February 26th, 2014

First, let me say thanks for the package, Mom! I do have one question about it though. Do I cook the muffins at 400 for 15 minutes, or 450 for 10 minutes like the first batch said? Also, the chopsticks work well with dumplings, stir fry, frying eggs, pizza (props to elder Wang for that one) just make sure you have something with the rice as well. Chicken teriyaki with sautéed cabbage and mushrooms with fresh carrot slivers and broccoli heads is a good one too. I may have had some companions who were decent cooks, you can rest assured that it wasn't me who made that.

We ran to the Freedom Tower and back for our long run last week, including the fact that we ran back through TriBeCa instead of just following broadway back up like we did on the way down, we ended up somewhere around 3 to 3.5 miles. Elder Zander thinks we are doing about an 8 minute mile pace currently, and on his 10 mile + runs he would average about 6:10-6:30, so it's safe to say that he's planning on speeding up as we do it more. His PR is a 4:20.

[In response to a question about the iPads they use for internet missionary work.]We have iPad minis. I don't know what generation that falls in.

Winter is still here, it snowed again yesterday morning a bit, and a little bit earlier today as well actually, although most of the snow on the ground has melted thankfully.

That's no good to hear that the AC on the RV is leaking. Hopefully this doesn't wind up having to be like the re-construction of the front half of the old trailer when we bought that. On the bright side though, if it does wind up being that big, Ethan and Wes could help a lot more than they were able to with the trailer I suspect. What about the Cabin, is it holding up alright?

We had Zone Conference last Tuesday, President really likes to tell us all the day before that he's going to call on some missionaries on the spot to give a talk, so everyone needs to have a 10 minute talk prepared just in case they are the one he choses. The only problem is he doesn't give us the topic until the day before during our district meetings, so we can't just write them a little bit each day for a week in advance.

Xxx Xxxx was baptized this Sunday, he's a super quiet guy, but he jokes around a lot when he does talk. (He calls Elder Murray a different pronunciation of his Chinese name that means 2 by 4 (the boards)). We hope he can start going to a group they just started in Boston, because it is a 3 hour drive for him to get here from Rhode Island, but only an hour from there to Boston, so he probably will have a better chance of staying active going there instead.

We met with a man who visited Temple Square, and drove 12 hours on a Greyhound bus from North Carolina to meet with us. His Name is Xxx Xx Xxxxx, and he's super cool. Unfortunately, he had to go back to China so that he can come across legally this time, since he's planning on staying here for good. He won't be able to come back until May, and since he's in China, we can't talk with him about the gospel over the phone. We did give him all the pamphlets and a copy of the Book of Mormon along with getting his Facebook and Skype info, so we're hopeful for him come summer.

We re-arranged the apartment once Elder Cook and Elder Williams left, so it's now a much-bigger-feeling place. The only problem is that it still doesn't have a washer & dryer, so we're still stuck going to the laundromat. Oh well, better than doing it by hand I guess.

Love, your son in Service,
Elder Christensen
陳少駒

February 19th 2014

Well, I think it would be safe to say that this last week was...tiring. We went running every other day (about 2-3 miles each day), and did some in-house workouts on the off days. Elder Zander would love to be running every day, but the weather is most certainly still classified as "Winter" here. The best one was a Nor-easter that came in around 2 am, dumped about 9 inches of snow by noon, and then turned into a nice little rainstorm just to make sure that everything was completely soaked and that all the snow had 3 inches of ice at the bottom of the slush. Elder Zander and I spent about an hour and a half shoveling that stuff on Friday, and between that and the morning workouts/runs, we were pretty tired. To give you a description of Elder Zander's running habit, before his mission he said he would average 15-16 miles a day, with 1 long run a week that was usually about 20-21 miles. Somehow though he says he's never actually ran a marathon. His Dad was a professional runner, and when Zander was 4 years old, his Dad told him he would pay him a quarter for every mile he ran, and that's how elder Zander got started in running. He has a goal now of running to the temple and back before he goes home (8 miles). He could honestly do it anytime, it's a matter of him training his companion to be able to do it.

