Monday, July 1, 2013

Halfway There


Hello everyone!
 
Saturday was the half way mark at the MTC for my generation of Mandarin Chinese speakers. One more month and I'll be out of here!
 
Last Tuesday, Sister Janice Kapp Perry and her husband came and talked to us. If you are like me, this name might not sound familiar but Janice Kapp Perry is the best. Why you ask? Well, she basically has written the greatest children's hymn book songs of all time ( i.e. A child's prayer)  and she also wrote the EFY medley and As Sisters in Zion. Musical genius. I can't remember if she was talking about going on a Senior couple mission or not, but Sister Perry mentioned that while she was debating on whether or not follow this impression to serve in some capacity, then thought came to her head that the work would go on without her. It would go slower, but it would go on. This really stuck out to me because it put things into perspective for me. She also went on to say that another thought that came to her mind was "but what are we going to do about your sanctification? What will we do to purify your heart?" When we accept the call to serve, especially missions, we allow the Spirit to sanctify our whole being if we will allow it. I have definitely witnessed this happened to me and like the thought that came to Sister Perry, I have no idea how I would have reached this point without a mission. Sister Perry also told us how she meet her husband while she was at BYU. She said she was in one of the music classes they had together and Sister Perry was about to go play a clarinet solo for class and he tapped her on the shoulder and the very first thing Brother Perry ever said to her was "I think those lips  were made fore something much better than playing the clarinet.." Right after she told us this, Brother Perry got up from his seat and gave her a big kiss. So adorable, and greatest story ever haha.
 
So I feel a little ill this past week :( Nothing too severe but I was not easy staying focused and I don't know how I had the energy to power through but I did. When I got sick I realized I had no medicine so the first night was quite miserable. I also wasn't able to enjoy the cashews i got in my package right away because I was too sick.  Friday morning all of the Sisters in my building woke up to a fire alarm. It went off at exactly 6:30 am (pretty ironic) and we all were like wait.. Is that someones alarm clock..? Nope. Just a fire alarm at 6:30 am. No big deal. For maybe 5 minutes we contemplated whether or not we needed to evacuate the building because it didn't seem like there was a fire but we got up and out of our room anyway. Everyone else was in the same boat. We were all so confused and half asleep as we were all ushered out of the building. Most of us were still in pjs but I also saw some Sisters already dressed (what? what time did they get up?!). After about 10 minutes of waiting outside on the grass and seeing security come and check everything out we were let back inside. Turns out the janitors were stacking trash bags and one of them fell and hit the fire alarm. Weirdest freak accident of my life.
 
My companion and I had a really interesting teaching experience this past weekend.. My companion and I were prepared to teach one of our investigators (one of our teachers of course) and then it turned out that we were teaching a totally different investigator (one of our other teachers) than planned. It was super frustrating because this was a investigator we had never taugth or told anything about. So we had 10-15 minutes to think of what to do and we just headed over to teach. When we got to the door of the investigator we knocked and he came to the door and peeked through a crack of the door like "who are you?" Yeah.. from then we knew he as not going to be easy on us. Needless to say, it was a very authentic experience and he took control of the lesson by taking the conversation in a very different direction than we had planned. Of course I only understood maybe 20% of what he said so it was very hard to pipe in and my companion understands and can speak better than I can so that was that. After I said the prayer he was like "oh, Sister Jordan. You speak Chinese? i didn't know. You speak very well." I only heard the compliment at the end so I was like thanks and then my companion explained what he said and then I couldn't tell if he was insulting me or giving me a compliment haha. This investigator also asked us if we would help him cook and he said he had many religions and that in one of them he worships his ancestors. What? This guy was having too much fun messing with us. We were only supposed to be in there for 15 minutes and didn't get to our planned discussion of the Book of Mormon until 12 minutes in pretty much. It did not go well but it was a great learning opportunity.
 
Thanks again for all of your love and support! I really love getting dear elders. talk to you all soon!
 
Love,
Sister Jordan

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