right at the same time as church. Next year, he's changing his tutoring time to be able to come to church. That was a fun relief.

Thursday, we did more service for Crossroads moving boxes from containers into trucks and taking stock. It was cool to see all the places that these boxes were bound for. That day, we loaded school supplies for Syrian refugees. Pretty cool. We also met a new friend on Thursday who has met with missionaries before, has read the entire Book of Mormon, and wanted to meet with missionaries again. We were so excited because this sounds like a golden set up. No. He just wanted to meet some new Americans and return his Book of Mormon. Yeah. Bummer. But he wants to keep meeting to talk about culture, so maybe we can change his mind... We also taught another lesson to Tim, our friend on date. He is awesome, praying on his own, reading on his own, he's excited for baptism, so we had a super awesome lesson about the Gospel of Jesus Christ where we discussed the importance of baptism a bit more. Super cool lesson.

Friday was a slower day. Lot's of finding windows, language pass-offs, all the necessary but not very exciting stuff. My language is slowly improving though. Thank goodness for Quizlet!

Saturday, the choir had its first performance in the evening. We went and the choir sang really well. There is one Elder who is a professional beat boxer and he brought the house down. Lot's of missionaries brought their interested friends and I think the Spirit was really there from the music. The dinner provided by the ward afterwards was super good too. I'm in love with mango pudding with fresh mangoes.

Sunday, I had to give a talk in church. That wasn't stressful at all. I gave it on the importance of having faith in Christ and how having faith is a choice that we have to make. I also talked about how we can grow our faith through many different ways but with an emphasis on serving those our around us. To grow our faith, first we need to act in faith. It went ok. I know the ward members really liked it because in that way that only people from Chinese culture can do, they came up to me with smiles and sincerely said "Hey, well you gave it your best shot." That's about as complimentary I could expect so I take that as a definite win. There was a huge birthday party after that too for the ward. Super tasty. 1/4 meals that we were given yesterday. Then we headed to a huge mall far away where the choir did a big performance. It drew a huge crowd and it was the job of the other Elders and Sisters to go hand out candy and passalong cards to them. We were only allowed to hand out specific cards and say "Merry Christmas". Absolutely no proselyting was the stipulation for being there. That didn't stop a few strong headed Elders, but nothing bad happened so we were ok. We got sandwiches from the members there too. Then we went to a family home evening activity in our ward. It was so much fun. Everyone was laughing, telling jokes, having a good time. We watched the new nativity video again. We ate so much good food (meal 3/4) and really got to know some of the ward members a lot better. It was also a Christmas themed activity so they all pooled to buy the missionaries gifts. So we had to walk home with huge grocery bags full of food, snacks, and a nice scarf. Super nice. We were all super grateful. Then on the way out, they bagged up the left overs for us to take home. 4/4. So awesome, the ward is so amazing. 

That's it for this week. Sorry for the longer letter. I'm truly so lucky to be serving here. Besides all the temporal benefits, there is so much spiritual learning I have been able to do here. So many little miracles. I couldn't ask for better.

- Elder Murray

Week 18 - Retraining Cantonese Listening; Apartment Cleaning; Love Companion, Love the People, Love God and Love your Mission Leaders; Thanksgiving Zone Conference and Dinner; Tim is getting baptized; Exchanges with Elder Lee;

Well this makes three weeks down in Hong Kong almost. It's so weird still. I feel like I'm getting the hang of some things, but others not so much. Cantonese is still kicking my butt. Some people speak with really weird accents or really mumble so I have to retrain my listening. Slowly, our apartment is getting cleared out of junk and garbage, but a certain member of the apartment enjoys filling the new space with more junk and garbage. At least I have my little area where I can keep things clean.

This week, we had Zone Conference with the whole mission for Thanksgiving. The thing I took away from all the trainings was something President said about his only expectations for every missionary. Number one, love your companion. Number 2, love the people. Number three, love God. Number four, love your mission President and his wife (which the handbook now has us just call "mission leaders"). I really liked that because if we really do all four of these things, all the other stuff will fall into place and our lives will be so much easier. We will truly be motivated to do the right things for the right reasons. After Zone Conference, we had a Thanksgiving feast. We had super tasty sliced ham and turkey with mashed potatoes, a weird pear salad, and pumpkin cake for dinner. It was so tasty, very nice to get some American food again.

