Happy Chinese New Year!

My first real celebration of Chinese New Year.  Basically that means eating a ton for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Our Branch was so sweet to make a sign up list to see who could have us over for the meals during the 4 main days of Chinese New Year.  At first I was feeling pretty Bu Hao Yisi about it, but the President said if they didn't take care of us, we'd just have to eat ramen at home for Guo Nian because all the shops are closed and that would just be way to sad.  Hahaha.  So the pros, we got to spend time and eat a ton of yummy food with different members.  The cons, I needed to figure out how to eat a ton of food with just a few hours break between meals.   I quite literally prayed for the Lords help in making it so that my body would be able to eat a ton and keep it all down.  Don't get me wrong, the food was absolutely delicious, but when you eat so much there comes a point where it wants to push itself back out.  Miraculously I was able to eat heartily and keep it.  Although keeping it also means keeping all the weight that comes with it, it's worth it if it is for Guo Nian.  They all say that Guo Nian is the exception and after, we can all focus on losing the weight we packed on.  Hahah.  

On Sunday we had one hour of church and then went to Gukeng for a Branch Hiking Activity.  Xu Family has a house up on a "hill" that they occasionally go to and offered to have the activity there,  So basically, a small hike and then dinner.  I got pretty car sick on the way up the "small" hill (small mountain more like it) but after we arrived my brain slowly stopped spinning.  We pretty soon started our hike.  It was oddly overcast and had even started sprinkling a little bit on the way but once we got to the peak of our hike it was like an Arizona monsoon.  Really, the heavy rain came out of no where.  So we all pretty quickly went from really warm and moist from the humidity to really warm and soaking wet.  Luckily the rain didn't stay too long.  :]  It was still a pretty good hike albeit harder than I was expecting.  We got back and they had a bunch of food prepared.  Probably had the largest pot of seafood soup I had ever seen.  It's good we got back when we did because shortly after an even more intense rain started.  I felt so bad and grateful to the priesthood leaders who were grilling meat for us outside under the protection of some metal sheets and large leaves...  

On another note, we currently have an investigator!  She is actually a Christian of another church.  Our largest hurdle with her is the fact that she has no desire whatsoever to read the Book of Mormon.  She absolutely loves the Bible and studies it everyday, but says her goal is to finish the Bible so she doesn't want to spend the time to read the Book of Mormon.  Sometimes it is hard to watch because we can invite and promise blessings, but it of course is only up to the person's desire if it is to be done.  AGENCY!  One of the greatest gifts given to us.  

In the end, Guo Nian has been amazing, but it has also been a time when no one has the time to meet up with us to discuss the gospel.  So it's been a fun, interesting and strange week.