Sunday, August 18, 2013

August 13, 2013

The highlight of the week: WE HIT OUR WEEKLY GOAL FOR TOTAL LESSONS!! (To give you an idea of how rare hitting goals is, Elder Mok goes home a week from today, and he has only ever had 1 week of his entire mission where they managed to hit ALL the goals for the week. 1 week in 104.)<br/><br/>

We got dropped by Xxx Xxxx last week, which was a bit depressing, but he was always a little odd towards the gospel, he couldn't grasp for the life of him what the difference was between authority and testimony. On the flip side, we got a surprise lesson with Xxx's husband. He's not too interested currently, but he's also not against it at all, it's just probably going to take some time for him, especially since he has basically no free time. He works from about 10 am to 11 pm 6 days a week, and can't get a fixed day of the week as his break day, and since he lives in Brooklyn, it's a little bit of a hassle for him to come to Manhattan. <br/><br/>

Thanks for the updates about new children in the extended family, I vaguely feel like Wes when he found out that Carissa was married after the fact.<br/><br/>

English class on Saturday had 29 people. Now we just need to get them all interested in the spiritual message we share at the end. Classes on Wednesday are a lot less crowded, typically only 6-10, and I don't help teach the monday and thursday classes, so I can't say how they go. It's pretty easy to tell when there are going to be fewer of them based on the weather, rain is really good at reducing the class size, although heat hasn't really been a problem as far as I've noticed for class size. Currently, most days are holding somewhere in the high 70s to low 80s, on rainy days it can drop to about 73, which is suuuuuupppper nice.<br/><br/>

Fun Fact: Ancient Chinese Medicine states that when you sleep, energy leaves your body to fill the room that you are sleeping in, so the larger your bedroom, the more tired you will still feel when you wake up, because you lost more energy than you would have in a small room. I tell you this because we have been sleeping with the door open in order to have AC in our room, since the bedroom doesn't have a window unit. Have been, but not any more. Elder Wang was feeling pretty tired a lot, so we started doing it with the door closed, and he's been saying he's sleeping better, and I haven't used my blanket since. That said, I had long periods of time where I didn't use my blanket in the MTC, and it was Jan/Feb then. I guess the days when I always needed a heavy quilt on me in order to sleep are no more. (The question I asked which Elder Wang refused to answer was "what happens when you sleep outside?")<br/><br/>

The new Temple Video is available West of the Mississippi, plus Palmyra and Manhattan (New York state is just that cool), we can see it when we go as missionaries, but if we decide/are allowed to go with the ward on the translation days for the ward, it will probably be the old one for a while.<br/><br/>

My apartment is currently Elder Wang and I, plus Elder Cook and Elder Radford. That said, Transfer meetings are next week, so there is something of a decent chance in the apartments getting mixed up soon. We don't talk in Chinese as much as we should, but we do it probably more than we realize, since we all have this automatic assumption that everyone speaks Chinese. For example, in the ward newsletter, the part you took out of my email, I accidentally typed "Ting de dong", which means (literally), "hear/listen obtain understanding." In essence, my listening comprehension. I didn't even notice that I was throwing in thoughts that were in Chinese.<br/><br/>

I just realized I haven't been taking pictures really. Sorry, it's hard to remember to bring my camera, since the side bag doesn't really have a place for it. On the other side, most of the missionaries dump most of their pictures onto clerk's office computer, so I can steal some of those and send them out to you.<br/><br/>

We had a triple baptism this last week, all of them converts, and we're having a triple next week, all children. The ward is growing. Now we just need to get a building to accommodate that growth.<br/><br/>

Love you all,<br/>
Your son/sibling in service,<br/>
Elder Christensen (The version that still has white shirts.)<br/><br/>

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