Every day this week we have been doing a lot of finding to finally get some more people to teach. We have one kid  named Tim who is a former that wants to start taking lessons again, but that is not nearly enough to occupy our time. He's awesome though, he set a baptismal date the other day. Elder Finklea couldn't even finish getting out "Are you willing?" before Tim said "Yes!" Super cool. But the finding isn't as successful. There is a lot of walking involved, a lot of rejection, but a lot of funny stuff too. The only bummer part is that I had been experiencing some weird pain in my shoulder and chest as we would find and it really made things not fun at all. I talked with the mission nurse and it turns out I've inflamed the cartilage in my ribs or something. So now I'm on an "anti-inflammatory dose" of 12 ibuprofen a day. Sick. It's doing a lot better now though so the work goes on. 

The other cool thing that happened this week was an exchange with some Elders in Tsing Yi. I got to go be with Elder Lee and one of his companions for a day. We had a blast teaching English class, teaching a lesson to a recent convert, and getting destroyed at a ping pong activity. It was fun to talk with him about how much things have changed since high school. We also had this guy named Andy, who lives most of the time in Vancouver, take us out to dinner. It was a party, he's not a member, but he loves to treat the missionaries when he's in town. He speaks crazy good English but all at a monotone, so it is hard to get when he's joking sometimes. Elder Finklea and I are going out with him today too. 

Other than that, it's been a pretty good week. Members fed us so much this week that I didn't even touch all the groceries I bought last weekend. I'm so lucky to be here. It blows my mind every day. See you around.

-Elder Murray

Additional pictures sent last week

Week 17 - Hot Pot, Balut, Jif Jafs, Fish Balls, Doritios and Nature Valley Granola Bars; Whitewashing; Sunny Bay Service Project; Thanksgiving Ward Party

Hello again!

It's been another week in Hong Kong. For P day last week, my companion and I and the AP's went to an all you can eat hot pot meal which was super tasty. I'm having to pick back up my chopstick skills. Then we went to one of the most famous malls in Hong Kong called the Dragon Centre. Nothing too special. Malls aren't really my thing.

Tuesday, we got back to the grindstone. We are whitewashing this area, so our weekly planning was pretty short and consisted mostly of looking through hundreds of old paper records to find potentials to call. We did get to go to a hospital to teach one of Elder Finklea's recent converts. Then we've been doing a lot of finding out on the streets. Apparently street contacting has been really hard ever since the protests got bad. People either don't want to talk, or if they do, they are afraid to give us contact information or plan to meet again because "the situation is so dangerous, it could go south at any time." I think they are exaggerating things a bit, but it's crazy how much everyone is being affected here. Nonetheless, it's still fun to just be walking around Hong Kong talking with everyone. 

Wednesday, after another finding session, we had District Council. It was decent, but at the end, an Elder brought Balut for everyone to try. If you don't know, Balut is a boiled egg but inside it is a developing chicken fetus. If you every dissected a frog in biology, then you have a pretty good idea what Balut looks and smells like. Seriously, when you crack it, it just falls apart into egg yolk with baby chicken pieces embedded in. It didn't taste too bad, but I couldn't bring myself to eat much of it. Unfortunately, I don't know where the pictures went, another district member took them and I don't know where they are.

Thursday, we did a service project out in Sunny Bay for an organization called Crossroads. Sunny Bay is this pretty undeveloped part on the way to Disneyland Hong Kong . It was cool, I got to see the ocean. We did a lot of clearing of branches from around shipping containers and cutting vines and things. It was hard work, but they gave us lunch and a bunch of these packages of things called Jif Jafs. They're double chocolate oreo type things, but they are so so tasty. 

Friday was just more finding and studying. We taught a lesson to a former in the church building which was cool. We invited him to come to church with us and start meeting with missionaries again and he agreed. So now our teaching pool is up to one person.

Saturday was more of the same except in the evening, the two wards in our meetinghous held a Thanksgiving party. It was a ton of fun and all the food was super tasty. They love the missionaries around here so they handed us gift bags full of American foods like Dorito's and Nature Valley granola bars. It was super nice. I was especially grateful for the chance to practice Cantonese. All the ward members are super patient when I have to ask them to explain something or say something again. I also learned that night that I'm serving in one of my MTC teacher's home wards and got to meet some of her friends. It was just a really cool night. It felt like any other ward party at home but with a lot more fish balls.

