Okay, so I've been training for the last few days... I don't know why either, so don't ask, haha. My companion is a good
kid though. He was born in Canada but speaks pretty good Chinese because
his parents are from Hong Kong, so I got lucky. He knows how to talk with
people about normal stuff but doesn't know a lot of gospel terms, which
is the only thing I know, so it works out ok, haha. He told me he has the
vocabulary of a 6 year old, which is about 5 1/2 years farther along
than me, haha, but we've been doing ok. Running around trying to figure
out what to do. One of the elders in my our apartment passed his one year mark yesterday, so we had a tim tam slam which is the greatest thing since chocolate. You take these things called tim tams, I think you can get them in the states, and freeze them. Then you bite off 2 of the opposite corners, make hot cocoa, and use the tim tam as a straw. The middle melts, and you try and see who can go the longest before you have to bail out and eat the tim tam or have it fall into the cocoa and be lost forever. It's pretty fun, haha.
Another fun fact about the China Hong Kong mission... to be an effective missionary we've established you need to be fluent in about at least 7 different languages/forms of communication. You need to be able to 1. speak English 2. read/write English 3. Speak Cantonese 4. read/write traditional characters (the closest thing to a written form of Cantonese there is.) 5. Speak Mandarin 6. read/write simplified characters (Mandarin written language) 6. Read/write Yale (American) Pinyin. (they way we learn to speak Chinese) 7. be able to read/write British Pinyin (kinda like yale but the way the British do it, and the way the Hong Kong maps/signs are written) if you can do those you have a good start.. well, you at least be able to read most of the teaching and progress records, haha. Other languages that are really useful are Tagalog, Nigerian, Malaysian, and every middle eastern language, haha. Hong Kong is a big mixing pot.
Well, we are still working hard here in the New Territories. We have a good investigator right now who is willing to meet with us regularly, but she has pretty strong ties to her other church, so it's been a challenge to help her understand the truthfulness of the gospel. Mostly because she won't read the Book of Mormon, but she'll come around eventually! I love you all. I really wish I had more to report ,as far as the work, but it's been the same as it was when I got here. No break through yet, but it's coming. It's a process not an event, as my mission president would say. Keep knocking doors and talking to people on the street! Thanks for all the love and support. I can feel it. Keep the faith. Love you.
Love,
Elder Mikesell
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