June 5, 2013

I was busy waiting at the transfer meeting chapel, so I only got like 30 minutes to email. Sorry. And I need to leave soon today as well, so I probably won't have a long one today either (We're going to a Yankie's Game.)

We got to go to a black baptist church funeral this week. Really different. REALLY DIFFERENT. One of the English speakers who comes to help out at Chinatown ward has a friend who's fiance passed away, and for some reason we were invited to the viewing/funeral. Nothing like 3 months in a congregation who all have no clue how to sing to make you appreciate church where they have a live band every service.

Our investigators are doing awesome, Xxx is about as cool of an investigator as I can imagine. Also, Xxxx might be back on the map. More to come as the situation unfolds.

I found a new hair gel called Got 2b Glued, it really is like using a gluestick on your hair, but stronger. I like it.

The new Elder (Elder Liang/leung) is really cool. Also, Elder Wang wonders if you remember that you actually ran into him shortly before I came out.

Elder Wang has been helping me out a lot with the language. I'm also learning a lot of really random words now for some reason (ex: Constipation, side-effect,party animal)

English classes have almost no members participating, most of them are just there for English, but we help them understand that if they have any interest in the gospel, they should consider themselves free to come talk to us. We've gotten some out of it, but not me personally yet.

Love you all, need to get going,

Your son in service,
Elder Christensen

May 29, 2013

I hear from John every week, I email him, but not Derek at all.

Transfers were this week, Elder Murray has gone upstate, which means that I am now with.......Elder Wang. He's from Sichuan China, and he's a native speaker (his English is really good too though), so I'm sure you'll be ecstatic about that. We get along swimmingly thus far, looking forward to a great 6 weeks.

Our investigators are doing well, Xxx is awesome, Xxxx is leaving for Massachussets for the summer to get a job to help pay for his schooling, so we're going to try and put him in touch with the missionaries up there, or else a ward, for the length of his stay. He should be back in a few months.

We got a new Elder, Elder Leung (liang), he's from Hong Kong, really cool. Also, Elder Zander is coming back down from upstate to train him, so that's Chinatown for the moment, some of the sisters got switched around too, but Elder Blonquist and Elder Cook are still together. Right now we're waiting for his (Leung's) luggage to come before we head back down, so we don't really have a very good idea of how long we are going to have on the computer in the chapel here in Kingsbridge (transfers are in the Bronx).

We're going to a Yankie's Game next week for P-day. Ought to be fun, you don't get to do THAT in most missions.

Got your package, thanks, I should be good now for a while. Actually, maybe a nice water bottle would be good.

Fun fact, when the gas goes out in your appartment building, you really don't want to take showers in the mornings for the next couple of days until they get it back on. That was a fun experience. Also, yes, it does rain like that in the city, but it only happens every so often. When it decides to happen though, it starts really fast (nothing coming down, 3 seconds later, we're suddenly soaked.)

Don't die,
I love you all, your sibling/son in service
Elder Christensen

May 22, 2013

It was nice to see you (sort of, you should try and get a better webcam, that one was exceedingly blurry). Tell Robin I'm sorry I forgot to send her her birthday card, I'll get that into the mail hopefully some time today or tomorrow. Now she's date-able, have dad buy a shotgun, sit on the front steps polishing it when her first date comes up to pick her up. It'll work better now that he's got some facial hair.

If I never told you the end story with Xxxx (the 82 year old man who gave us tea and offered us beer), we had to drop him, he just wanted someone to talk to, no real interest in religion at all. Problem was that he doesn't speak much Mandarin or English, mostly just Cantonese, so it took about 4 lessons to figure that out.

Transfers are coming up in a week, and with it comes the end of my training! I might get transferred somewhere in Chinatown (get a new companion and/or change up what investigators I'm meeting with), but other than that, not much will probably change. We've been told by our zone leaders we are getting 2 new missionaries, 1 Elder, 1 Sister. Problem with that theory is that Elder Williams is already training that new Elder who was supposed to come out, and he's training him in upstate. He called us to let us know he had ordered a Chinese hymnbook for him, but had put the address as 221E Broadway, so he needed us to send it with the office Elders. So that new Elder may or may not be coming to Chinatown at some point. As for the Sister, Sister Khong and Sister Chen both went to BYU Hawaii and knew her there, and they both confirmed that her mission call was English speaking, not Mandarin, even though she was from ...I think Taiwan. Basically we've just proved that the MTC doesn't do too good of a job at keeping track of what languages people already speak and what languages they are supposed to speak. (Elder Mok spent 12 weeks in the MTC to learn a language that he had been fluent in since he was 4 years old.) To sum up, the odds of me training this next cycle aren't very likely.