Sunday we had hours of meetings and church so we only had time for one hour of finding and then all of our studies, meal times, and Elder Finklea's Zone Leader duties. But once again, members just kept handing us bags of food and candy to take home. It's so nice, I've gotten really good at learning how to be extra grateful in Cantonese. 

So that's been my week. Not too crazy. No protests outside our window yet but some other elders told us how they looked out their window the other night to see a flaming bus in the street. Jealous. Really though, the area I'm in is far from the heart of the craziness so that is a blessing. We don't have to spend time indoors. Today I'm hoping to go get my film developed and then see an all wooden monastery. Should be fun.

-Elder Murray

Week 16 - First Week in Hong Kong, Dim Sum, War Zone, Tiny House Apartment, Cheap Food, Cantonese Testimony

Sorry in advance if I never got to respond to your emails last week, it was a little crazy. 

Anyways, Hong Kong is pretty fetching dope. We got in on Wednesday night (or maybe Tuesday night, hard to tell) and rode a big bus from the airport to a hotel. On the way, we had to pull over for a full fleet of cop cars to whizz past us. We were all looking through the windows as we passed through the city, we saw for a split second down one street a bunch of protestors and tear gas a few blocks away so that was pretty lit. Fortunately, that's the closest we got to any violence. The hotel was nice and had a very nice western breakfast in the morning. The next day, we walked all the way to the mission office by the temple for some new missionary training. We had to take a train to the government offices to apply for our ID cards, which was super long and boring, and then we came back to walk to a dim sum place for lunch with President Philips. Before we walked, we were all told not to take any pictures or anything because we were about to walk through a battle zone. Right on the street where the temple is, there is just so much vandalism and graffiti, it really did look almost like a war zone. The bricks in the sidewalk were all pulled out and lying in the street, street signs and guard rails were pulled out to make barriers, there were spots where things had been burned, glass shards and trash were everywhere. It was crazy. This continued on for multiple blocks getting progressively worse. Apparently this had all taken place just a few days earlier right as we got the green light to go.  Honestly though, you really have to be here to understand that even though these things can happen really anywhere and can be really bad, we are in our house waaaaay before it happens and missionaries are far from being targeted by anyone. So I'm not worried at all. It does make it hard for street contacting because everyone seems kind of on edge. 

Anyways, the dim sum with president was good, I had chicken feet again which were not my favorite, but they had cinnamon covered BBQ pork buns which were to die for. Then we walked back and did interviews for the rest of the night. We also got the chance to head out with some missionaries to do some street contacting. It was a blast, I can definitely understand and speak Cantonese better than Mandarin so that's a plus of being here. President Philips is a sweet guy, super chill and super concerned about the missionaries' wellbeing. 

The next day, we left the hotel with all our luggage, took a train to the office, and met our trainers. My trainer is Elder Finklea from St. George. He's a total stud, he has been out about 10 transfers, three of which he was trained in the area where he is now training me. He's a zone leader and worked in the office for a few transfers so he's pretty familiar with the whole of Hong Kong and how to do the work. It's awesome. Our apartment is tiny which I can deal with (it's like living in a tiny house or something) but it's filthy. Elder Mumford is in the apartment too and he's freaking out.  There's trash everywhere, nothing has been cleaned in weeks.

The night we got in to our apartment, Elder Finklea and I cleaned out the office we are going to use to just have one clean space. Today, we are going to hit it hard. 

Other than that, Hong Kong is amazing. I'm in Kwai Fung which is kind of on the outskirts of the larger city but it is still packed in tight everywhere you look. It's crazy packed, our apartment is literally attached to the MTR station and separates it from the police station. Apparently it can get exciting down there sometimes late at night. Everything is so conveniently close and food is really cheap. I bought some groceries and got a sack of potatoes, a crate of 24 eggs, some dumplings, broccoli, and some other stuff for 46 Hong Kong dollars. That's like 6 US dollars! It's crazy. 

Church was super cool, I bore my testimony in Cantonese and I didn't see too many confused faces when I spoke so I'll take that as a win. The building has the universal carpeted walls that all church buildings have. The members are super nice, on Saturday night, we met one who was cleaning the church and he was just like "hey, come eat with me." He got us some really good curry. 

