Hello everyone! Due to recent... circumstances, I've been doing some reminiscing back to the good old movie-making days we had as kids! Specifically 'That Totally Appropriate 70's Show (Totally!)'... Why, you may ask, do your thoughts turn to such a film of such mediocre quality? Firstly, how dare you ask that question?! That film was spectacular. Secondly, because my role in the film, the evil mastermind, Dr. Twitch, has become a reality. That's right, I've actually developed this weird twitch in the lower eyelid of my right eye, and it is CREEPY. I guess the mission just does weird things to you, but this is a completely new experience. I'll be teaching a lesson, maintaining normal eye contact, and then my eye will do this very visible twitching thing and then everyone involved will be creeped out haha. I guess it's just one of those things that'll probably go away... hopefully. Ah, yet another reason to dread getting home and doing all that dating stuff! Fortunately I still have a while...
T-shirt of the week: 'You only live ones.' Wise words.
Here's a sweet miracle that happened this week. So last week I might have mentioned that I was having a relatively rough week, and that kind of culminated this Tuesday, but after some prayer and pondering, I was feeling a little bit better. I've been trying to meet with a member who hasn't come to church for a long time, and I'd called her the week before to see if we could meet with her. She said she was busy, so we wrote a note to her and put a picture of Jesus in there with it, and we left to go drop it off at her apartment. But then it occurred to me that our map was completely Chinese, and we only had her address in Portuguese... Yeah, two languages that I don't really know that well to begin with, and a map of an entire island to search though. Plus, the street name was Travessa dos Virtudes, and 'travessa' means 'little tiny side street.' So yeah, practically impossible, right? I decided that we'd just take a note to one of our investigators first, and afterwards we'd somehow figure out what to do. So we're sitting on the bus, and it occurs to me that I should look out the window at every street sign I can see. I do this for about 15 minutes with no luck. But then as we're driving past a little street, I look backwards at the other side of the building that we were passing and there I saw it! Travessa dos Virtudes! We jumped off the bus, found her door, and dropped off the note! I called her a few days later and she said that we could come visit her next week! It's moments like that that show me that God really knows where each of his children are. He knew I was having a hard time, and he knew that member needed a note. So he took our two needs and used them to solve each other. That's called geniusly efficient. (The computer is telling me that 'geniusly' is not a word. Well, it should be. 'Genius' needs an adverb.)
Oh, this is pretty big news! Why didn't I mention this first? I have a new companion! Thanks to mid-move transfer craziness, I now have a Filipina companion! The Filipina sisters usually serve in the giant church building in Wanchai for their entire mission, but they had an odd number of sisters, so they sent Sister C over here with me! It has been interesting so far, because she always teaches in Tagalog, so I really have no idea what's going on. I feel like I'm a brand new missionary all over again, not understanding the lessons and randomly bearing testimony about what I think she's saying. We're figuring out how to work together, because it's kind of a challenge. The first few lessons, I barely got a word in, but she's really great and we're working together to find a balance.
We've had fewer lessons than normal this week, and during this time I've really figured out how much I love to teach. It's one of my passions, sharing what I know and love with people who really want to learn--the best feeling in the world. I want to be a teacher when I get home, and I don't know what I'll end up doing in the future, but I'm positive that it will involve teaching. I just love it, it's challenging and rewarding and fulfilling. And I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father pushed me onto this mission (because let's be real, I was WAY too chicken to do this on my own), because I've learned how to be a better and more effective teacher. Really, the most important thing is to love the people you teach. That's why Christ is the Master Teacher. He taught out of love, and I have so much that I can learn from him.
No comments:
Post a Comment