November 18, 2012

Elder Arrington did not include a blog post in his last letter but here are a few answers to general questions we asked.

How is you language? Do you dream in Cantonese yet? what about reading...has that been any easier?

Language is okay, I am getting better but I still have long way to go until I am good. No dreams yet honestly I have had only had two dreams my entire mission. One in the MTC and one here... So no dreams. Reading... Interesting you ask that. They just gave a couple missionaries the new pin-yum (Romanized Cantonese)  Book of Mormon to a couple of  people (2 sets of elders) and its not published yet but we get to use it. So I will start reading the BOM in Chinese soon-ish....

In your letter you said this was your "second move" what did you mean?

A move is a transfer. Every move is 6 weeks. I am on my second move in Causeway Bay (I've been here 9 weeks- so 1 move and 3 weeks).

You never mention much about the other missionaries you live with. Do you battle it out Cantonese or Mandarin is better? What is the primary language there? 

The other elders are pretty cool. They are still Mandarin  We got a new one Elder Burwiser and still elder Bradley. I'm close to Bradley since we are both babies and we both are really good at soccer. We play together and just dominate the pitch haha. The primary language is Cantonese but most people can speak Mandarin because Mandarin is a lot easier than Cantonese.

Were Coco and Silence able to be baptized? How is Felix coming along? You mentioned Wayne as a resurrected investigator- how did you come about him?

Coco Silence and Felix are still working with their parents. Felix is doing great he has such a strong testimony about the church; he is just trying to get his parents to understand why he wants to join. Coco and Silence mum lives in Mainland soooo we can't really help them it's kind of up to them at this point; but they are both great kids and have a ton of faith. Wayne is an old investigator who wants to wait to be baptized on his birthday in Feb but we talked to him and explained waiting to sign your own papers (cause that's why he wants to wait) doesn't make your baptism any more significant. He understood and said he wants to get baptized as soon as possible so next Sunday!

So when you teach discussions you you have an order you go in?

Uhmmm we teach to people's needs soooo if that means by going in order of the lessons we will but often times it isn't  We almost always start by teaching about prayer, who God is, why we need to pray, how to build a relationship with him and kind of go from there.

Where should I have a package sent to? Do you know how long it takes?

The package should be sent to the mission home and it should take like 10 days if you send it by air mail (i think?)

Okay explain how the money thing works....how much do you get a month and what do you have to pay for? How much is a good pizza? you said your suit was 880HK)...how much is that in America money? 

Money... ahhh ... We get HK$1780 a month (like $235 ish) and that's for food travel and other stuff. Sooo just use a converted things are pretty similar in price we missionaries just don't have a lot of money so we don't get nice food hahah:)

What do you do on Pday? Do you go sight seeing? Will you get the chance to go to Disney Hong Kong? (In Anaheim they let us go to Disneyland once a year).

We don't really do much right now on pday. We travel all over Hong Kong and just do little stuff. Shopping on Ladies street (really famous place you buy fake things), Golden Computer Shop (world famous computer shop) and going to the dirty mall today haha. We can go hiking but with the new rules of always wearing long jeans no one wants to do anything that takes effort... President Hawks is really strict soooo no on the Dinsey thing haha.