Sister Pao in the North Star State: Dinkytown: Week 20 "Chinglish...and new discoveries and so forth"

Wow, another week has come and gone! Splendid week once again. Tough but good.
We've been struggling a lot recently with finding more progressing investigators and filling up our teaching pool. Thus, we spend 5-8 hours a day contacting on campus! Sometimes even five consecutive hours! Crazy to hear that eh? But surprisingly, five hours spent talking about what we hold so dearly to our hearts seem to pass by each day in a blink of an eye. Sister Huang and I talk about how incomprehensible that is to our puny, dinky human brains.

We have plenty of Chinese to teach on campus each day, but they are all such busy students with busy exam and school schedules! However, we are not losing faith because we currently do have Yan still waiting to be baptized a few more awesome progressing investigators! With time to find new investigators, Sister Huang and I have more time to get to know each other as we walk and talk late at night.

I worry intensely for my poor little brain each day. (Not literally, but perhaps in the long run of things..haha)

Transitioning between English and Chinese each day messes with my brain! I worry that I will go home not being able to speak better Chinese, and having my English deteriorate while in the process. It's an interesting experience indeed, and I guess speaking with Cyn and Shar growing up has somewhat prepared me for it...haha fun stuff.

Sister Huang and I are getting along real good. Sometimes tooo good I say haha.

Mom, I made Sister Huang some lunch the other day. I made her 蛋包飯 and it reminded me of you and our childhood meals!
Oh the good ol' days.

Funnies with Sister Huang this week is that she LOVES to say 'oh man!' So one day we were talking to the other sisters, Sister Callister, and Sister Curtis (whom I adore as well), and suddenly Sister Huang shouts out oh woman! instead of oh man! and then we changed it to Oh Sister! She often also says, I am so humor, instead of i am humorous. The other night, I woke up in the middle of the night to a scream. Sister Huang was surely sleep talking and dreaming in her sleep. It was great. I've found my match because now someone can finally compare to my sleep-walking. Luckily, that hasn't happened on the mission yet. I'll keep you posted on that if it ever does! haha

This week has been another great learning experience. We had the chance with the new transfers to bring the new missionaries in this area to the stake family research center. FAMILY! You need to go to familysearch.org and sign in with your lds accounts and do some geneology researching. I found so much cool stuff on the 鮑 family geneology, but it was too crazy and confusing for me to read. when you sign in, go to serach then scroll to the bottom. you'll see a map, click on asia, and click on the different collections there. There are some from anhui...isn't that where our family's from. Shar if you read this and understand it, try it out and have mom and dad go look at it! It's so cool!

Anyway, before I end my email this week. Fam, i just want you to know that the mission gives you special abilities. Seriously, i am so blessed with the ability to read the book of mormon completely in Chinese these days. I can promise you that before the mission, i would've killed myself if i even tried reading the book in chinese. However, as of today, (I had an aha moment this morning), I can officially say that I love the Book in my native language, and that no matter what language it comes in, it is truly the words of God.

I am discovering new things each day about myself, about the Plan of Salvation, about the people around me, about this Gospel, about my Savior's role in my life, about my relationship with my family, about God's plan for ME, about the amazing lives of the prophets of the Book of Mormon, and about Minnesota!

And according to the words of our most recent convert Andrew Li (he is so wise!): "Discovery is Glorifying God."

Profound eh? Simple at first. But think on it! It's so true!

Love you all!

Sister Pao