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?
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!
