Elder McKay Horsley

Hi everyone this is my first full week here in Calgary and it was solid. I ate fish soup, was a part of a Chinese KSL negotiation, got to experience older ladies helping us heal our wounds, and already moved apartments. This week we got fed by members a lot which was very fun. The food they make is delicious with tons of pork, ribs, wings, rice, and almost no fruit. Fruit is like a dessert so we barely get any at members' houses, so I stocked up today at the friendly neighborhood Walmart. This week we also got fed fish soup which was like some gelatin consistency soup with bits of fish and vinegar in it. Not as delicious as one might hope. I ate it all to be polite and then the person who was taking us out to dinner asked if I wanted more. I of course had no clue what they said because they speak at the speed of light so I hit the international smile and said yes. So that night I was blessed with the opportunity to have two full bowls of delicious fish soup. We also helped the El...

This email will again be short. But realistically who doesn't just skip to the pictures anyways. This is my first week in Calgary so I feel like I'll actually have stuff to talk about! This week started off pretty normal at the MTC, but on Wednesday night we packed everything up and woke up at 2:45AM and cooked it to the travel office. We said goodbye to everyone which was tough cause I made such awesome friends at the MTC, but then most of us in the district started making our way to Canada, Boston, New York, Taiwan, New Zealand, and HongKong. All of us speaking mandarin. I was flying alone to Canada which was fun, but I also got to see some Lawson's on the flight. So awesome to see them we've been neighbors for like 13ish years. When I landed in Canada I made it through customs pretty quickly and got greater by the AP's, and ever since then it's been the Missionary life. On the ride to the place where we were staying I helped chime in with my intermediate ...

Just to start off the direct translation of 胖 means fat in Chinese, but it's a word used to describe anyone who is not skinny, so I am now 胖. I GOT MY TRAVEL PLANS! So anyways I fly to Canada on Thursday morning at 4:07 AM by myself, and I'm so excited. I have loved the MTC though. The people I met here have been awesome, and the amount of stuff I learned here about the gospel and Chinese has been awesome. The MTC will always have awesome memories associated with it in my mind. Also I will miss Elder Palmer a lot. He is such a cool dude, and my next companion is going to have a lot to live up too. This week me and some people in the district decided we were going to do push-ups for every word we miss out of our goal for the week. We've been doing 150 words per week with the tones and if we don't get them right, that's three pushups. Anyways I did 102 pushups on Tuesday, but this week I will do none. My mom sent me a package with Salsa and Cherries in it. It was...

Hey everyone! This week was great, but I'm going to keep it short because I feel like not much different has actually happened, but that is OK because I actually leave the MTC in 10 days. It's kind of nuts to think about because I have been living here since May 24th now, and I've developed really close relationships with a ton of the people here. It's been really fun to get to know all these guys and learn Mandarin with them. I really will miss them when we all leave. Anyways, honestly the only thing I can think about that happened this week that was out of the ordinary was that we had Brother Wilcox come and give us an awesome devotional. It was really so great and one thing I took from it is that God will sometimes not give us an immediate answer, but that doesn't mean he does not care. Oftentimes he will let us wait so that we can grow, he compared it to the idea of learning how to swim or walk. If we never are allowed to struggle in the water or take a couple ...

Sorry I didn't include any pictures last week. I forgor. Anyways this week has been really good. We've been having a lot of fun and learning a ton of Chinese. It's been going really well. I've gotten to the point where I can pick up on the new Taiwanese Sister calling me elder Kiwi because she thinks my new haircut makes me look like a Kiwi. So you could say it's coming along pretty well. This week we got to celebrate America by watching the fireworks set off by the stadium of fire. It was so fun to watch with everyone. Everyone was having such a good time it was awesome. Elder Blyth thought it was so funny that everyone was so into it. He thinks we just like it cause we've been indoctrinated since kids. Such a funny guy. Love him. Also Elder Chang kept going around writing 美国第一 on peoples arms, which means america number one in English. That was great until someone told him he needed to stop, but it was fun while it lasted. This week we had the Chinese dis...