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.
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