Whooaaa We're Halfway There: Ups and Downs

So many of you may know that Chinese is a tonal language, so that the way you say the vowel changes the meaning of the word. You have to memorize the tones of a word in order to know the word. Many words will be two syllables together, and we've come up with a code for how to know what the tones are: when the two-syllable word starts with a rising tone and ends with a falling tone, we call it a mountain. Switch that and it's a valley. Starts with a flat tone and falls means it's a slide. We actually haven't come up with any more than that but you get it. The word for companion is tongban, and it's a mountain. You have both ups and downs with your companion, so it goes up and then down. That's a bit was this week has been. 

It's actually been a great week! One up was our lesson with our investigator on Tuesday. We decided to show him around the chapel so that he would want to come to church (we walked about twenty yards to the main building with like six chapels in it) and we had this whole lesson planned about the sacrament and baptism. We decided to sing a song at the beginning to bring the spirit so we sang him 'Nearer My Good to Thee' in Chinese. The Spirit was so strong and he was asking what this feeling was so we ended up just talking about that the whole time! It was so wonderful, I wish every lesson could be like that. Maybe I should sing in lessons more.

One down, however, was our lesson with him on Saturday; we tried to tackle to Plan of Salvation. It was going really well until we got to Adam of Eve. To most of the Western with Judeo-Christian backgrounds, this is a simple enough topic to expound on; they know the basic story and you mostly just have to teach the LDS standpoint on it. In Taiwan, however, people might have never even heard their names, let alone know anything about trees and serpents. So we try to teach that and for some reason I think it's important to tell him about them not being allowed to eat the fruit and that they're supposed to have children but they can't until they eat the fruit and basically it was super confusing and I was way embarrassed and he thought it was ridiculous and it sounded ridiculous coming from me because, you know, I CAN'T SPEAK CHINESE. But it was great.

Another up was that we got to host on Wednesday, which is fun, because you help welcome new missionaries into the MTC and tell them how awesome it is and you get to miss class for a while. I helped like 7 new sisters come in, including one going to Taiwan! She's not in our zone though. But we did get a whole new district of missionaries going to Taibei, which is really awesome. They're super nice and it's cool not to be the youngest ones anymore. I guess the down with that one is that it was way exhausting. Still fun though!

Another major up is that WE GOT OUR CHINESE NAMETAGS. We each got two nametags that are completely Chinese and have the name of the Church in Chinese. It is so freaking exciting. We're not allowed to wear them until we get to Taiwan, though, which is kind of sad. 

Also, WE'RE HALFWAY DONE. Saturday was the halfway mark of the MTC, and I should be leaving for Taiwan in four weeks from tomorrow. It's so crazy! I'm going to Asia! I'm supposed to know Chinese! I don't know Chinese! I don't ever want to teach about Adam and Eve again! I can't wait to eat real Taiwanese food! it's great.

Haha something funny that happened last Monday after I had already emailed is that we put our laundry in the dryer before the washer so we ended up with some nice warm clothes that were still dirty and we couldn't actually finish laundry until after dinner. It was really dumb. But pretty hilarious. Also, turns out you can wash and dry your nametag (not necessarily in that order) and it will be fine. Those things are sturdy.

Another up/slightly embarrassing down was that we were on the big screen in devotional last night! We were sitting on the front row of the bleachers in the back and the speaker, Stephen B Allen who is the managing director of the missionary department, pointed to us (almost all of our district was sitting together) and said "Hey, all of you sitting right there, count off twelve or so of you and come up here on stage." So we went up there and he asked us to tell him something we gave up to be on our mission, and we couldn't say anything that others had said before us. I said it was not seeing my family, including my six-year-old brother with Down Syndrome. Haha when Sis Wawro was up she said "marriage" and he was like "Oh will you tell us about that" and she's like "uhh no I don't really want to talk about it" and there may have been catcalls. It was pretty funny. We're practically famous.

