Last P Day at the MTC!

Leih houh!

Wow! Today is my last P-day here at the MTC! My time is almost up here. It's so bittersweet! I have loved my time here, but I am ready to go to HK! I've known for five months I would be serving in HK but I think it's finally setting in because it's so close now! :) Pretty crazy! 

We got our travel plans!!! :) We leave a week from today (Monday, April 27th)! We leave SLC at noon, fly to Seattle, have an hour layover, and then go straight to HK! We checked with the travel office today and our visas and passports all passed, so we are ready to go! :) This week will probably feel super slow but at the same time it will be really busy having to pack, clean, and organize everything! We heard there is a Cafe Rio in the airport so we are hoping that is true! ;) I have also been praying for an opportunity to share the gospel with someone in the airport or on the plane so hopefully God will place someone in my path! 

This week was a good week! Sister Chan (one of our language teachers) had to fly to HK for a family emergency and isn't sure when she will be back. We have missed her a lot this week and we really hope we get to see her before we leave! Our whole schedule got switched and we've had 2 subsitutes this week- one speaks Cantonese and the other doesn't. But the good thing with that is we got to teach an "investigator" in English!!! :) Haha I was so excited! Because although I can teach and testify somewhat in Cantonese I can never fully say what I want to or share experiences because I have a limited vocab pool right now. So it was great in English to understand what the investigator is actually saying and to be able to express what I want haha! :) So that was fun for us! 

Our district got asked to be traffic hosts this week! We had a blast! :) Unfortunately, it decided to snow on Wednesday again so we froze! But we got to wear these huge, yellow, reflector coats and use walkie talkies! We thought we looked pretty sweet :) I'll try to get the pic, only one person had their camera. We are hoping to host again this week, we really like doing it! 

Another big thing that happened this week is we had a new district join our zone! It's a pretty unique situation because usually your district all speak the same language but between the ten of them, they are learning 4 languages! So it's been pretty crazy! Since we are the Sister Training Leaders we had to give them an orientation with the zone leaders and we've had tons of meetings this week. We got 4 new sisters! Sister Johansen is from Utah going to Washington speaking Cambodian, Sister Xiong is from Alaska going to Cambodia, Sister Lim is from the Philipines going to Hong Kong, and Sister Dao is from Colorado going to Vietnam. They are all really sweet and fun, we have enjoyed getting to know them :) We have had to help them out a lot this week because two of the girls are having extreme homesickness. It's been fun being a leader and helping the new ones! 

Sorry this is so long! Just one more thing I want to share about this week. For the devotional, we had Elder Zwick of the seventy and his wife come. They gave great talks on hope and the Atonement. At the end of the talk, Elder Zwick invited his handicapped son, Scotty, to come up. He is physcially (slightly) and mentally challenged. Elder Zwick said, "Scotty what do you see out there?" Then Scotty said, "Missionaries!!" with a huge smile. Elder Zwick asked him to bear his testimony. He said, "I love Jesus Christ and I love missionaries. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." Everyone in the audience was in tears at this point and the Spirit was so strong! Later, in our district review of the meeting our branch president pointed out that Scotty had only said two things but the Spirit that was there was incredible! He told us that that is how the Spirit works so when we get to HK we just need to make sure the Spirit is there and not to worry about our Cantonese. We could say two sentances but as long as the Spirit is there, he will make up the rest! That made me feel so much better and have hope for the language! :) 

Thank you so much for all the prayers and support! Elder Zwick also said that he was in a temple session with the First Presidency and they gave a special prayer for missionaries. Wow! I am so humbled that millions of people (including you!) who are praying for me and for the mission force!
So thank you so much! The work is true :) Our branch president allows us to email the Saturday before we leave as well so I'll send a short email then. Everyone have an awesome week! 

Love, Sister Escher