Well, it's finally come! I am officially at the start of my last 6 weeks as a missionary. AAAGGGHHH. Okay I'm good let's not mention it anymore.
Happy New Year! Hope you all had an exciting New Year's. We... did not. We went to bed. But someone was putting off fireworks near our house last night (January 3rd?) that were nice and pretty, so we celebrated a little bit. By "celebrate" I mean "looked out the window and aahed a little".
It's been a fairly good week for us! Not much going on. It rained super hard last night, man it's been a couple of months since I've been that soaked. It was great. Had to wring out my skirt when we got home. We went and visited a less active couple who were super nice; they were just getting dinner ready when we came by so they invited us to eat with them. We had soup with potatoes and black tree ears (hmm I wonder what that is actually called in English) and she was worried about it not being flavorful enough so she brought out the most beautiful sight in the world: Montreal Steak Seasoning. I think I almost cried. oh MAN I was going to ask if I could bring some home. I guess we'll have to go back.
I also accomplished another one of my life goals this week. Let me back up though; we were visiting a member whose dad is essentially a Traditional Chinese Medicine Man. He was working with a patient (in the living room) as we were chatting with the member and I casually mentioned that my shoulder had been hurting recently so she volunteered for her father to look at it for me. yessss
So then I sit down on a stool. I kind of expected him to look at my shoulder immediately but no. He takes my hand and feels for my pulse in a few different spots, closes his eyes and breathes deeply. Other hand. Then he looks at me: "Your heart isn't very healthy. Your liver and stomach aren't doing so well either; like 50%. Your thighs are probably sore, and you get exhausted easily." me in my head: ...I just want my shoulder to feel better.
He then proceeded to prove to me that my body was not functioning correctly. I had to hold up one arm and resist while he pressed down on it, then place the other hand on whatever part of my body was ailing; over my liver, stomach, heart, etc. When I could resist with more strength it meant that body part was doing good; if I was weaker though, man it's serious. We determined that my breathing was doing okay but, as he suspected, when I had my hand on my liver I could hardly put any resistance with the other arm. Then came the solutions, which involved scratching my head (REALLY HARD) with a comb, me rubbing my sternum, him stepping on my foot with his heel, and him poking my back (also really hard) to fix my heart problems. Finally we got to the aching shoulder; he determined that my shoulder was hurting because my head right above my right ear was struggling. Arm up, hand on head: yep, I couldn't resist for even a whole second. The solution for this problem included hand massage, punching my arm, and me going "ow ow ow bu yao BU YAO" and as a result I've got a gnarly bruise on my bicep.
In conclusion, Chinese medicine is awesome.
As for how missionary work is going this week, man Shalu is awesome. We are meeting with an AWESOME couple named Titan and Vivi. They just love reading the Book of Mormon together. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and they had tons of great questions and it all totally made sense to them. They did a lot of "ohhh I see" during the lesson in unison, it's pretty cute. Seriously, it just builds my testimony so much that no matter how many times we get rejected and people don't want to meet with us, there are still people who are so prepared to listen to the gospel.
oh also don't forget to make New Year's resolutions! One of my goals is to say something in Chinese every day this year and to not get married.
Love you all! Hope you have a great week.
Sister Cardon
Picture: There's like a Seaport Art Museum right next to our house with really pretty architecture!
No comments:
Post a Comment