So I'm doing pretty good here in Hong Kong. It's still a bit of an adjustment, everything is so different, but it's really similar to Taiwan. It's really busy, really packed, but I'm just letting that all just float past me. It's hard work, but it's a cool place to be working hard.

-Elder Murray

(He didn't give descriptions with pictures but the first looks like the last with his companion in Canada and the last looks like dim sum in Hong Kong) 

Hong Kong Arrival

President Phillips sent email that they had arrived

Week 15 - Good news - on my way to Hong Kong!

Well I've got some good news. I'm on the way to Hong Kong right now. We got a call yesterday at 8:00 AM saying that we got the greenlight to leave and we would leave at 4:00 AM the next morning. So yeah. Pretty wild. I spent most of the day packing and prepping. We had to drive down to the Richmond office for dinner with President and Sister Wahlen and then slept at the AP's house. It doesn't seem real. It was weird to say goodbye to Elder Sun and Elder Tan. We're all pretty stoked because we were all fully prepared to stay for a long long time in Canada. It's also pretty sketch because we have heard a little bit of what's going on right now on the news. But we'll be fine, the areas where all the crap is going down are closed. The funny part is that the older group of Hong Kong missionaries are still stuck for another transfer due to Visa problems. Anyways, not much else happened this week, lots of lessons and finding through Tai Chi and ping pong. It's hard to leave Willoughby right now because I feel like I'm finally just getting comfortable in the area, finally able to talk somewhat with our people we are teaching. Seriously, they just barely started to acknowledge my existence, but I guess it's time to go. Wish me luck! I may have time to write a more fleshed out letter later.

-Elder Murray

Week 14 - Baptism, Canadian Toque, Halloween, Cello Playing Again, Chinese Flashcard on phone

Happy Halloween! This week has been pretty good. I'm still plucking away here in the great white north. I got a real canadian Toque (beanie) this week so that's pretty flippin sweet. 

The big exciting thing that happened this week was that our friend was baptized on Saturday. It was pretty great to see. He is the first in his family so far. We had his friend from the priest quorum baptize him. The only problem was that our friend is like 7 feet tall and the priest is like 5'2". So he had to be dunked three times, the last one on his knees. It was really cool to see how he changed afterwards though. After the confirmation yesterday, he and his family came to practice fencing in the gym. Both Elder Sun and I noticed that he seemed more confident, stood a little straighter, and just seemed more sure in who he was and what he was doing. He's in high school so that is super important to have. Hopefully is family will notice too and follow his example.

Other than that it was a pretty normal week. Lots of time was spent on my part trying to follow conversations in Mandarin and trying to chime in every once in a while, but that's rare still. It's tough, I don't have nearly as much time as I would like to study, but I'm still getting better. Thank goodness for phones so that I can have chinese flashcards on me at all times. 

On Halloween, we had to be in at 6:00, but as we were driving home, there was a huge house fire right next to the temple. It was crazy, there were a ton of fire trucks, the flames were super tall. Luckily they got it under control, but the house butts up right next to the edge of the temple property, it was pretty exciting. The house was abandoned so nobody got hurt. The mission office thought that since we had all this extra time on Halloween, it would be a great chance to deep clean our apartments. Gee... Luckily I still found time to put up some halloween decorations and carve pumpkins with Elder Sloan. It was a blast and our apartment is now sparkly clean.

Yesterday evening, Elder Tan (Elder Sloan's companion) and I went to a rehearsal for our Stake's performance of the Messiah for Christmas. Our ward mission leader was super kind and rented us instruments to play for this and service opportunities at senior care facilities. So I got to play cello for a while last night and meet some new people. There's a few members of another faith that came too so we got to chat with them for a bit. President Wahlen is keen on the idea of having us use this opportunity to reach out to people through music. In any event, it's just nice to be able to cello again. 

But yeah. That's it for this week. Life goes on. I've got that 1/8th of the way checkpoint under my belt now so that's nice. Hope things are doing pretty good on the homefront. See you later!