So it's so cool that we have a native Taiwanese teacher (Sister Wu) because we asked her to teach us some Taiwanese idioms, and she has some really good ones! Every other day or so she will give one to us, it's great. One of my favorites is "You really have two brushes," which is like saying somebody is awesome. We tried to ask her where the saying comes from, but she's like "I don't know, do you know where 'raining cats and dogs' comes from?" and we were like "okay fine" but then I remembered that I do actually know where that comes from.* But oh well. Probably some Chinese calligraphy master was so awesome he could use two brushes at once. Another one is the Chinese version of "the pot calling the kettle black": 50 steps laughs at 100 steps. She did tell this origin: it's like if two guys are trying to get to the same destination and one of them takes 50 steps and the other takes 100. Neither of them makes it to the destination, but the guy who took 50 steps laughs at the one who took 100 because he exerted more effort and still didn't make it. The point is that the one who took 50 also didn't get there, so he's being a hypocrite. (it took us like 20 minutes to figure this one out from Sister Wu's explanation.)

So that's the kind of week it's been! Good parts, bad parts, but overall still great because I'm a missionary. Devotionals are some of the best parts, we get to hear from really wonderful speakers, last week we had Sister Bonnie Oscarson, the Young Women's general president. She told some really awesome stories from people in her family who served missions. Love it. 

Yesterday at Relief Society the speaker (Sis McConkie of the YW General Presidency) said this: As you stand up for Christ, He will stand up for you. I love it, and it totally reconfirms to me that I am in the right place, standing up for Christ and defending His gospel and that because I am doing so, He is supporting me and helping me be an instrument for Him. So inspiring.

Love you all!

Sister Cardon

P.S. The picture is of my new nametag and me wearing jeans, because happy is what happens when all your dreams come true. It's so nice to wear pants.

* Cats and dogs used to congregate on people's thatched roofs and when it rained sometimes the roof would fall through and so would the cats and dogs.

Four Square is Serious Business

No, really. If you've ever been to the MTC you know it. Everyone knows it: Four Square is one of the most important things you do as a missionary besides learning the language and fulfilling your purpose to invite others to come unto Christ.

Okay, not really, but it is a pretty big deal. Wei JM and I decided we were going to try it this week. All the elders in our district play it nearly every day during gym time and we figured our pseudo-brothers (the elders in our district) would be fairly nice to us while we're playing (they're not particularly, but they do cheer for us when we're not against them) so we tried it. It's way fun! And we get better every time, I've made it to King more than once. We convinced Bi and Gu JM to play with us the next day and soon we will have a force of sister missionaries playing four square that will be one to be reckoned with. We've even come up with strategies that would totally work if we could actually aim the ball. I did execute a pretty good Criminal Hook the other day, though, but Elder Shurtleff was too quick for me and he hit it back. Next time, though, next time. And I will be sure to let you all know when we execute a perfect Flamingo strategy. (I love being a missionary, i really do. But sometimes you need a little distraction, like planning strategies for a game I haven't played since third grade)

The food at the MTC cafeteria is really good, especially their desserts. So, I have made a goal that i am only allowed to have dessert on Sunday. I know about myself that I don't really do well at resolutions unless I have some incentive, however, so I asked my district sisters to help me come up with one. Their solutions: a deal (not a bet, because missionaries don't bet) that if I eat dessert on a not-Sunday then I will have to confess my undying love to an elder in our district of their choice. That would definitely be against the rules, and since I try my very best to follow the missionary commandments (it's really hard to go to sleep right at 10:30, I'm telling you), then it is actually a really good incentive for me. I didn't even have dessert on Sunday, I was so terrified of the prospect of having to tell an elder that I would love him forever. Hey, maybe I could say it in Chinese so fast that he couldn't understand it. That would be a good thing to practice, definitely more important than learning vocab for the Restoration! :)

I really hope everyone knows I'm kidding and that the point is, missionaries aren't perfect. I don't know if that's the point, actually. THe point probably is that I feel really good now that I'm not eating dessert and i don't even want to anymore because i feel so awesome. It's good practice for Taiwan, where they really don't have good dessert. So I'm happy! But if my companion tells me how good her cake is one more time there might be something to talk about in companionship inventory. (that was a joke, i love her)

