Provo MTC drop off
June 6, 2018
Hey mom! This is my email confirming that i have arrived and am doing great! ;)
Love you lots!
Sister Jensen
First real email-
June 11, 2018
Nihao fam!!!!!
It’s been a crazy week (of course) haha but it was so fun getting all your emails!!! I can read them all throughout the week and respond anytime on mondays! The pics of whitewater rafting, and Disney were awesome!
Chinese missionaries have the best schedule here at the Provo MTC! We have our prep days on Mondays and we get to go to the temple every week! We also have exercise time in the morning every day except on Saturdays when we have exercise time in the late afternoon. We played beach volleyball with our branch this Saturday! And we’re allowed to take our shoes off! The sand felt great! Sorry, rewind, Wednesday was good! I arrived and like they say, went straight to class where they only spoke to us in Chinese! I was the only sister there for a little until two other mandarin sisters came too. So I’m in a trio with sister Morgan from Oregon headed to Toronto Canada and sister Liu from sandy, Utah headed to Irvine California! I’m the only sister headed to Taiwan in our zone, but there’s a couple others in the “generation “ above and three of the six elders in our zone are going to Taipei! The others are going to California San Jose or something and Canada. Our teacher is super awesome! He got back from Taipei in August and our other teacher, she got back from Taichung 5 months ago. She’s super sweet and has been a real help to me, especially emotionally haha Thursday was a lot of study and classroom instruction and then in the evening we met our branch president and the rest of our branch! There are two branches of Chinese missionaries, ours is mixed mandarin and Cantonese and the other branch is all mandarin. It’s been super fun though! I love the canto sisters (there’s only sisters) so much! They are the ones in the temple pic with us! Friday we had our first exercise time and we played indoor volleyball with our zone! It was a lot of fun! The food here is just like the cannon haha but it’s all good. At least I’m used to it. I’m super grateful I’m here at the Provo mtc though because the HUGE choir is AWESOME and the devotionals are FANTASTIC and the gym is huge and I’ve seen so many of my BYU friends all the time! And we get that big field for soccer and frisbee and beach volleyball and the temple and it’s just awesome! Sunday was a lot of meetings, but it was great! We started memorizing the mission purpose in mandarin (pictured below) and during sacrament meeting and zone conference every Sunday they randomly select two missionaries for each meeting to give a talk on the topic of the week (so everyone has to prepare) and I got by in sacrament but I had to conduct the music and give a talk in zone conference! I was pretty nervous but kinda grateful that I went first cuz then no one judged me for only saying my three sentence testimony at the end of my talk in Chinese. The older missionaries gave their whole talk in their language! Needless to say, I didn’t understand much haha I forgot to mention (sorry this is very scattered) that we taught our “investigator” on Friday and Saturday! (I say “investigator” cuz he looks like a 21 year old BYU student that probably served in Taiwan and has an English Apple Watch and our teacher admitted to being friends with him…exposed! Haha but I don’t mind because I definitely do not want someone’s salvation resting on my Chinese right now! Luckily, sister liu already knew a lot of canto and some mandarin so most of the time she understands his questions and sister Morgan and I just kinda stare at him blankly... we always have to have him read the scriptures or quotes and use a video to take up most of the 20 min we’re supposed to teach) although i can say a simple prayer in mandarin!
Well, it has been a rollercoaster of a week! Chinese is super hard and stressful, but it seems like every other meeting or interview is another testimony or promise that the gift of tongues is real and I know that this is the Lord’s work so He will help me become whatever He wants and needs me to become, even if that means I’ll always struggle with Chinese! This isn’t about me or what I want, this is about Jesus Christ and the people of Taipei! I am so grateful for this opportunity and I know God has sent me where I need to be and I have the best companions ever—they’re just so perfect! He is looking out for me and watching over me everyday! Provo and the mtc grounds are beautiful and the weather here is perfect!
Keep smiling and keep laughing!
God is so good and is watching over all of us!
Love you lots!!!
Jīn Jēmeì
