(For Part I of this thrilling saga, go
here.)
*
Edited per Lo Gung's helpful hints. Thanks, honey! :-D Deciding to go on a mission was the start of a beautiful change in my life. I arrived in the Missionary Training Center in May of 2003, in beautiful Provo, Utah. I spent 12 weeks there, learning how to be a missionary, learning to speak Cantonese, and learning how to present The Word to the sweet people that filled that distant city. I arrived in Hong Kong in August of that year. It was hot, sticky, smelly...I was miserable at first. Every day, my trainer would ask me, "How are you doing,
tuhngbuhn (companion) ? Every day, I gave her the same answer - Sticky.
I ought to explain a little - my first apartment in Hong Kong was in an area called Cheung Sha Wan. Our biggest claim to fame was the sheer number of elderly residents that lived in the Retirement Communities that dotted the neighborhood. There was a very large elementary school, just below our window, with hundreds of students. Every morning, they had their Exercise Time. All the students stood in neat little rows, wearing their neat little white shirts and teeny tiny shorts, and doing jumping jacks or just jumping, or stretching, while a Teacher would count over the loudspeaker: "
Yat, Yih, Saam, Sei, Mh, Luhk, Chat, Baat" I'm pretty sure that I could count to eight in my
sleep within two days of moving in.
We were on the 17th story, I think. There were four girls living in the apartment, which consisted of a main room, a bed room, a study, a kitchen and a bathroom. The bedroom had had the doors removed - the door wouldn't shut with two bunk beds in there, anyhow. I had the bottom, right bunk. To get to bed I would crawl onto the bottom left bunk and cross over to mine. The hardest bed to reach was my companion's bed, above mine - she had to crawl onto the bottom left bunk, cross my bunk to the recessed window and then climb up onto her bed. There was literally two inches between the two bunk beds, and about that between the four sides of the beds and the four walls. The kitchen had room for two people to stand, side by side. The "study" had room for two desks and a dresser, with about three feet between the desks (side by side) and the dresser at our backs.
(
I don't mean to complain about the apartment! Later apartments were much larger - we were in the process of looking for a new apartment when I lived in Cheung Sha Wan, so the teeny arrangements were temporary.)Our area of town was dotted with various sellers of foods. There were several shops that sold nothing but dried seafood, roots, bark, fungus and mushrooms, all for the healing of the body and the making of delicious soups. I can tell you - you definitely
know when you are approaching a shop that specializes in dried scallops, shrimp and salted whole fish.
By the time my first companion (my trainer) was done with me, my heart was beginning to soften. We had seen miracles, she had raised my Chinese from practically non-existent to the point where I could hold a conversation with a (very patient) Chinese person and understand what they were saying, and I had eaten my way through more yummy meals than I could count.
I have to tell you, BBJ - the Gift of Tongues that they talk about in the Bible? It's REAL. Every morning, I spent an hour studying Chinese. Every day, I used Chinese to talk to complete strangers, everywhere I went. There were so many times when someone would say something to me, and I would have NO idea what they were talking about. I would ask them to repeat it. I kid you not- every time, IF I had been diligent that morning in my studies (regardless of what words I actually studied), I would hear that person in English the second time. It was like a little translator was sitting on my shoulder - I would hear the Chinese word with my ear, and it would be English in my head. God blesses those that do His work, and do as He commands them.
I spent a total of 15 months in Hong Kong. (The three months in the MTC count towards your 18 month total.) By the time I left, I loved the Chinese people so much it hurt. I just wanted them to be happy. As a missionary, I was completely dedicated to them. I slept for 8 hours every night, waking up early to work on music for my choir to sing to the people. I studied the scriptures, and Chinese, every morning and ate breakfast. Then I spent 11 hours a day on the streets, in the homes of members of the church or teaching lessons in the homes of those investigating the church. I showed my respect for the culture, and my hosts, by eating anything (and everything) that was put in front of me. I ate pigs tongue, chicken feet, cows stomach. (This probably explains how I put on nearly 25 lbs during my time in Hong Kong!) We had one day a week to take 8 hours for ourselves, to wash our clothes, clean our apartments, buy our groceries and send e-mails to our parents to tell them how things were going.
I cried when I left Hong Kong. I could still hear my friends' questions, ringing in my ears - What will you do when you go home? Where will you work? Their favorite question, though, was, "Will you go home and marry a Chinese boy?" I always told them, no. I wouldn't be marrying a Chinese boy. I was a very focused missionary, ignoring most of the temptations and distractions Hong Kong had to offer. (Except the bakeries. Those were so, so dangerous!) I had simply never seen a Chinese man that was my definition of handsome! I assured my friends, though, that though my skin may have remained the pinky-white I was born with, my heart was half "yellow." They understood what I meant - it was a common image among missionaries: the "egg". The missionary that was "white" outside and "yellow" inside. I had come to understand, know, and love these sweet, generous people of Hong Kong.
My deepest fear, when I got off that airplane in SeaTac, was that I would have lost all the Chinese I worked so hard to gain. I knew that if I hadn't had God's help, I never would have become as fluent as I had. I kind of assumed that without that direct help, I'd never be able to speak it fluently again. I can't believe, now, that I did this...but, after I got off the plane, I found a Chinese-looking family standing near the baggage carousel. I approached them and, in Chinese, introduced myself...and asked, "Can you understand me?" The father looked confused but he assured me, yes, as long as I was speaking Chinese and he was still Chinese, he could understand me perfectly. I was so relieved! (Remember, it's a long, long flight home from China. I don't think I'd slept in 48 hours at this point.)
I went home to my family...and tried to figure out what came next. I signed up with a temp agency. I reconnected with old friends. I met every person from Hong Kong that I could, trying to keep a connection to the culture. I quickly realized, though, that just about everyone that I could meet were my mother's age. They could teach me a lot about language and food (they taught me to cook some fabulous things!) but they would never have the time to just be my friend.
I began to pray that Heavenly Father could introduce me to someone more my age, someone I could hang out with and go shopping with...
Ha. Ha. Ha. He has such a sense of humor.