-Elder Murray

Week 13 - Christmas Materials and New Handbook, Mandarin and Finding Fun, Skyped Cantonese, Stay Positive and Happy

This week was a pretty darn good week if I do say so myself. We had zone conference on Tuesday where President Wahlen came and showed us all the Christmas videos and materials we'll have to use. It was super cool, no spoilers, but the church made a historically accurate nativity video and it's awesome. Part of the stuff from the missionary department for Christmas is a giant chalkboard set up thing for a big city square or something. The idea is that there are prompts or questions all around the chalkboard and we as missionaries go around talking to people about them and the church but in normal clothes, no tags, and going by our first names. Everyone is pretty stoked about that one. Also we got a little more information about the new missionary handbook coming out soon. There's been a lot of crazy and fun rumors and theories about what exactly will change with it. I personally hope there's a specific clause in there that allows missionaries to go see Star Wars episode 9, but that's just a guess. The real big change though is that it's going to be a lot more reliant on our agency to make righteous choices and be responsible. One of the big things President wanted to teach us is that we should look at everything we do with the perspective of how it will fulfill our missionary purpose, not just if it falls in line with a rule or guideline.

The work this week continues to be work. My Mandarin is getting better slowly, but I'm still practically deaf and mute in all of our lessons. It's good though, I do what I can. Our zone has been doing this "Amazing Race" type challenge thing where you have to do a bunch of objectives while out finding. One of them is to use analogy of the gospel with a rubber duck, or compliment 10 people on their shoes, or use the word llama. It's been pretty fun, making the work seem less like work. One of the brighter spots is that one of our friends this week passed his baptismal interview and is planning on getting baptized next week! This whole time we've been kind of wondering how well he's accepting what we are teaching because he's a 17 year old, but there have been little signs along the way. Like, he started to come to church in a suit, he started to pray on his own, he started to go to youth activities. Then, when we got to brass tacks about the interview questions, like being asked if he believes in God and the Restoration and stuff, he was like "Yeah, of course I believe it." So that was pretty cool to happen this week. We're still working with his family. 

Elder Sloan and I also had our first Cantonese tutoring over skype. The teacher told us that he and two other people had been hired by the MTC to specifically teach all the Hong Kong missionaries their languages so that they can be ready when things ease back up. Apparently this came directly from the Quorum of the Twelve I guess. No pressure or anything. I was planning on just focusing most of my time on Mandarin, but I guess I've got to focus on both. No problem at all...

Other than that, it's been pretty normal. I'm still getting used to things, finding a groove, but it's been a fun ride so far. I had an exchange with an Elder who is going home in a few weeks, he gave me a lot of advice on how to stay positive and happy throughout the whole two years. He had a bunch of crazy stories to tell. He had some really rough challenges to overcome, but he was always able to look back on it fondly and see the bright side of things. I'm going to try to be like that, have no regrets, just good stories. He said that's why God gives us challenges on the mission, they're tender mercies so that we can have cool stories when we get back. I like that perspective. I think it can apply to a whole lot of other stuff too.

Anyways, see y'all around, eh?

- Elder Murray

Week 12 - Candy, Soda, and Chinese Signs; Unstoppable Future, Rain, Here to Listen and Mourn and show Heavenly Father's Love

This marks 2 weeks in Canada now. Most of the time I forget I'm in a different country, everything is so similar. The only big noticeable differences between here and the US are the candy, the soda, and the crazy amount of Chinese signs. All the candy has different logos or is something from Cadbury. Cream soda is popular here, but it's pink. The  most popular kind is Crush cream soda which is a bit different to see. And in some parts of Canada, like Richmond, you feel like you are in a totally different part of the world. Downtown Richmond is almost entirely Chinese stores and shops, it's crazy.

My week has been pretty long but really quick at the same time. It's long because a lot of it is spent trying to listen to my companion speak Mandarin to people and comprehend what they are saying. I'm definitely learning a lot of new Mandarin words and grammar principles, but I am a long way away from being able to participate much. All the Mandarin I learned in school and in Taiwan has been replaced in my brain by Cantonese. I'll think of something to say in Mandarin, and then my mouth will say the Cantonese words for it. But think, once I get the hang of both, I'll be unstoppable! 

It's very wet here. It has been raining pretty much nonstop the whole week. This is good for me because I love rainy weather, but it kind of makes it hard to find people. It's nice that we have a car, otherwise I don't know how much I would enjoy the rain. People say that it won't really snow here except for one day in February maybe. That's a bit of a bummer and a blessing because I love the snow but it can be a real hassle. 

