I'm still cooking a fair amount, we have Quesadillas, Chicken Alfredo, and Rigatoni Mozerrella planned for this week. I think the recepies from Bro. Allen should be in a blue folder on my desk somewhere, if you could find that and send it, it would be good. The canned ham...tastes like spam. Not joking. It's not really bad, but it's also not really good, it's just kind of there.
I've decided that Chinese take-out is by far the healthiest fast food you can get. I eat more vegetables here than I ever did back home. I even had some mushrooms in the Hot Pot Soup we all went for on Monday, and I actually enjoyed them (that said, it was a sichuan resturant, I got the weakest spicy soup they had that was still spicy, and it was quite warm in my throat and sinuses for a while after I finished.) It's actually funny that the food we eat is by and large all the same, despite the fact that we typically get it from different resturaunts.
I've decided that the fact I have to teach English class is Karma for the fact that I never payed attention in English class in school. Its fun though. I've finally started to feel like I somewhat understand what people are saying to me, so I can finally start really focusing my language study again on words I don't know/grammar. We've been picking up talking in Chinese at the appartment a little more. The bright side of being here is that even if we don't get completely immersed, I can already understand more of Fujanese, Cantonese, BeiJing, and NanJing accents than most Taiwanese missionaries can when they've been out twice as long as I have.
Guess what? I did the math, and I think my birthday is my 100th full day on a mission. How's that for cool/random fact? A CTR ring would actually be a nice present for that, I think my finger is a size 9 ring if I remember right. It might be 9.5 or 10 though. Just don't do a too expensive one, in case it's not the right size. Also, if you want to count in cycles (transfers) mom, April 17th is the end of my first full cycle here, and the end of my 16th cycle will be the 2 year mark, so I have 15 transfers remaining (don't worry, I'm not counting down, if anything, I wish it would go slower, I just thought you might like to count that way, since it's a smaller number than fast sundays left.)
We're going to the Manhattan temple to watch General Conference. We have live streaming. If we have an investigator with us, we will watch the Chinese translation. If not, then we get to watch the English.
Tender Mercy of the week was when I ran out of cash and we were going to go out to eat as a District for dinner (most places here don't take cards). We went back to the apartment really quick to drop some stuff off, lo and behold, I had a letter from Dad's parents with 3 dollars in it, which was just enough to pay for dinner.
Tracting is about as effective as it has ever been, but street contacting is slowly picking back up, people aren't quite as desperate to get inside a building now, so we have slightly better odds of getting them to stop and talk. Yes, we still only use Mandarin when contacting. It's really awkward though when the missionaries for another church are set up across the street with their own tables. That said, the Jehova's Witnesses just make it awkward whenever we go to the temple. They always have tables set up in the subway at columbus plaza. Oh well, love them anyway. We've decided to try a new contacting method. We just walk slowly around town, and as we find ourselves walking along side someone, we just start talking to them until they get to their destination. It has worked really well for the sisters in the past, we haven't tried it yet though. We're also planning a trip up to Columbia University to go work the campus there at some point.
I forgot to mention, I had to help teach Gospel Principles in church. It's the sunday school class for recent converts and investigators. Not a very easy class to teach actually, because most of the investigators are too nervous to answer any questions you ask, and most of the recent converts go get something to eat during the second hour so they can come back for Relief Society or Priesthood not as hungry. We need to work on that.
Our investigators are doing well, we may be doing a fast with Henry to help his Aunt let him be baptized. Chui came to church, which was a bit of a shock actually, but I don't think he got anything out of it because his Mandarin is pretty bad. We really want Li xxx (JieMei means sister) to come to Gen. Conference. We're trying to set that up with her over the next few days. Liang xxx is doing well, and we even found a new investigator yesterday named Zhou xxx. We were on splits actually, so Elders Williams and Cook found her, but since they were in our area, Elder Williams and I will be the follow-up with her. I don't really know anything about her though, so you'll get the details next week probably. Lin xxx xxx (blind one) is moving, which must be a real pain for him, but he won't let us help him at all. He already told us the new adress though, so we'll go check up on him once he's settled in.
Love you all,
Relative in service designated Elder Christensen
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| Look who showed up... Brother (Craig) Done! |
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