April 13, 2014

GOOD MORNING!

YEAH SISTER WARNER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! wow that is the miracle i needed today :) I think that we should just let her know that if she knows one thing in this goespel is true, it is all true. If Joseph Smith was a prophet then he HAD to have had the priesthood. Wow i am so happy :) I will pray for her! We need her help in building the kingdom. 

Have you been inviting people to hear the gospel?

We were able to teach Mr. Wong this week and it was AMAZING. He is so good. He doesn't have religious background so we are still teaching very simply which is what we should always do. We haven't met his family yet. They were not able to make it to conference :( but we will schedule him tonight to see him this week. We will be inviting him to be baptized. Charmaine....well that lesson was...it was a rough one. We taught one with Kasey and it was great! She didn't want to be baptized though so we planned the next lesson all about baptism and scriptures and general conference. Well we worked with a new fellowshipper to help her know more people in the ward. Well our fellowshipper did not help our cause very much and charmaine told us she didn't really want to learn more. But we will work with her this next week. i really learned the importance of having a GOOD member to help teach. I hope we will never play down the importance of the basics of the Gospel. We must ALWAYS pray, read our scriptures and go to church. They are such important parts in our path to eternal life. 

I LOVED CONFERENCE! One of my favorites was elder Holland of course but i LOVED the one about the olympics. We are all on our 4 minute run. Every second counts. We only have a short time to fix our mistakes and really do what is right. Do what heavenly Father wants us to do.  Then we will have eternity to look back on what we did in those 4 minutes. I don't want to regret anything! So i think i need to look at my life and see what i need to change so that i can have that "perfect run". I also liked the quote that Jess gave me about the gospel. The Gospel gives us wings.

I was able to see a lot of the Kwun Tong members at conference and i love them so much :) one of the members brought me some chicken wings and a bagel haha. That is how Chinese people show their love. With food. I guess that is the same all around the world. 

I caught a few themes from conference too that i thought were pretty cool.

-LOVE

-LIFT

-HANDS

tis is all about us. WE have to love. WE have to lift. Life is full of lifting. and we need to use OUR hands to help those in need.

I've had to use my sign language a lot lately aha. We went to a fireside last night and the person who was supposed to translate didn't show up and so i was the only one who knew a little bit. Well let me tell you that it was ROUGH! I definitely need to work on the gift of hands. 

It is getting hot in Hong Kong again but i don't think it is as hot as Kwun Tong...maybe because it is not summer yet :) but ill take it for now! I hope you are having a fantastic week and inviting people to learn about the gospel!

I love you all so much and thank you for always supporting me in everything i do. I love reading your letters and feeling your prayers. 

-sister HAmblin

March 30, 2014

Hello! 

Our week was full of FINDING! yep and it was good. We were able to find 4 new investigators! Ok some are pretty young but all have potential. I love being a missionary. 

It is good to hear about old elder Davis. Ill keep him in my prayers. I think a mission is the best time to have a family member pass away because your testimony of the gospel is the strongest. 

Natalie emailed me this week :) she said she was so nervous haha. I would never ever redo the first few months of a mission. It was the hardest thing i have ever done but now it is the BEST! still hard but so so worth it. I just didn't know it would be the first few months. I am so excited to hear that Riann is putting her papers in! What about Dustin and Hailey?

Well this week was a really good one! We FINISHED LANGUAGE PASS OFFS!!!!! so now we can learn a little sign language is language study and in the furute i can start learning chinese characters. We are told to focus on the speaking skills before the characters. So ill probably wait a few months to start that part. 

We were able to teach our deaf investigator again this week :) she is so cute. I still can't understand everything in sign language but i can teach simple lessons in sign language. I feel like i have a deaf person radar now. We were on a boat to ap leih jau and i saw this deaf family in front of us. I couldn't let them go without trying to share the gospel! so we ran to talk to them when the boat stopped and the dad was not too interested until he could see that we were trying to speak sign language. then we got their number and now our recent convert who is also deaf is texting her and setting up a time to meet with them. What a miracle! 

My area has about 5 islands. But we only go to 3 because the others are too small and no one really lives there. and they are far away. it only takes 5 minutes to get to ap leaih jau and about 30 to get to lama island. And then we live on Hong Kong Island. It is so pretty here. I love it so much.

And now i know what they mean when they say spring rains. Last night we had what they call a black rain storm. We had just gotten into our apartment when the who sky went dark. Then sheets of rain were pouring down. We turned off all the lights and the lightning was so big that it lit up the house. The thunder what so loud and it was just amazing looking out the window of the 23rd floor of our apartment. And it hasn't stopped raining yet. It is not black rain anymore but I'm pretty sure the swimming pool next to our apartment is full :) 

So this week we went finding a lot a lot a lot a lot. We decided to walk from our house to our area (instead of taking the mini bus) well we didn't know it would take 2 hours. Finally we found a place called pok fu lam. THERE WERE HOUSES! Yep little tin houses but we could knock on the doors and it was legal. I felt like a real missionary knocking on doors haha. but then we were just knocking and walking when i heard an angelic angels voice. Yes mom. it was ELVIS! It was blasting from someones garden. so mom just for you we went to go see who it was! well his name was mr chan and he was about 60 years old. He invited us into his house (a fence with a tin roof and a garden) and decided to show us around. Well he talked to us about all his plants and that just reminded me of dad haha. anyway we tried to share the gospel and he interrupts us and tells us that the green plants in the very back are drugs. so we decided to get out of there! but we wrote down his number and said we would send the elders to teach him about the word of wisdom. he was so funny though! But that was a day of finding for over 7 hours. I think your prayers are working mom. We are finding. maybe you should pray for us to TEACH :) 

Oh and we do get to watch conference a week after you all. We will look for you in the front row! :) oh and also how are the kennibecks? (spl) I've been thinking about them. 