Stake conference was fun, a decent number of the ward showed up to the Sunday session, only about 3 to the saturday adult session though. The evening session was translated via elder Mok (the man is a translation machine, he can switch between English, Cantonese, and Mandarin so easy it's ridiculous, it's also funny because some sayings in English don't translate into Chinese, and vice versa, but he still says them because he's thinking that language at the time, and it confuses native speakers. For example, saying "sweet" as a similar meaning to cool/okay in Chinese doesn't work at all, it just messes with their heads.) The Sunday session was translated already, because it was actually a regional conference broadcast from SLC, so we got to watch L. Tom Perry and Boyd K. Packer talk. The APs told us all that the conference was all supposed to be about missionary work, but instead it was all about temples. whoops.

We have a lesson scheduled with Xxx. He's a student at CUNY (City University of New York), getting his PhD in Linguistics, got a bachelors in Statistics and a masters in Business.

We decided to go to the Bronx Zoo finally, despite the warning of thunderstorms, because the weather has been saying storms for the last 3 days and it's been blue skies. Got up this morning and we couldn't see Freedom Tower because of the fog/clouds. Well played Irony, well played. (It hasn't started raining yet, but we have proved that the sky can open up in about 3 seconds flat if it so desires. And it probably will.) it's supposed to be 85 degrees though, so we'll only get soaked, and not cold.

Love you all, drunk people can be really funny to talk to/watch,
Your relative in service,
Elder Christensen version Rong(2)Yao(4)Ban(1) de(5) Fei(2)Pang(4) -(literally means glorious (as an attribute describing Sub.) Fat. The "fat" is fancier though, so it's more like "Rotund", but without the implication of round, just the way it sounds more fancy than saying fat.)
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Final side note, if you look on LDS.org, you'll see a picture of 2 missionaries talking to someone in a big city. The one with white skin and brown hair is elder Hutchins, he's my AP, and he goes home a week from today. How's that a nice gift to him for his last week of missionary-ing?

May 15, 2013

Sounds like the trip to Cali was fun. Did you spend any time in the Chinatown there? If so, you might have run into elders I knew in the MTC (Seegmiller, Smith, George, and I think Senken were the Elders in the MTC I knew were going to Cali Mandarin speaking.)

If you take a look on the Ensign for General conference on page 74, you will see a picture of a woman walking a double wide stroller. She's my bishop's wife. The boy in the stroller with really big eyes is named Matthew, and seems to be convinced that I am actually Huang Kai (the bishop's first counselor.) This would not be a problem, if it weren't for the fact that every time he see's me he yells "HUNG KAI!" and trys to grab onto my legs, at which point he can be somewhat difficult to remove.

Xxxx came to church again this last week, but she left after sacrament, when we asked her why, she said she wanted to buy a longer skirt and a physical bible, since she liked the feeling of using the book in the chapel instead of her phone copy. We haven't even taught her the first lesson yet, and she's already teaching herself keeping the Sabbath day holy (aside from the not buying things, we'll work on that). The sad part was that she didn't get to see Chen Bin's baptism afterwards, but hopefully there will be another baptism between now and the 23rd of next month.

I don't know if I've told you yet, but no-one seems to be able to comprehend the idea that Catholics are actually Christian here. Either you're Catholic, or you're Christian, but if you try to say that they both believe in Jesus, they won't believe you, even if they ARE Catholic or Christian. So confusing. Had to teach a 50 minute lesson on the street yesterday with Elder Cook (we were on splits) and about half of the lesson was spent trying to get that point across. And yes, it was all in Chinese, and I could actually understand a decent bit of what they were saying. I'm starting to finally feel like its getting back to that I don't know enough vocab, and not that I just can't understand native speaker's accents.

The new English program was given to us by Elder Christensen. If I didn't describe it, we break into huddles and get them to interact a lot more with the teachers than before, and they aren't allowed to take notes/read the English during that time. We also talk about the fact that if they have faith in themselves and in god that he will help them, then their English will progress faster, and we teach how to pray in every lesson and try to get someone who has never prayed before to do it with us. Oh, and Elder Christensen is half of a senior couple that came in that are serving up in Harlem, Spanish speaking. Sorry, I'm not THAT creative.

Spiritual thought of the Email: If you manage to feel the spirit while praying with a couple that you just semi-argued with for the last 50 minutes, you both get to set a new record as the first time you teach a full lesson on the street, and get to know that you're doing something right. Also, Tired mom, is what you feel when you've been contacting since 1 and it's now 7:30. And it feels awesome.

The weather has been beautiful this last week, but today's description was Clouds and Thunderstorms, so the Bronx zoo is probably out. We're thinking about going to the Met. museum of art instead. Personally I really want to go to Intrepid sometime this summer. Oh, and we're going to a Yankies game on the 5th of June. That aught to be fun.

Love you all, see you in a few days,
Your relative in service,
Elder Christensen