Chapter 3: You xinxin, you banfa.. plus, Dear John Trickeries

Nimen hao!

First off, it kills me that I can't put tones on my Chinese words, it's just not right! I've always known that without tones the meaning of the words change, but I've especially been careful of that this week because our teacher told us we've been saying several things wrong and totally changing the meaning of what we've been saying haha. The first thing our district has been messing up is when we say our missionary purpose, we are supposed to say chishou daodi, which, with the right tones, means endure to the end. But with the wrong tones on chishou, it means sucking your thumb to the end. So that's fun. Another one that we haven't really been messing up but could is "Zhishi wo de Aizi" which means "This is my Beloved son" at the end of the First Vision. Aizi (beloved son) with one slightly different tone could either mean midget/dwarf or AIDS, so yeah, can't mess that one up. It's especially daunting because people don't really use the word Aizi that often, so we really have to make the tone correct or people will think we are crazier than they already believe.  

There was a lot of kind of crazy things happening in my zone this week, and just when I thought it couldn't get much worse, an Elder in my district got "Dear John"ed. For those of you who aren't familiar with this term, it means that he had a girlfriend who was waiting for him to get back home from his mission so that they could continue to date and eventually get married who wrote him and said that she had found someone else and was in a relationship with the other person. So the day this Elder received the letter, he went to the bathroom and a different Elder in my district READ THE LETTER OUT LOUD to us before the he got to read it. I was so mad, I tried to have him not read the letter to us because that's not our business, but he still did. All the Sisters in our district were SO SAD for this Elder. It broke our hearts, knowing that he had been "Dear John"ed but he didn't know it yet. The next day when we saw him he was so down, he didn't really talk to anyone, and we were all just heartbroken for him. All the sisters (even in the zone, because everyone noticed and figured something was up) were being so nice to him. The Elders in our zone would come up to me and ask me every day if Elder Smith was doing better, and I'd tell them he seems better every day. Also, he didn't know we knew about his letter, so I just felt bad that I knew why he was so sad, when I wasn't supposed to know. Well, Saturday rolls around and our zone did a talent show. At the talent show, Elder Smith gets up and begins to say that he had a hard week and that he was grateful for all of our kindness and support, but that he sent the letter to himself. I was so shocked. He TOTALLY got us, and he had all of the Elders in the zone in on it. All the sisters had been so nice to him and it wasn't even real! Let's just say the Elders lost our trust a little bit. But honestly it was like the best thought out prank ever, and it was so funny. The Elders really got us good haha.  

My cute classroom!

The view from our classroom window. 

I have a fantastic view of Y Mountain and Squaw Peak. 

I love it getting to watch the sunset every night :)

Moving onto more spiritual stuff (because that is like every second here, I love it so much) Sister Warren and I taught our first lesson without any notes, only our scriptures, in Mandarin to our investigator! I feel like because we weren't looking down at our notebook or trying to find a word we didn't know in our orange Bible (a little orange book we have grown so fond of that contains so many wonderful translations of Preach My Gospel lessons and church words), we were able to feel the Spirit so much more in our lesson. As we bore our testimonies, Sister Warren and I both started to cry, it was such a special experience. I broke my goal of not crying at the MTC (a feat that it quite unheard of here), but I changed my goal to not crying out of sadness or frustration, which is definitely more achievable.  This week one of our teachers, who served in Taichung, told us about how Taiwanese like short 4 or 6 word phrases, and that one of them is "You xinxin, you banfa" which is basically the Chinese version of "where there's a will, there's a way." Except this more closely translates to "if you have faith, there's a way." He told us this was basically the motto of the missions in Taiwan. And I can honestly attest that where there is faith, there is a way. The Lord will help us do whatever we need to do as long as we have faith in Him. Before our lesson without notes, I was so so nervous, but I had faith that Sister Warren and I could do it, and it turned out to be wonderful and a great experience.  So many things happen here, I wish I could share them all with you! I love you all, and I love the Spirit that is here in the MTC, especially in the new buildings! Fun fact, the public can tour them, so if you are in the Provo area, please tour the new buildings! Aside from temples, they are honestly the most beautiful buildings I have ever been in, and I am so blessed that I get to spend all day learning Chinese and doing the Lord's work in them!  

Wo ai nimen!  

Love, Sister Larson 

Note:  The mostly correct way to pronounce this post's title is "yo sheen sheen, yo ban fah"