Monday was P-day and I wrote emails, did laundry, and went to the temple. It was fun but we had our first member TRC over Skype with someone in Hong Kong. The problem was that no one actually from Hong Kong picked up. We sat around waiting for a while when Elder Lee's mom (who speaks Cantonese) finally was able to be taught by two elders, and a TRC worker's mother from California could be taught by us. It was a super awesome experience as she actually knew Elder Siu a little bit. I was able to understand a lot of what she said, but she was super helpful in helping us out when we had misunderstandings. We had time to share a little bit of a lesson and then share our testimonies. I got in the zone and my Cantonese flowed a bit better. Gift of Tongues is real. By the end of it, we actually had her tearing up which all gave us a big boost of confidence that we really do have the Spirit on our side. I'm excited for tonight's TRC. I hope it goes half as well.
Tuesday we were back to class as usual. I don't really remember much from the day, but in the evening, we had Elder Stevenson come speak to us. He spoke about using the scriptures, the missionary handbook, and Preach My Gospel as our missionary toolkit. We need to learn these things inside and out to be more effective missionaries. It was pretty short, but nice and sweet.
Wednesday was Elder Lee's birthday, so at the end of it, we held a party for him. It was pretty crazy. Elder Lee invited elders from all over the MTC so the little study area in our building got packed. We ate snacks and joked around for a good 15 minutes but made a mad dash to have it all put away by quiet time. It was pretty hilarious, I'll put in some pictures of it.
At dinner, Elder Siu was getting salad, but he wanted M&Ms at the same time. The only problem was that he didn't want to carry two bowls, so he put it all in the same one, ranch dressing and everything. The picture was after we asked him about it so he hammed it up, but at the time, he was dead serious about it being a good idea. It was hilarious.
Elder Hilbig from the Mandarin district decided to draw a hyper-realistic portrait of the event.
Thursday, was a just a boring old day. We had class and everything. My slow Cantonese progress improves a little bit each day. One funny thing that happened was that our teacher was super sick (probably from us) and was struggling to teach. To cheer her up and make her healthy, we thought it would be a great idea to steal one of the handsanitizer dispensers from down hall and put it in our room. We kind of just put it down and sat down at our desks like everything was normal. She just kind of stared at it a bit, then went over and got some sanitizer and started like everything was normal. It was pretty dang funny and we all cracked up for a few minutes. She made us take it back of course but not after we all got a picture.
Friday morning, Elder Sloan and I took an early morning run. It's been pretty nippy, but it was worth it to see the MTC empty in the dark with all the lights on. Pretty trippy. Then, during study time, Elder Yee fell asleep in the chair next to me, so we decided to take advantage of the situation. He was seriously out, so we just kept seeing how many tissues we could put on him. We eventually gave up because we didn't want to waste an entire box, but it took him forever to wake up. Everyone thought it was pretty hilarious.
Saturday, the only memorable thing was the Great Bean Dipping war. For those of you who don't know, it's basically a game where you try to slap each other on the chest as hard as you can. Elder Watts (another Canto), when we were all back at the dorms at the end of the day, screamed "LETS START A WAR!" People went crazy, there was yelling, running, much pain and great anguish. At one point, a group of Elders came to me with a truce, but they betrayed me and held my arms back as I got destroyed. It was awful...ly hilarious. To get back at them, I put a pillow up my shirt to try to protect myself as I went gangbusters. Unfortunately, they quickly got the pillow away and I got destroyed again. War truly is an horrible thing. But it was a lot of fun too.
Yesterday, it was nice not to have to wake up early for Branch Council for once. I didn't have to speak, but our district did have to go usher people for the devotional. It was pretty fun, but I was surprised how many missionaries have a problem sitting a few rows over from where they wanted to sit. Kind of funny really. We watched the face to face with Elder Soares. It was really good, but they kind of lost me when they tried to translate Portuguese and Spanish on the fly. It didn't make a whole lot of sense, but I bet they said some good things.
We haven't heard of anything crazy from Hong Kong lately which I guess is good news. The earliest we would have any sort of flight plans would be this Friday, but it is doubtful. They'll probably wait until the last minute just to see what happens. We are supposed to get there right on the Independence holiday in China when everything is supposed to escalate apparently, so there is reason to believe we might be delayed. But we also have heard the mission is dying for new missionaries now that so many have gone home this summer, so there is reason to believe that they might risk it if it isn't terrible. Who knows, we'll see.
Anyways, thanks for reading such a long letter. I'm going to have a lot less time in the field to write, so I'm getting it in now. See you in a while!
-Elder Murray
Conner found his cousin who just entered the MTC
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