Missionaries aren't perfect, it's true, and I definitely learned that yesterday. At sacrament meeting every week the branch presidency chooses two missionaries to give a talk on an assigned topic, but the things is that everyone has to prepare a talk and you only know that you have been chosen to give the talk when they announce it, about two minutes before you actually speak. I gave this sort of impromptu testimony my first Sunday here so i was pretty sure that i was exempt from speaking since there are three whole districts who have been here longer than us where NOBODY in the district has given a talk in Sacrament meeting yet. So I wrote a basic outline for a talk on repentance, shrugged and decided not to translate it into Chinese because I probably wouldn't be speaking anyway, and went on my merry way. The counselor gets up after the passing of the sacrament to announce the speaker, and the words "Our first speaker will be..." are coming out of his mouth when I suddenly think "It's me, shoot, it's me, I'm going to be giving a talk, why is it me?!!" and he finishes, "...Sister Cardon!" Compelled to be humble, much? :) Haha I'm making it sound worse than it was, I think it went pretty well, I just spoke a lot more English than I would have if I had prepared more. And it's good practice to give impromptu talks because you never know what will happen in the mission field! I'm actually really lucky to be able to have the Spirit with me to know what to say and practice speaking in front of groups, even if it was a mesh of Chinese and English that didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Last night we had an awesome devotional where Jenny Oaks Baker, a wonderful violinist, spoke and performed five or six pieces. She is so talented! Her violin sounded like silk, and she performed with her four kids, which was really cute. Her last piece was I Know that My Redeemer Lives and she was essentially playing a duet with herself, playing two strings at a time. It was so impressive, we're so lucky to have the opportunity to hear such wonderful music and speakers at the MTC.

We taught TRC again on Saturday and it went a lot better than last time! We planned the lesson about prayer on the walk over to the building where they hold TRC (not a good idea, you are definitely supposed to do more planning than that, although since it went well I'm not entirely sure i learned my lesson) and had two really nice discussions with some chinese-speaking RMs about prayer. In one of them we talked about having more sincere prayer, which I decided to put into action, and it was so awesome! Last night I tried praying specifically for every person in my district, and I felt like i gained so much love and understanding for them. Praying for people really helps you love them, and I definitely encourage you all to think more about specific people when you pray (you see, I'm practicing giving commitments when I teach, isn't it great to be a missionary? :D).

Thanks so much for your support, love you all and hope you are having a wonderful week. I sure am, I love being the Lord's representative.

Sister Cardon

PS I'm always trying to coordinate outfits with my companion, much to her chagrin, and this time i actually did it, here's a picture :) Every time I see companions with matching outfits I go, "see, they're doing it!" and she rolls her eyes. But I won this time.

Zhunbeihaole ma!

Or in other words, "Are you ready?" (Well the direct translation would be "prepare good completed action question" but that's neither here nor there) We've been singing that non-stop to some music in the Lion King but the only words are Swahili so I can't tell you what song it is, so you'll have to figure out where we put "zhunbeihaole ma" in the Lion King to sing that. It's pretty much in my and my companion's head 24/7.

It's been a great week! Let me start off with some of the best language mistakes of this week.

1. One of our teachers told us a story from her mission: the words for "cat" and "towel" are pretty similar in Chinese, so she told he investigator that she would need to bring a cat to her baptism.

2. When you say "we ask thee" in a prayer you say "qiqiu" for ask, which is only towards God. When you're talking to a regular person you say "wen". The other day an elder said to our teacher Sister Wu "Wo keyi qiqiu ni?" (I can ask you) instead of "Wo keyi wen ni?" and she was really embarassed and we all laughed a lot.

3. At the beginning of the MTC we were given all Chinese-character bibles and triple combination, so it's super difficult to know what scripture you are asking an investigator to read because you can't read the characters even if they can. So some elders were teaching in TRC on Saturday (volunteers come to be taught by missionaries) and were teaching about revelation so they tried to hare D&C 9:7-8 which talks about studying it out before you ask for an answer. Instead, however, they handed their investigator Ether 9:7-8, which talks about the king Akish shutting his son in jail and starving him for a month. Luckily the elders figured out what was going on before they asked the investigator what he thought the scripture meant.

So there's these two elders not in our district who we seem to pass all the time when they're in the middle of an argument and some of them have been pretty hilarious, especially when Sister Wawro mimics their voices when she's retelling the story. The most recent one was "Elder, if it doesn't come up in comp inventory, it didn't happen!" So we've been saying that to each other all week. Sister Wawro refuses to play Marco Polo with me when we lose each other for a minute. It's going to come up in comp inventory some time. (oh comp inventory is "companionship inventory", when you talk openly about what you did well and what you can improve on as a companionship, it's great)