One cool experience I had this week was going on an exchange with an English elder in Richmond. We went finding at a park right on the beach. It was so cool to see and touch the Ocean, but it was windy and cold as all get out. When we were leaving, this guy sees the English elder's Book of Mormon in his hands and yells at us "Hey! Is that the Bible?" We were a little stunned so all we responded with was "Uh... it's similar" and he yelled back "What do you mean it's similar?" and started walking towards us. We were nervous he wanted to bash or something, but he immediately told us that he had felt drawn to come to the beach and to talk to us when he saw us. He was a bit drunk we could tell, but he talked to us very animatedly about the death of his son and the funeral the day before. We did a lot of listening while he got a lot of things off his chest. It was a super sad story and you could tell he was just sick with grief. In between his words, we managed to share our condolences and our testimony of how the Book of Mormon will help him find peace. We told him we knew he would see his son again and that we had both been led to find each other (we had felt prompted to walk down the street he was on but didn't think much of it). We managed  to give him the Book of Mormon with the missionaries' number before he left. I hope he reads it and finds some peace, but I think that's not the main reason why we were supposed to find him. I think that God put us there, in the way of his grieving child, just to listen to him, to mourn with him as he mourned. It wasn't much but I think that just a listening ear really was what this man needed. I hope more comes of it for him, but if not, I think we fulfilled our purpose there. It was tender to so clearly see how much Heavenly Father loves his children all over the world.

Anyways, I'm still here, still adjusting. There are good parts of every day and not so good parts too. But what matters is that we focus on the few good parts than the bad parts. I know that the gospel helps us enjoy those good parts more fully and endure the bad parts a little easier. Keep on being awesome!

-Elder Murray

Week 11 - Vancouver or Bountiful? Assigned Mandarin after learning Cantonese, $5 Thrift Sweater Bonus, Canadian Thanksgiving

Hello from Vancouver! After the two hour flight on Monday, I landed in YVR and breezed right through immigration. A little too easily actually, no one was there to pick us up. We were supposed to spend hours getting special work forms and things filled out, but the two immigration officers just looked at each other and said "Do we have to do anything special for missionaries? Nah." and sent us right on in. 

Once President Wahlen got there and drove us to the mission office, I started to see how similar and how different Canada really is to the US. For a lot of the drive, I felt like I was back in Bountiful or something. But Vancouver is way more diverse than Utah. Seriously, there are communities of every different ethnicity and nationality here. 

Luckily, I got the privilege of serving in one of the Mandarin areas. Unluckily, I hardly remember any of my Mandarin and what I do remember gets confused easily with my Cantonese now. It's good, I'm learning, but I'm basically mute for the time being in lessons and such. My companion is Elder Sun. He's from Beijing but he and his family emigrated to Toronto Canada a few years ago. He's awesome. His English is fantastic, but his "Cantonese" is hilarious. It's the equivalent of an American adding "-ito" to the end of every word and calling it Spanish. It gets a laugh out of the few Cantonese members of the ward. Elder Sloan from the MTC and I are in the same apartment so we get to practice together still. We even went out on our own to teach a lesson to Cantonese members from the ward. It was a ton of fun, like stretching your legs after a long drive. 

The rest of the week has been a blur, I don't really know where I am most of the time, we drive all across Langley, BC to visit people. But it's fun. I had to gear up on sweaters and thicker pants from the thrift store next to the mall so that I don't die when Winter comes around. Since it was by the mall, I got brand new pants and sweaters from like Tommy Hilfiger and Banana Republic for 8 american dollars a piece. Pretty good haul especially since one of the second hand sweaters came with 5 american dollars in the pocket too. Another highlight of the week was trying poutine for the first time. We just got it from the Costco food court, but it's super tasty. It's fries topped with cheese curds and beef gravy. All the best things for your arteries. 

Another good thing is that our chapel is right next to the Vancouver temple, we get to see it multiple times a day. We went in for a session on P day today and it was really cool. Monday was also Canadian Thanksgiving, so we went for a Chinese ward group potluck on Friday night to celebrate. Our job was to bring a game, so I used an idea from Youth Conference. I can't remember who exactly came up with it, but thank you, it was a hit. It was the thing were you all take turns taking things away from a list of things in your life to narrow it down to the few things you value most. We tied it into gratitude and thankfulness for families and the gospel. I say we but it was really just our two native Chinese speaking companions who did it. All the nonmembers at the potluck loved the game so I'd call that a success. 

Anyways that's all for me this week. I'm still adjusting to things here, getting settled in, but it's a good time. See you next week!

-Elder Murray