Part of Annie's email home on Sept. 7th, 2015
Thanks for the football update! It's great to hear that it's all going pretty smoothly right now!(: LOTS has changed in 3 years!!!!! I looove showing off these pics to people hehe They're so huge and people don't ever ever believe that I'm the oldest(; So you know how Sister Farr is my "big sister" on the mission, cuz Sister Pieper trained her, too? This week I said, "Sometimes I can't tell if your my big sister or my mom!" and then she said, "They're one and the same." I laughed so hard! She's the youngest in her family so she's had like the opposite experience I've had growing up. It's so funny! She's been having fun being the big sister for once and I'm having to be the little sister. haha I thought you and the boys might get a kick out of that(;
Here's a funny story from yesterday when we were finding.. I had a language mess up! haha! We walked up to this college age girl to contact her. So we introduced ourselves, "Ni hao. Women shi zhe fujin de chuanjiaoshi jiemei. Wo xin Feng, er ma de Feng. Wo xin Ou, Ou Yang de Ou." 你好. 我們是這附近的傳教士姐妹. 我姓馮，二馬的馮。我姓歐，歐陽的歐。 (so that you can Google translate it(; ) So then after we say our names you obviously ask what their name is. BUT in Chinese there are 2 ways to ask, informal and formal. Usually we'll say the formal bc we're missionaries, but I randomly decided to say it the informal way, that my native trainer Sister Mao would say all the time... haha. So the formal way is to say, "您貴姓?" ”Nin gui xing?" But the informal way to say it is, "你姓什麽？“ "Ni xing shen me?" So "xing" means last name right? Well if you just leave of the "g" it means beliefs, like religious beliefs. So when I asked, "What's your last name?", she thought I meant What religion are you? then responded, "不好意思！我信佛教。“ “buhaoyisi! Wo xin fojiao!" Sorry I'm a buddhist！ I think I probably just killed the funny with all that chinese explanation, but basically I wanted to ask her last name, my companion also though I was asking her last name and then she was like sorry I believe in Buddhism! It was SUPER funny yesterday! We couldn't even continue the contact cuz we were laughing at the awkwardness. :)
Oh and then we were on our way home a few minutes later and we pass through this HUGE marketplace! It was like Aladdin, but CRAZIER! SO MANY old people! Anyways, we're just tryna get home and these college age boys selling shrimp stopped Sister Farr and tried to give her free shrimp cuz we're American. Then he's like just take some free shrimp! It's from Taidong! And then Sister Farr's like hey! me and my companion have both served in Taidong! So then I came up and was like what?! Taidong?! So we got some random free shrimp yesterday. It made our whole day! They still had their heads on and everything. SO fresh. But we were so excited to eat them we took the heads off before we remembered to take a picture. :( SO there's some craziness for the week! hahaha! Sister Farr and I have so much fun! We have our rough days for sure... but it's been a pretty great last few weeks! :)
So yeah.. there it is! This email took forever cuz I had to figure out how to tell that chinese mess up story... sorry! But overall I think Spiritually and emotionally it was a better week!... maybe not as far as the work goes, but we always have another week. One thing that's freaked me out though is the language... :/ Part of our language learning is to pass of these 3 "phases" of learning Chinese. Phase 1 is to learn PmG lesson vocabulary, grammar, phrases and such. Then Phase 2 is 2,000 common words and expressions I guess that we have to memorize then take a test with the AP's to pass it off. THEN phase 3 is learning how to read and write 3,000 characters. :P Usually sisters will have 12 transfers on island to do all 3 of those phases, and it's REALLY hard for sisters to do in that time. But I still have had the goal to get it all done before I go home. But I only had 10 transfers bc of my visa AND now I have 5.5 left. I still have about 1,500 words to memorize for Phase 2 and then I can go on to Phase 3. I really want to be able to pass it all off, but I don't think I'll have time. :( I was kinda sad about that this morning.
Anyways. Thank you for all of the prayers and love, momma! :) Keep up your great work and your prayers for me! They help!!!
<3/Annie