I'll share something that most of the Zone haven't found out yet. Elder Williams was transferred. He got a call last night, and he and Elder Cook left with his bags at 6:30 this morning. They didn't know where he was going, or who his or Elder Cook's new companions were. It was pretty sad though because he flies home 1 month from tomorrow, so he most likely won't come back, and he didn't get the chance to say goodbye to anyone, including most of the missionaries.

We have a baptism this Sunday, Xxx Xxx was a referral from a less active member who first came in October while I was upstate. He's pretty cool, kind of quiet, but really funny. He's also decently tall for a Chinese man, I think he's about 6'2".

It has occurred to me that weather seems to go crazy when someone of our family is around. Remember when we went to Washington DC during the hottest week they had had in 75 years?

I got to go to the temple! It was a translation session, so the old video in English with some people wearing headphones, but I didn't even care, it was just nice to go through the temple again after so long.

I got the exercise bands you sent Mom, they work pretty well, although I think I might be giving away the lighter bands to some of the sister companionships. Probably not Sister Palmer though, she broke her wrist 2 days ago when she fell off a pull-up bar. If you want to send more mix for those bran muffins, it would be greatly appreciated. So long as you send on Wednesday or Thursday, I'll still get it by the next P-day, barring bad weather preventing the office Elders from bringing it down on Tuesday, but that can't keep happening for too much longer, winter is going to have to give out at some point.

To the best of my knowledge, you can't get in trouble for buying fake name brand stuff, just for trying to sell it. At any rate, the missionaries do it quite a bit, and president seems to be okay with it.

We still contact a bit, but we are waiting on the weather to improve before it really starts to become effective at all again. Nobody here calls it "streeting", in English it's contacting and in Chinese it's 接觸。

I'm sorry if my letters seem less than packed, typing on an iPad is slower than typing on a computer, and honestly, during the winter at least, not as much stuff happens, we spend more time inside calling people or warming up before we go back out again. We also still seem to average about 6 missionary meetings a week, which tend to take up some time as well.

With Elder Williams leaving, the set-up for Chinatown is a little unknown, but I can give you what we currently have. Elder Williams leaves with Sister Khong in March, Elder Blonquist and Elder Zander leave at the end of April, Elder Murray leaves in June with Sister Chan, and Sisters Lee and Mackay leave in July. Sister Chen leaves in August, Sister Dong leaves in Nov/dec, and I, Elder Cook and Elder Wang all leave next Jan. We got one new Sister in this last transfer, and we had several others come in while I was upstate (Sisters Toronto, Astle, Palmer, and Elder Atkinson) but currently we have no reports on new Elders coming in yet, which is a problem because we just lost Elder Williams and we lose 3 more by the start of summer. We also have Elder Leung who goes home with Elder Radford in May of 2015, so they have a while still.

One thing that occurred to me this week is that we tend to focus more on temptation than on promptings to do good. We talk about getting tempted by the devil a lot more often than we talk about the fact that God is not going to just sit there on the sidelines and watch us fight temptation on our own, he's going to be actively trying to send his own stuff to us as well. The difference is that the good promptings are a lot easier to not notice or to try and take credit for it yourself, not recognizing that it was Heavenly Father giving you the reminder you needed to do the right thing.

I already saw the stuff on the member Olympians in Sochi, I'm still on Facebook, and a lot of my friends from here in the mission tend to post stuff like that.

Tell Robin thanks for the Christmas card, I finally got it, they found the key for the mailbox back at the 15 East Broadway appartment.

Love you all,
Your son/sibling in service,
Elder Christensen
陳少駒

February 12, 2014

My new apartment is on 61 Delancy Street, right next to the intersection of Delancy Street and Allen Street. We live on the 5th floor (did I mention that the entire apartment is about the size of our kitchen/dining/family area, and we have 4 Elders here?) I live with Elder Zander (South Jordan, UT, first name Jacob, companion.), And Elders Williams (Tyler, he goes home in 5 weeks, Zone Leader) and Cook (Xean, MTC companion, Zone Leader).

We have an investigator named Xxx Xxxx who has a baptismal date for a week from this Sunday. He's really cool, works in Rhode Island, and rides the bus back every Sunday for church. He quit smoking and drinking a few weeks ago.

