Hong Con: Week 2 - MTC Choir, James Bond and the Spoon Game, Parsley and Peppers, Gift of Tongues is Real Y'all

This week has been pretty uneventful. I've just been getting into the groove of things, learning how everything works better. It felt good not to be the new guys anymore once all of the new missionaries got here on Wednesday. I got to find Elder Sommer and Elder Chidester at their first meal here in the MTC. They are both from Woods Cross and are both going to Hawaii. It was cool to see them. On Tuesday, we got to sing in the MTC choir at the General Authority devotional. That was a super awesome experience. There were about a thousand missionaries in the choir so it was crazy loud but still sounded pretty good. The devotional was great too. It was all about missionary work... crazy how that happened. The big takeaway was that we have the Lord on our side so no matter what we go up against, we can't fail. Even if we failed in our efforts, we still succeeded with Heavenly Father and that's all that matters.

At meal times, I've been hardcore playing the spoon game. Thanks for that one Parker and Marlie. For everyone who doesn't know, you play the spoon game by taking a spoon from the cafeteria, and hiding it on another Elder without them noticing. Not to brag or anything because that's not very christlike, but I'm pretty much the best that there has ever been at the spoon game in the entire universe. I started out small, just slowly slipping them into belt loops and side bags. Then, I graduated to pants pockets and then finally, shirt pockets. The trick is to distract them, get in close, grab them by the shoulders, and drop the spoon as you walk away. So basically I'm James Bond. Just kidding, it's a lot of fun though when the whole district gets in on it.

The past two weeks, as we've been walking around the grounds, I noticed a bunch of plants everywhere that looked like parsley. After a while, I got the courage to finally try some and sure enough, it was parsley. It kind of freaked out my Canto teacher when she saw me just reach down and eat something out of the flower patches. I'm still super confused as to why they just planted parsley everywhere but I got even more confused when I found all of the pepper plants everywhere. They are kind of hidden because the peppers are small and red and they are right next to red flowers, but they are definitely peppers and they are everywhere. The other evening, I reached over and picked a couple for a couple of us in the district to try. We ate them after class and convinced our Canto teacher to eat one too. They were pretty hot. Ok... really hot. There was lots of yelling and crying and running towards the water fountain. It was hilarious and super fun. The best part was that they were fantastic tasting peppers! I'll definitely be picking more later for meals.

(I didn't take any pics or video of us eating the peppers but here's what they look like.)

I'm starting to understand Cantonese a bit more. It's super hard, memorizing the vocab is especially difficult, but I'm starting to understand and create on the fly more. The gift of tongues is real y'all. Cantonese is so tough and I totally wouldn't be able to learn as much as I have in 2 weeks as I would normally. I've been thinking back to high school mandarin and how long it took to get to where I am right now in Cantonese, in mandarin. It's totally crazy how fast things have happened. It doesn't feel like two weeks at all. It feels like such a long time which is great sometimes but not so great other times.

The best parts of the day are the personal study times. We have a study area right outside our classroom that has huge windows with an awesome view of the mountains and the temple. There's also a speaker system that plays music all the time. It's super relaxing and I learn so much during that time. I also signed up to play the cello during sacrament meeting sometime so hopefully that will follow through.

The MTC is great. It's a lot of work and a lot of pressure, but perspective really is everything. I'm super pumped to start another week, hopefully even better than the last. Hong Kong is going to be great. Unfortunately, the Hong Kong temple is going to be under renovation the whole time we are there, but luckily we will have Disneyland to go to so that will be fun.

Anyways, things are going good here. I know it's only been two weeks out of nine, but I'm starting to get really antsy to get to Hong Kong. I'm trying to enjoy things here as I go though so that I don't miss out on the experience. Thanks for everything! See you in a while!

-Elder Murray