Chinese Fun

The day before we left Mt. Pleasant Lanny and Shirley stopped to say goodbye and the last thing I said to them was that my dream would be to be able to help a Chinese person come into the gospel.
We were pleased to see two Chinese Elders at our first Zone meeting and told them that we would be willing and happy to teach an Oral English class for them if that would be helpful to them.  There are two working at the University of Oregon and two at Oregon State University in Corvallis. 

The two cuties behind me are best friends from the same ward in Hong Kong.  The one just above me has only been out a little over a month.  They speak Cantonese in their apartments, Mandarin to investigators and English to the rest of us. 

On Thursday night the middle two, who are assigned here in Eugene called to see if there was any way that we could drive three of their investigators to Corvallis to a party on Friday night.  We were free and agreed to but weren't really even able to understand where he was saying the party was.  It was dark and rainy (surprise) and the GPS gave us some wrong directions so it was a little difficult to find the institute at UO to picked them up and then we drove for another hour in the dark and rain to Corvallis and found the institute.  Our three riders are graduate students from various places in China.  We couldn't tell how much they had actually heard about the church but were excited because this was to be the first Christmas party they had ever attended. One girl spoke quite freely to us and the other two didn't say much at all. 

After we met at the institute we drove to the home of a family.  We're not sure why we went to the institute because we got back into our own car and followed our GPS to get there but we did. 

Three years ago a couple in Corvallis (he is Chinese-she is from Oregon) had a few Chinese students over for a Christmas party.  The next year they had met a family with a much bigger home and she had gone to Taiwan for a mission and they arranged to have the party at their home.  They had about 10 Chinese that year.  This third year there were 20 Chinese there.  Most of the conversation came in Chinese and even the "He is the Gift" video had Mandarin subtitles.  It was really fun to be so immersed in the culture again. 

We have no idea how our riders felt about the video and the testimonies that the Elders bore in Mandarin.  They spoke in Mandarin the first while back in the car and then were quiet most of the way home.  I had mentioned to them on the way up that we have offered to teach Oral English at the institute in Eugene if they find interested students.  They quickly said that they would love to be our students.  When they got out of the car we told them that the offer was open and we gave the a card with our phone numbers and email address.  We'll see if anything comes of it. 

I do have to say that when we got assigned to the country town of Veneta that doesn't even have a Hispanic population my wish of working with Chinese seemed quite impossible.  We will see what comes of this.  At very least, we truly enjoyed ourselves.