Had a BBQ with all the youth at it was great! Get your roasting sticks ready, because I'm going to teach you all to BBQ HK style and it's going to rock your world! Forget your hot dogs and marshmallows - we were cooking chicken wings, pork chops, fish balls, crab balls, toast, you name it, we were BBQing it! So just have that to look forward to.
Sister Hoxer is the greatest companion a JiMuih could ask for. She's just amazing and we work hard and have fun! Everyone tells her that if she had black hair she would look like a HongKonger..... Which we're not so sure about. But my love for her is untypeable.
Sunday night we had an interesting experience with two lessons back to back that really changed my perspective about teaching.
I'll explain.
Lesson 1: So we taught this black man from Nigeria. Good guy. He's working here, been here a couple years. We met him on the hingtit (lightrail) and he had some interest so we rescheduled him for this Sunday.
Turns out he's SUPER Catholic. We gave him a chapel tour and things were going great! He loved it and thought it was beautiful and had all kinds of great questions. We sat down and really simply and fluidly taught the Restoration. Granted, it was in English.. Haha but we were teaching great together, the spirit was totally leading the lesson and things were going great. He was understanding it all perfectly and we were keeping it real applicable to him and doing all the 9 million things that people tell you that you have to do to be a good teacher. Sister Hoxer shared the first vision and the Spirit was undeniable. It was incredible. We bear our testimonies and I'm thinking we've sealed the deal.....
Long story short he went off about the trinity and things just went downhill from there. We're finally able to invite him to pray and ask God if it's true and you would have thought we asked him to jump off a 800 ft cliff into a tank of electric eels. Needless to say he was quite offended that we would even suggest such a thing, so we ended the lesson and he went on his way.
Lesson 2: Directly following the lesson we went over to teach a less active that has recently started coming to church. He's super awesome, just busy. He's agreed to let us practice our teaching on him, so it's been great! This time we taught in Cantonese, gama (obviously) and we practiced letting Sister Hoxer take the lead! She's INCREDIBLE and I've been amazed at how fast she's picked everything up, but learning Cantonese in just a really hard thing (if you haven't tried just take my word for it) and the lesson was taught nowhere near the level of clarity and fluidity that we were able to teach the black guy with. BUT. The Spirit was just as strong - and actually stronger because it stayed the whole time. The guy we were teaching was super touched and it was just an uplifting experience for everybody. and it reminded me a valuable lesson.
This whole preaching the gospel a whole lot more about the ground then it is about the seed or about the sower.
You all know the Parable of the Sower (Matt). What I mean by that last statement is that really when it all comes down to it, the gospel and the things we're sharing (the seed) are true and perfect. We (the sowers) are just doing our best. We study hard and we sihfaahn (roleplay) and we study more and we do our best to deliver the message as simply and as clearly as we can so that the spirit can testify that what we are saying is true. But really it all comes down to what condition the heart (or the ground) of those we are sharing this message with is in.
I am in no way saying that it isn't important for missionaries to teach clearly with power and authority. What I'm saying is that we are not perfect, and God knows that. That's why He always makes it work out - those with prepared ground and those who choose with their agency to receive the seeds we're passing out (for free, might I add) will always find that when continuously nourished, it will always bring forth fruit!
Mom sent me an email clear back saying that the parable of the sower focuses a whole lot more on the ground than it does about the seed and the sower. It was cool to experience it in real life this week. It's been good to reevaluate what condition my ground is in!
I hope that made sense. I love you all and I'm so very grateful for all you do for me! Ga yauh!!
Love,
Sister Robinson
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