Conference was a blast, I've never enjoyed it that much before, nor have I ever gotten that much out of it. An English Copy of the Ensign would be good, and look for some pictures of me in it, there was a photographer at the temple taking pictures for the ensign. Plus, they give us Chinese ones anyways.
If you could get me the address for that cheesecake place, then I can use my personal card to pick some up there. The Blairs (senior couple in Chinatown (don't speak any english)) are going to take me out to dinner on my birthday, so that will be fun too. On the subject of food, I think you might need to send me another box of the Nature Valley bars. Last time I checked, I think I had 4 left.
Life as a missionary feels quite normal to me now, I'm thinking that going home after spending most of my 2 years in this small area will make this place feel just like home to me. When we street contact, we typically start by asking them how their day is going. They usually blow us off, but if we can get them in a conversation, then we start bending it towards the gospel and BoM. Our 2 primary forms of contacting are that and tracting (yes, I am still sneaking into doors.), although on a long day with nothing to do, we might go up to Columbia University and work there. Our boundaries technically are...the mission. But we stay in Chinatown 98% of the time because that's where most of the Chinese people are. The bishop is really good, he speaks solid Chinese too thankfully, and we've got several key players in the ward leadership who are from solid wards (aka, they understand how church culture works.)
Transfers are next week. President warned us that missionaries who came out 6 weeks ago should be ready to train now, not at 12 weeks, so I might be going without a senior companion sooner than I thought. We'll see come Saturday when transfer calls come. Odds are, I won't get moved anywhere for at least 1 or 2 more cycles, though. My Chinese is getting better, and we've gotten better at SYL-ing. We're getting 2 more sisters and 1 more elder down here, plus Elder Folley (upstate) is coming back down, so that brings the total number of missionaries in ChinaZone to...20. In 1 ward. Coordination meeting and Ward Counsel are starting to get just a little bit crammed.
Our new investigator that was found while we were on splits last week (Zhou) is a 60ish year old lady from Beijing, she really wants to get baptised before she goes back to China. She was converted Christian after some experience with heart surgery, I didn't understand that part much at all. Her baptism date is May 12th, we're going to meet with her every Friday and Saturday. (Our first lesson was 3 hours long. Hopefully that isn't an indicator of future events.)
We went on splits this week, Elder Cook (MTC companion) came to my district. We spent most of the day contacting, I ran into a really nice Fujinese man, but couldn't understand most of what he was saying. We also had to teach English class together, which was interesting.
I FINALLY CAN GO WITHOUT A SUIT JACKET! IT'S 79 DEGREES OUTSIDE TODAY! This is going to be a very long hot summer if we don't cool back down for a while.
Love you,
Elder Christeeen (as the ward members say.)
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