Kasey is doing great. She has been coming to church and has a calling as a ward missionary. she actually showed me her mission papers yesterday :) she is amazing. I just hope she will find a way to go on a mission! she wants to go so bad.  but i love you all so much :) thanks for the prayers. I can really feel them. I just love to think about my eternal family! Maybe not everybody will listen to me but i know that if all is said and done and no one listens to me i still have the gospel in my life and i have been converted in the process. 

LOVE YA'LL!    -Sister Hambreen

March 26, 2014

HELLO EVERYBODY!

It is sad to hear about grandpa sherwood. But you know what is cool? I knew it happened. I remember looking at my watch at that time, having a feeling that he had passed away, and then i prayed for elder Davis. What a cool experience it was because i just know he is happy and he is well. 

MIRACLES! well Kasey is back :) back back back. She has met with us a couple times this week and it is just so good and she is happy. She has been coming to chuch and all. Just pray for her!

So we went on 24's this past week. I went to causeway bay again. We were outside of the beautiful chapel trying to give people tours when ELDER GONG pops up out of know where. Well he is in the first quorum of the 70. He came to me, shook my hand, and pretended to be some random person on the street. He looked me in the eyes and said "sister, what is your message about"? and i said "Jesus Christ". Then he said do you think it is true? and i said "without a doubt" then he looked at me and said "good work sister, see you later". I WAS so scared! haha it was quite a shock because i have only seen him in pictures and i was just shaking in my sandals. But it was so cool to bear my testimony to him :)

We have a few more deaf investigators! Sister Chan is on a roll. We have been teaching a loot of her friends. Some accept but most don't really understand the message because they have never seen someone sign it before. So it is very hard to teach simply in sign language. but we are trying to work harder to learn it! I love sign language but i like speaking cantonese better....because i am better at speaking haha but signing is so fun! but we had one super potential deaf lady but let me tell you that it was the WORST lesson i have ever been in haha. So we have our recent convert sister chan. she is deaf. she has two sons one 6 one 7. well they are very crazy because their mom can't hear them and so they can do whatever they want. well they came to this lesson. And we were trying to teach this lovely deaf sister yuk when her sons just start screaming and throwing thing at us. Well then were reading scriptures so they didn't see anything. so we started yelling at the boys in chinese to get them so stop and so they ran out with with a gallon of water and came back with an empty jug. now where did the water go? we don't know because we were still trying to teach so then one of them runs up to me and starts poking me in the face. and we are supposed to be missionaries here so i couldn't just tell him to stop like i wanted to. so  we just try to push him away when the other one runs in with water guns and starts squirting us all in the face. Well their mom felt this one and got a little mad and kicked them out of the room. then we try to get back on topic when sister cheung and i look out the little window of the door and we see her sons squirting water all over the huge bicture of Jesus being baptized. so we booker it out of the room, tackled these little kids to the ground, took the guns and ran back in the room to finish the lesson. well the investigator caught on that something was wrong haha. and she was a little frustrated with the kids. so she left :( not a good ending but i wish i could replay that lesson for you all haha. it was the WORST lesson ever. 

Well dad, THE ASIAN SPRING IS BEAUTIFUL! especially on the island :) the trees are so bright and beautiful! and it smells good disregarding all the pollution :) it is beautiful! we were walking to general conference when just the greatest feeling of happiness filled me up :) i just couldn't stop from smiling and i looked at the chapel and the sun was shooting its rays right on the steeple of the chapel! it was gorgeous! ill try to send a pictue of it!

Well we have been finding a lot lately. we found on Lamma Island. and ap lei jau island and on our little island. We have been really trying to find new investigators because our zone has a goal this month for 101 new investigators....we usually get 30 but we are already at 78!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT A MIRACLE! the work is going forward :) but anyway we have been changing and sacrificing to find more time to find. so we decided that every time we get on our mini bus to go to aberdeen from our home in west point, we will sit by someone else. Well this has been amazing! We have 30 minutes to get to know someone and tell them how the gospel will help them! well some people do not want anything to do with us but they are stuck with sitting with us :) it is so amazing to get to know them and their families and why they are there and then introducing the gospel! Last night we were on the bus coming home and a person got on the bus. well he was a man and he wasn't chinese so i just prayed in my heart that he wouldn't sit by me...well he did. So i kind of chickened out and just sat there. Then i just couldn't stop but look at him because he wasn't chinese haha (not in a weird way, he was old) but then he took his headphones out and just said "hi" IN ENGLSIH! so i just stuttered and said "umm.....hi" haha well then i asked him why he was here and it turns out he is from peru and he works making video games! we talked for a while and then i talked to him about the church. he was just in awe that a 20 year old would give money to go tell people about a church and then have to learn cantonese haha. then he asked me if we had a card and if he could come to church!!!!! WOOHOOO! it was so good :) we talked to him for about 45 minutes and it was just ngonpaai. 

Well i have never been happier in my life. This gospel is happiness. I know that we will have happiness now and in eternity as long as we have this knowledge. I really challenge you all to invite friends to meet the missionaries. Don't be scared. just do it. The only way they will have this happiness and live with God again is through this gospel. not another gospel or another way but THIS way, And we all know this. SO SHARE THE GOSPEL! I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week sharing the gospel. and ill be asking how it went next week! so don't forget to invite someone to come to church or something this week :) ok love you all!!!!