Week 2

HEY!!! How goes it? So the mission is amazing and I'm loving every minute of it! The language is hard but slowly coming along... It's actually really beautiful and i kinda feel like I'm singing haha I still love my comps. We have so much fun together but yet we're really serious. We have the most amazing companionship study. We end up crying every time and the spirit is so amazing. I'm learning so much and I LOVE it!!! My district is amazing the Elders are so funny and nice and actually pretty mature haha so it's great! Last week we met a lady in the temple from Taiwan and she got our address and sent us some of her family names so today we were able to do their temple work.. it was so amazing. Even though I didn't know the person I honestly felt a connection and excitement for her and that her husband was able to have his work done at the same time... It really was beautiful. (I'm trying not to overuse amazing and beautiful but that basically describes it!) So a little update on our investigator... I think he thinks we're crazy... Last week we were teaching him about the first vision and since our vocabulary is still pretty small ( I can pray and bear my testimony and teach in chinglish) we decided to sing the hymn "Joseph Smiths First Prayer" to him... in Mandarin... the singing was horrible but the spirit was so strong and I could tell that he loved it. He's praying and reading the Book of Mormon so it's coming along and I just love him. We get 2 new investigators tomorrow so I'm really excited! Now to the best part.... Thanksgiving! This was honestly the best thanksgiving I've ever had... We had a devotional in the morning and we kinda new an apostle would be coming so I was getting a little excited... while we were singing "Because I have been given much" Elder Holland walked in... I started to cry... the spirit was so strong. He is so amazing and his talk was so powerful. I wish I could write it all... He talked about the Atonement in such an amazing and beautiful way. He expressed how important it was for us as missionaries to know why we're serving. He said that we were given our calls in the pre-existence and that this has always been in our plans. He told us to "cowboy up and get to work". He said that the Savior had to complete the Atonement alone so we would never be alone and that we need to serve with all our might so the Savior doesn't have to do the work alone. So powerful and such an answer to my prayers! I love Elder Holland and I love the Savior so much for what He did for me! I'm so grateful for Him and the Fathers plan!

Week 1

Hey! How is everyone? The MTC is awesome! I love love love it! I love my companions! There's Sister Reece from Arizona and Sister Okada from Wyoming. We all click instantly and we really balance each other out. Mandarin is both harder and easier than I thought it would be... the tones are crazy hard and me being tone deaf doesn't help at all (maybe I should have continued singing lessons...) but the structure of the sentences are pretty easy... The scariest part of the first day was when I walked into class and the teacher would only speak Mandarin and kept trying to tell me my Chinese name and what to do and I just stared at her for like 5 minutes but my new name is not Sister Bray it's Song Jiemei which means absolutely beautiful... JK it really has no meaning it's just a popular last name from Chinese dynasty haha but I love it! So I'm actually part of a really cool pilot program here at the MTC. There's only 4 districts doing it in the MTC and we are the only Mandarin district so I feel extremely blessed. The main difference is we teach an investigator everyday... let me repeat... we teach an investigator in Mandarin everyday... yep this started on Thursday when I knew maybe 10 words with the wrong tones haha but it is so awesome. His name is Xia Guang We. He is from China and he is here studying medicine. He has a wife and a daughter back in China and he is waiting for them to come here... He is so cool and I can just feel the Lords love for him every time we teach him. I loved that we had to just jump into Mandarin and into teaching. It really helps so much to have someone to focus on and gives me even more motivation to learn the language fast so I can talk to him and get to know him better! Basically I'm loving the mission so much! Yesterday was so spiritual and amazing... I would write more but I'm almost out of time! I love you all!!!!