Ga Ting Leih Deih Hou!!!! - March 6, 2012

Leih deih hou!!

The first week in the Missionary Training Center was excellent! The first thing that happened when I stepped into my classroom was my teacher (Jang Hing Dai) talking to me in Cantonese as if I was fluent. I immediately got a bit nervous, but I knew that as I exercise faith and obedience, the Lord will bless me. The next day we were told to prepare to teach an investigator in our mission language. Everyone in my district got wide eyed immediately. "We just learned how to say 'Hi, I am a missionary.' just yesterday! How are we supposed to teach a lesson about the gospel in Cantonese?!" was my first thought. The next day was when we had to teach our investigator, Pauline. In class, right before teaching Pauline, we learned how to bare our testimonies in Cantonese. Simple, but bold testimonies. This is all that we could do really, but we felt the Spirit very strong in that lesson. Although, Pauline was a bit confused due to our broken Cantonese, she was very understanding towards us and loved that we took the time to teach her. Elder Liu (one of my companions) grew up speaking Cantonese, so he was able to start off with a good relationship between her and our district. The next lesson we tried teaching Pauline about who God is. He is our loving Heavenly Father and loves us so much. He wants us to live with Him again, and because of giving His only Begotten Son to the world to be sacrificed for our sins, we can live with Him again! We tried communicating with her, and telling her about this amazing truth, but we stumbled and couldn't fully tell her what we wanted to say. She asked some very good questions, and we tried to answer them the best way we could, but she was very confused due to our lack of experience in Cantonese. We left the lesson very discouraged and very frustrated with ourselves. When we got back into our classroom, we prayed telling Heavenly Father what we wanted to say and promised that we would work even harder to learn the language. Pauline wrote four questions down for us so we could help her the best we could the next time we saw her. We only know how to read pin yahm (romanized Cantonese), but she wrote her questions down in characters. We were kind of worried as to how we'll be able to translate her questions. As we sat down to translate the questions, it amazing to see how my previous knowledge of reading and writing came back to me. I know that God helped us with that. Alma 26:11-12 talks about how through God we can do all things. We have the strength to do all things, and without Him, we are nothing. I truly know that God did helps us in translating Pauline's questions so we can help her understand that Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Her four questions were:
What is faith?
I can't see Him, I can't hear Him. How do I know God?
Why is Jesus God's Beloved son, but we are His children? (rough translation)
What relation does Jesus Christ's gospel have with family?

The next lesson was amazing. It lasted for an hour! We were able to show her scriptures concerning what faith is, and then taught her about how through faith and prayer we can know God. We can know that He is listening to our prayers and loves us with all of His heart. As we taught through the Spirit (versus memorizing things to say to her) she was able to understand and learn more.

As we got to know Pauline more, we found out that she had a sister who died. She wants to know more about Jesus Christ's gospel and families because she wants to know if she will see her sister again. We told her that she will. We are going to teach her more on the doctrine of eternal families next time we meet with her. She is amazing, and her willingness for us to teach her is so great! We are so blessed.

I love the MTC so much! I hope everyone is doing well! I love you all, and I hope you all have a great week!!

Love you all!
-Elder Johnson