Hiya!! People say that a lot here.
So this week has flown by way too quickly, it's hard when you feel like you've done nothing and time just trickle through your fingers. We had so many appointments scheduled this week but yet again they fell through. I still don't know what happened to Frank, I hope that he's okay. This week was the week of Recent converts that needs to be watched over, Rayann and Shirley. We saw them it feels like 3 times this week, Shirley was moving out and she's a single mum. Thankfully she had a lot of friends around, the Elders came down for an hour and carried some heavy stuff. It brought me back to when my family and I, moved to America and had a big container and boxes to unpack but the members of Mountainville 2nd Ward showed up and helped us out. I think Shirley could've received help from members but she didn't have a ton of stuff. We had ward coordination this Tuesday, the Elders didn't come because one of them hasn't been feeling well for the past few weeks, now he's in Edinburgh and may or may not be coming back to Dundee. I'm glad that he isn't going home and toughing it out, but it's sad that we won't be seeing him any more in Dundee.
Meng took us out to a Chinese Buffet for his farewell dinner, he said that the place was 70% Chinese and that the food looked Chinese but didn't taste Chinese. He said that he'll find me a Chinese cookbook in English because he thinks I have good potential to be a good Chinese cook. Hahaha! It was alright, but I think meng is right, it doesn't taste Chinese. People here have a very plain pallet of taste, they don't like spicy food or anything too weird. The Chinese Buffet didn't even have chop-sticks on the table!! I asked for some and showed off to Meng my chop stick skills, I have to say they've vastly improved over the years. Thank you Nam!! One day I will go to China and try chicken feet, Cow tonged, guts, feet, pig ears and all of that yummy stuff! I'm really sad to see Meng go back to China, and I hope he emails all of his Missionary friends soon. Later on that day we saw Michael, he seems to be almost done reading the Book of Mormon, he's really sincere about finding an answer for himself and I admire that so much. We hope to give him a tour of the chapel later this week so he'd feel more comfortable about going to church.
Thursday was ALL-SCOTLAND!!! Whooop! I love seeing all of the missionaries that you never see and hearing the incoming missionaries and the going home missionaries testimonies. I forgot to tell Sister Truman that she was giving her testimony in-front of all the missionaries in Scotland. Opps. I don't regret not telling her because then she has less time to be nervous about it. She and the other missionaries gave lovely testimonies. Sister Muller, the STL (sister training leader) from Germany is going home at the end of this transfer. I'm sad to see her go and she seems to be not too excited to leave either. She kinda let go of home and absorb mission life and it'll be like loosing her home and family going back to Germany. I feel like I might get that way, I'm starting to love mission life and get used to how things run. I don't think I would ever want to imagine what it's like going home early from your mission. At All-Scotland we were re-taught all of the basics from the Big Five(My Conversion Formula, how to get a 2nd Appointment, How can I have a Model area, 4 Steps to Qualifying Appointments and The Holy Ghost Principle), to Missionary Handbooks Always and Nevers, ironing Shirts and other such things. It was good to do it I think because most of the people in the mission now are really new and most haven't been out more than 9 months.
On Friday we had dinner with Lawrence and Ann Sophie, they are awesome! We had a German dinner with a fantastic potato salad (I need to get the recipe) and
Schnitzel. They are also great Ward Missionaries! Lawrence served his mission in Germany and Ann Sophie is German. Wow I have a lot about germans in this weeks email... Anyway Lawrence is helping us out by going through the member list marking the active, less active and part member families. I'm planning to get the members in the Liff Ward more involved with missionary work or start to get them more involved, hopefully...
Saturday was like a blink in the eye, we traveled to Kriton and while we were staring at the bus schedule map, a voice behind us said, So where are we going? turning around we saw THE APS behind us!! (AP, assistants to the president) it was so strange to see them in Dundee I was so confused for a second. We asked them about the bus schedule, realize we were at the wrong stop and need to go the other direction and ran away. We also ended up being 30 minutes late to a dinner appointment that night with the Manuels but it didn't see to bother them that much thankfully. They made a FANTASTIC Banoffee pie, I suggest everyone at home to try making Banoffee pie, you don't need digestives, gram crackers would work just as well. and also you don't need pre-made caramel, just cook sweet and condense milk, with Brown sugar and butter. Google it. Basically you crush gram crackers, mix melted butter cover the mixer at the bottom of a tray, place it in the fridge to harden, then you get sliced bananas lay them over the gram crackers, make caramel with the sweet and condensed milk, pour it over the bananas, then whip some cream, cover everything with cream, crush some chocolate (they have a chocolate bar called flakes here, that is really light and has a different texture) What I think you can do is grate a block of chocolate over the cream, being generous and wala!! You have Banoffee!! It's so good and so easy!!
| Men and Sister Miranda Johnson |
Sunday I walk for 4 miles to church and then 4 mile back to the flat in the rain...
something but we wanted to keep the Sabbath day holy so we walked. It was a REALLY LONG walk. it was all up hill to church and super cold on the way back. Sister Truman and I were silent almost the whole way home, it was kinda miserable. But hey now we have something to say in a lesson if some one is complaining about how hard it is to keep the Sabbath day holy, IT'S NOT THAT HARD TO NO GO SHOPPING! TRY WALKING 8 MILES IN THE RAIN!
We got a ride from Sister Keogh to the dinner appointment with her family thankfully and the Calvins gave us a ride to the missionary class we had that night.
And now we are on today, didn't do anything exciting this P-day because the flat desperately needed to be cleaned. So many ELDER SOCKS! And we've started to decorate for Christmas, I'm really excited to start listening to Christmas music. And October isn't even over yet... can we please skip Halloween and just have Christmas now?
Hope everyone is doing well at home and getting excited about Halloween, they seem to have an Americanized Halloween here, there are Halloween stores, orange pumpkins and candy everywhere. I'm excited to see what it's like. I love walking into the grave yards here because they are from the 18th century cemeteries, There is a lot of huge grave stones too. One night when we were walking at 7pm, it was pitch black I saw that there were paper crane looking chain of lights hung in the tree is a really old grave yard, with creepy music playing. Sister Truman and I walked through it. I though it was really cool, I think it's a temporary art piece that's called the luminous birds, you can probably look it up. It reminded me of the Asian horror games, that are spooky and strange.
I just want to end this email on a spiritual note but I'm not sure how to now, this has turned into a really weird weekly letter...
I'll just end with talking about the sacrament, I wish that we can all make sacrament meeting more of a spiritual experience, when we partake of this amazing ordinance we have the opportunity to become more Christ-like to use the atonement of Jesus Christ. It's the number 1 most important moment in our week that the sacrifice that our Savior has made can have full effect in our life. Before the meeting the whole chapel hall must be quite and peaceful to allow those who wish to contemplate the repentance processes they've participated in that week and to feel the love of God come over them. I miss having more peaceful, and quiet alone time moments with my God. Personal Prayers are another one of my favourite parts of missionary work, I used to find praying such a bother and waste of time. But now I love them because I feel a closer relationship with my Heavenly Father and feel like I'm coming to know him better. I've been working on identifying the moments when my prayers are answered and also asking for the right things in my prayers.
Praying for all of you! Feel free to email me!
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