It still feels really weird that I’ve only been in Hung Shui Kiu for a little over a week because there is already so much that has happened and I absolutely love it here!!!! I don’t think that it would be possible for me to pick another place on the whole earth that I love more. Heavenly Father really does know best!

There were a couple of lessons that I learned this week to sum things up:
1. Don’t judge a book by its cover, or, Hong Kong New Territories style, don’t judge a shack by its outside.
2. The dogs will lead you. Okay, I know that doesn’t really make much sense, but I can explain.

So this week we decided to do some finding in the morning which we never do because we’re usually doing studies at that time and it’s not necessarily the best time to go outside and do some finding. But we felt that we should and so we did and at first we were able to talk to a few people, but really didn’t have too much success. We saw a lady walking a couple of dogs by herself down an empty street, so we decided to stop and talk to her for a minute. Well, she was pretty happy to talk to us and ended up giving us her dogs’ leashes and we walked with her for about 15 minutes as we walked her dogs down the street and talked to her. We shared with her what we were doing and she said that she had been to our church before in a different area about 15 years ago and that she had a friend she knew that was also a member of our church, but we didn’t recognize the name. We were also really excited because we were able to exchange numbers with her and she seemed pretty interested. We still couldn’t figure out who her friend was at church and were wracking our brains trying to think about who it could be. We headed to our lesson with our investigator, Winnie, and it turns out that she was the friend of the person that we had met on the street and had actually just called us the day before to ask if we could help walk a friend of hers’ dogs!! When we made the connection, all three of us were just sitting there like WHOA!!!! There are no coincidences, so I think that Heavenly Father must really want her friend to hear the gospel- we’re so excited!!!

Another thing about this area which is different from my last one, which was pretty wealthy, is that a lot of people live in huts. Like literally, they have some pieces of sheet metal held together with a roof on top. We walked to one of our investigators’ houses, Michael, and his house was one of these hut-looking things. However, when we walked inside it was the craziest thing to see because it was all decked out and he even had a little fish pond under his kitchen floor!! Weird!! The lesson with him was also so amazing! He is a long time investigator that has never come to church or really made any progress, he just wants to learn English from us. I was skeptical when my companion said that we would go visit him, because I wasn’t really sure what to teach him. We got there and were just chatting, and then somehow it kind of led into commandments and why we have them and we were able to find out some of his concerns and to overcome some of them. We also invited him to come to church with his wife and kids and he didn’t promise us, but when we walked out of his house, he said “see you next Sunday!”, so I’m really hoping that he’ll come!! Ahhhhghg, I just love teaching!!!

I learned this week not to give up on people or to judge situations too quickly, especially when you don’t have all of the information. Our Heavenly Father never gives up on us and even when we can’t even see the potential hidden inside of ourselves, He can. Because there’s only so much that you can see with your eyes, it takes something more to be able to see what’s actually there. After all, you never now what’s hidden inside of the rusty old shacks that you pass everyday.

Love you all!!! Keep working miracles every day!!

Love,
Sister Crockett

Pictures:
1) an old abandoned Buddhist temple that we saw while finding
2) Sister Malone! Me new comp!
3) What a lot of my new area looks like, it’s quite different!
4) super good aloe vera drink with rice balls–so good!