In other news, we just helped a man try to find out where his friend was, which took us on a trip around the courts, eventually to a police station, where we found out that he was arrested yesterday for selling knockoff name brand phone cases. Having finished that service opportunity, we then proceeded to go help some other missionaries from Scarsdale buy fake Rolex watches for 30 bucks a block and a half away from where the other guy's friend got arrested. The irony of the situation was killing me.

We also taught a Recent Convert named Steven how to play piano.

In other news, we are teaching one of the doormen, he's really cool, and slowly getting rid of his Catholic views. We talked with him for about 2 hours about if angels hate humans or not. It was kind of an interesting conversation. The problem is he is a weekend worker, so he has to sit at the front desk during Sunday [services]. Hopefully we are able to get him in touch with the English missionaries once he quits. He's really cool.

We also got a new sister, Sister Ng, from Hong Kong. She speaks great Cantonese, decent English, and some Mandarin.

Love you all,
Your son/sibling in service,
Elder Christensen

陳少駒

February 5th, 2014

Today was GOING to be transfer day, but upstate got between 10 inches and 2 feet of snow, and are currently experiencing freezing rain, so we don't know if the transfers are going to happen or not. At any rate, I'm staying in Chinatown, but I'm going to the Delancy Street apartment with Elder Zander. He goes home at the end of the next cycle after this one, so I'll probably be the one who sends him home. On a related note, I currently weigh about 166, which is about where I was before I went upstate, so I'm doing okay weight-wise I guess. On the other hand, Elder Zander runs Cross Country for UVU, and he's going back home pretty soon, so I'm going to be doing a lot of running these next few months. I've already done runs to the Empire State Building and past Battery Park. Elder Zander's goal is to run to Central Park and back at least once before he goes home. That's about a 6 mile run.....

I haven't been able to send your present yet Mom, but I'll try to get that done today. If not today, then next week for certain.

For everyone on Facebook that keeps putting up those pictures about "just keep calm and pray for snow", GIVE A SPECIFIC LOCATION. We have enough here, make sure you are asking for it to go to places that actually need it.

Welcome to the Year of the Horse! Interesting fact, there is no parade for Chinese New Year. They just fence off most of the streets except for Bowery and Canal, and then everybody just has a bit of a party in the streets. I have never seen so much confetti before in my life. It is also problematic because it is really hard to find food outside your home. I actually had dollar slice pizza for New Years, because all the Chinese places were closed. Most of the party stuff happened the first day, but there are some traditional parts that can continue for up to 2 weeks. Most of the people here though just did it as a weekend thing.

Based on his emails to me mom, Ethan is succeeding in his efforts to be overly socially interactive.

Most of the investigators are Mandarin, only a few are in English. On the bright side, I can finally make natural feeling small talk with Chinese people. Only took about a year.

Cantonese lessons were cancelled. The Cantonese area was dissolved due to lack of investigators (plenty of member lessons though), and the fact that we don't have any companionships currently that both sisters or elders speak Cantonese. I am officially back to being a 1 new language learner. On the plus side, though, I now know how to say pervert in 3 different languages (I don't know why the sisters thought we would need to know that word.)

The muffins are great, but you can hold off for a week or two before sending more, I haven't used it all yet. I don't know when I'll get the bands, either today or next Tuesday probably.

It seems that the first week of March is just our family's time for travel.

Spiritual thought. Read Jacob 4:6, see how it connects with Moroni 7 on faith and hope.

Tell Cam that I was going to write him, but my iPad deleted his email, so I'll write him next week.

Love you all,
Your son/sibling in service.
Elder Christensen

陳少駒

January 29th, 2014

[Regarding the Chinese New Year...] We've been seeing more white people these last few weeks, but not much of a change in the number of Asians. If anything, we actually see fewer, because more of them are busy working in the resautraunts, since right now is the time when the most foreigners want Chinese food.

The former investigator that they are working with again, Xxx Xxx Xxxxx (LBQ) is still doing pretty good, but he won't get [baptized] until February at the earliest. Other than Our friend in Hong Kong, we are working with most of the same people, although we have had a few potentials start to pop up. Like I said, currently, a lot of people are really busy because of the new year. It is a lot like the foreigners during Christmas time.

I got your package. How do you make that dry part of the batter for the muffins? I might like to make more later on. Sending the packages to the mission office is fine, it only gets to me a day or 2 later, and President asked us to have all mail sent there, so I will be obedient.

