The Super Sniffer

Hello all! I hope you are having a good week and enjoying the nice
spring weather.

So, one of the downfalls of working with universities...finals week.
It's almost worst than when I was in university. Almost. But besides
the pain of seeing so many of our friends stressed out,  it means
that almost no one can see us for the next week! So that has made
finding a bit difficult this week.

Something unique about the culture that I have noticed here is how much
English people love their dogs. It is not uncommon for two strangers
who are walking their dogs to stop and talk to each other, which is
very odd for a place where talking to strangers is weirder than a
weird thing. So what do Sister Chou and I do to adapt to this unique
culturally acceptable way of talking to strangers? We showed up at a
member's home and volunteered ourselves for service to walk her dog,
Freddie. This member has been too sick to walk her dog and she
really appreciated this service. So we headed out with Freddie to go to
the nearest park. It was a beautiful sunny day and Freddie was a great
missionary. We were able to have some great conversations. And it made
finding so much more fun!

A darling recent convert named Hua gave us a referral for a Chinese
family but she didn't tell us her name...or her house number, she
just gave us her street name. So we decided to tract the whole street
to find them.  We said a prayer that we would be able to find them.
After tracting a couple of doors with no success, we decided to walk
down the street for "Chinese clues," or "family clues." After walking
for less than a minute, Sister Chou suddenly turns, points to a house
and says: " I think that this is it." There was no obvious signs of a
family living there but we decided to give it a go. Before we could
even knock on the door, Sister Chou took a big sniff in the air and
said, "Yep, this is it, I can smell it." Haha, and sure enough it
did smell like Chinese food. And the woman who answered was Hua's
referral! After she and Sister Chou talked for nearly 20 min in
Chinese, she agreed we could come back, but she wants to be taught in
Chinese.  We will be seeing her again next week, but hopefully we will
be teaching in English so I can teach her too.

We had a great miracle with our dear friend Michelle. She has really
wanted to come to the church, so on Saturday we gave her a chapel
tour. She also owns a Chinese takeaway business, so we decided to
order some of her food as well. We had a really great tour! We focused
on 3 major points of the church: foyer, chapel, font. When we showed
her the chapel, we talked about what sacrament meeting is like. Then
we led her to the sacrament table where we told her the story of the
the last supper and the atonement of Jesus Christ. It was a very
moving moment for me to be talking about the atonement while standing
next to the sacrament table. The spirit was so strong, and Michelle
said she could "feel the power." :) It really made me reflect on the
importance of the sacrament.

Sister Chou gave me a Chinese name! It means calm, graceful wheat. :)
It is pronounced Mai Anna.

Love you all! Have a great week.

Love,
Sister McFarland

Pictures
1. Walking Freddie
2. With Mae Mae. ( her name isn't really Mae Mae, but we call her
that. It means "little sister".
3. With Mae Mae's brother Xiao Hao.