We have really great people in our district. Two of the elders, Elder Braden and Elder Tatton, both have really good voices, so we've been practicing a musical number that I'm accompanying and they're singing a duet of "Where Can I Turn For Peace", it's really beautiful! We'll be auditioning in front of the MTC president's wife, Sister Nally on Thursday to see if we can perform it sometimes. Oh my goodness I forgot to even mention that Sister Wawro and I got a number ready two weeks ago and auditioned (I Know That My Redeemer Lives) and Sister Nally said she liked it so we'll be performing soon, but we don't know when. It's so great to be able to practice that music and perform it, since we don't get to listen to music otherwise here! For some reason you're not allowed to listen to music in your residence or anything, it's kind of sad and something I miss the most from home. On Sunday the sisters get to watch Music and the Spoken Word before Relief Society, and this week the guest star was Dallin Vail Bayles (he plays Hyrum in the Joseph Smith movie fun fact) and he sang a couple of Broadway songs, and the organist did an arrangement of Grieg's Morning Mood, and MoTab is fabulous all the time, so I was nostalgia. Also fun fact one of the Elders in our zone is Elder Elliot, the son of Richard Elliot, a MoTab organist. He wasn't the organist that did Morning Mood, but that's okay. Oh and the best part of MATSW was that my Uncle Dan was playing the tuba so I got to see him and point him out to the sisters around me! 

But I was talking about my district wasn't I. Elder Redding from Bountiful always tries to make English idioms into Chinese, so our district's favorite phrase is "Ni shi mao de meow," you're the cat's meow. Other favorites include "mifeng de xigai" (the bee's knees) and soon I will figure out how to say "smart cookie." It's great fun, although our native Taiwanese teacher doesn't really get our humor. 

We've been teaching a new investigator who is actually just our first teacher and it's going pretty well, although our first lesson was kind of iffy because Sis Wawro (her Chinese name is Wei Jie Mei so I might just say Wei JM from now on) didn't have a voice. But the second lesson was great, we taught him about prayer and how it's a two-way communication, not like Eastern shrine worship, and that transitioned nicely into the Joseph Smith story. We'll be teaching him again on Thursday, and will talk about the plan of salvation. Man, it's been so cool to learn how to listen to investigators and try to figure out their needs, like last time we asked him what he would ask God and he said "what happens after we die?" so now we know that he needs to hear about the plan of salvation! Sometimes it's easy to figure things out like that, and sometimes you really need to listen to the Spirit to understand what their needs are, especially when listening to their Chinese doesn't make it any clearer.

An awesome thing about being at the MTC is that you get to listen to awesome devotionals twice a week. Last night we heard from Richard Heaton, admin director of the MTC, and he called up to missionaries who were converts and volunteered their story, and they had the coolest stories that I don't have time to tell, but it was so cool to think that I can help people in Taiwan come to know God like these young people had to learn. We all have to learn that. It's awesome. We also got to go to choir, which is directed by Brother Aggett, and he tells the coolest stories. We're singing "Nearer My God to Thee" on Tuesday and he told us what the lyrics are about, which I have NEVER even heard of. It's the story of Jacob, whose brother Esau sold his brother to Jacob and then got murderous so Jacob had to leave. He left in the middle of the night and used a stone for a pillow, then dreamed about a ladder leading up to heaven, where angels guided him up. When he woke up he said it was a holy place and called it Bethel, House of God. The lyrics to Nearer My God to Thee? 

1. 1. Nearer, my God, to thee,
   Nearer to thee!
   E'en though it be a cross
   That raiseth me.
   Still all my song shall be
2. (Chorus)
   Nearer, my God, to thee,
   Nearer, my God, to thee,
   Nearer to thee!
3. 2. Though like the wanderer,
   The sun gone down,
   Darkness be over me,
   My rest a stone,
   Yet in my dreams I'd be
4. 3. There let the way appear,
   Steps unto heav'n;
   All that thou sendest me,
   In mercy giv'n;
   Angels to beckon me
5. 4. Then with my waking thoughts
   Bright with thy praise,
   Out of my stony griefs
   Bethel I'll raise;
   So by my woes to be
6. 5. Or if, on joyful wing
   Cleaving the sky,
   Sun, moon, and stars forgot,
   Upward I fly,
   Still all my song shall be

So cool. I love it. 

Well my time is about up! I love you all and I'm so glad I get to be a missionary and feel the spirit so strongly all the time. 

Love,

Sister Cardon.

P.S. It's totally free to write me a letter on www.dearelder.com. Just saying. No mail makes Sister Cardon sad. TAIW-TCG  leaving SEP23, Unit 11. FYI.

P.P.S. The attachment is from our temple walk on Sunday, so pretty!