HELLO from my last Wednesday at the MTC!!! Words cannot express how happy I am or how excited I am to get to Taiwan.
This week started pretty rough. Liang Jie Mei went home on Friday because she needed to get surgery and it was a rough goodbye. We all love her so much and as Lei Jie Mei put it "it feels like our right arm is gone." Please pray for her as she is getting surgery. She will hopefully be able to come back to her mission in about a month! So I guess I shouldn't have said it was a goodbye- just a see you soon. :)
The hardest moments in life definitely leave you with a renewed gratitude for and awareness of every single happy moment. And this week has since been full of some of my favorite memories on the mish so far. The first sweet moment of the week was...*drum roll please*
#1) receiving our FLIGHT ITINERARY!! We are actually going to Taiwan!!! We leave next Tuesday morning and I don't have the words to express how excited and grateful I am. The Mandarin is coming along well, but I have also been so humbled (to put it lightly) to realize how little I know when speaking with native speakers here at the MTC. Taiwan will be shocking and humbling, but I have NEVER been more ready and excited to get wrecked #HOLLA
#2) We also found out that our Branch President (a.k.a. the man who acts like the grandpa of our class and two others here at the MTC) is kiiiind of a big deal. He has a Wikipedia page- search "Gregory Newell." He also casually took off one night after visiting us because "he needed to catch his flight to make it in time for his meeting with the President." Yep. With Mr. Obama. In D.C. At the Whitehouse. This is my claim to fame.
Or at least I thought that was my claim to fame....until our little class of 6 was selected out of every single class here at the MTC (about 120 individual classes like ours & ours was chosen!?!!?) to do an interview with SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. Yes YOU HEARD ME: the Sports Illustrated Magazine!! The article was about athletes who put their sporting careers on hold to serve missions. It was pretty cool because the writer kept saying how impressed she was and that it wasn't at all what she had thought. And it seemed like she meant it in the best way possible haha. I also thought it was kind of weird how nervous she was, but I guess anyone would be nervous in a classroom with 6 weird teenagers speaking Chinese. OH & there was a camera man that literally took 5 billion pictures and he was so close to my face at one point that I would not be surprised if there is a picture of my right nostril in the article.
ANOTHER COOL THING this week was being able to hear from Elder Renlund! He talked about how life-changing faith is. We got to sing in the choir last night that was the special musical number for Elder Renlund's talk and our choir director mentioned something that has been on my mind. (side note: the choir director is incredible and always explains the meanings behind hymns) He was talking about companions and how to be a good companion. He said "All you need to remember are 6 words: Be their blessing, not their burden."
So simple right!? But then I was thinking about how I want to adopt this motto for every relationship in my life. How can we help others instead of weighing them down? It's sort of like a glorified way to say "treat others as you want to be treated." But the way he said it really got me thinking. Be the companion that other missionaries look forward to having and be the person that other people look forward to meeting.
A quote (pinterest, woot woot) I have hanging in my room back home says "Live your life in such a way that if anyone were to speak poorly of you, no one would believe it."
I wish I could glue these thoughts to the front of my brain because it is so easy to forget when I become upset or things don't seem to be going "my way." But I really want to try being that person that is a blessing rather than a burden. I don't think there should ever been any in between either! If you have the ability to make someone happy rather than weigh them down, why would we ever burden someone? This was such a good reminder for me and I hope it helps some of you, as well.
Bring a lil sunshine into someone's life
Wǒ ài nǐmen!
xoxo
mo jie mei
PICTURES
1. Our flight itinerary!!
2. Taiwan here I come!
3. With my wǒ de tóngbàn <3
4. Zuì kě'ài de rén huózhe: Fang Jie Mei from Táiběi!<3
5. This is the greatest thing ever. So I made ANOTHER friend from Taipei who is ALSO one of the greatest people I know. She only speaks Zhongwen so it is really good practice for me and my comp. The first day we met her, she invited us down to her dorm and already had written me a little note. Then she gives us these seaweed snacks her family sent her called "BIG SHEET". There is only one seaweed piece in it....slightly concerned about how you only eat one sheet. however I guess it is called "big sheet" so it will probably suffice! Is Asia not the best place in the world, besides home?