Elder Leung is finally going to get thermals, Elder Blair scared him with tales of pneumonia. I think he might turn into a hypochondriac now, but I guess if it keeps him from freezing to death, it's the lesser of two evils.

I got to go on splits with Elder Cook 2 times this week, because Elder Williams and Elder Leung were helping a member who lives in the Bronx. It was really funny to know that we had been companions a year ago, and here we were serving together again. We got to teach some pretty good lessons.

I'm going to see if I can't find you a birthday present [Mom] (it will probably be made in China.)

Love you all, glad to hear you're warmer than I am, because it has been pretty brutal some of these days,

Your son/sibling in service
Elder Christensen
陳少駒

January 21st 2014

That was yesterday. The snow was falling sideways, and I realized that as a result, everyone was pointing their umbrellas into the wind (at my face) which made it difficult to talk to them. Solution? Stand on the other side, facing into the wind. My mission is the first time I have felt so cold that it actually passed numb and went to perfectly imitating a burning feeling on my hands and face. The odd part? I loved every minute of it. It's strange how the gospel makes you happy despite, (or perhaps through) ridiculous circumstances. Also, the boots are especially warm, I've only had to use the wool socks once, the boots alone are that good at keeping my feet warm/dry. Thank you for paying for them Mom.

We have our first online investigator. He's named Xxxx, he lives in Hong Kong, a friend of Elder Leung, but he speaks English only, his mom is Greek, and his Dad is from India. It sounds like some setup for a punch line from Ethan's mission. We taught him on Skype this morning, really cool guy.

I still haven't gone to the temple. We were going to go this week, but because it is going to be closed next week (cleaning I think), [the Mission] President is taking all the missionaries who go home this cycle to the temple today instead of next week. And the week after that is transfer meeting, so we won't be able to go then either, so the soonest I can hope to go now is mid February. Depressing, it's only a half hour travel away, and I won't have gone in about 8 months by the time I do get to go. Yes, I do acknowledge that Ethan wasn't able to go at all on his mission, but he didn't have a temple 30 minutes away either.

All the missionaries in Chinatown have been requested to begin learning Cantonese. We currently have 3 missionaries, 2 from Hong Kong, one from Singapore, who are already fluent in it, and they are slowly teaching the rest of us. It is a terrible language. Mandarin is much easier to pronounce.

We are putting together a New Years (Chinese) celebration, but I currently don't know what will be involved, so I can't say what the activity is, because the sisters are organizing it.

The new blog is something that has been spearheaded by the sister missionaries, the idea actually came from a less active member I believe. It's been pretty effective thus far, we've had almost 1500 views, most in the USA, a few from Canada, and even a couple from China, and the blog has only been up for a couple weeks. We actually were meaning to ask Wes/Dad if they had any ideas for layout or background or any real web page design stuff that could be used for the blog.

Our new bishop, Huang Kai, was baptized around 10 years ago, he is from Fuzhou China, just like most of the people here in Chinatown, but he works for the MTA, not a restaurant like most of the people here. He's really cool, but a little timid sometimes, he loves the people and the gospel though, so he'll do well. His son Greg was the first primary child in our (back then) branch. He and his wife were sealed a few weeks ago too.

It's been a lot warmer here than it currently is,
Love, your son/sibling in service,
Elder Christensen

陳少駒

January 15, 2014

You can send everything to the mission office, it still gets to me before the next preparation day, so it doesn't matter that much if it is a day or 2 late. (No, we still don't have a key to our mailbox.)

[Regarding a Facebook post in Chinese] I knew most of those characters already, but I had to have Elder Leung check it to make sure (I had two of them wrong, same pronunciation, different character.) I can read probably about 300-500, but writing is a lot harder than reading, so fewer for that part. The generally accepted number is that you need about 5000 memorized to have fluency in reading/writing.

[One of our investigators'] lesson was...different. He was a very different person from how he was when I met with him before with Elders Williams and Murray. Back then he didn't like praying, and was angry a lot of the time. This time, he was really happy, asked if we could start with a prayer, and volunteered to give it himself, and gave one of the best prayers I've heard given by a nonmember my entire mission. He honestly seemed like a different person. Then the lesson took a South turn when some random lady walked in and sat down, and failed to understand that none of us knew who she was, or that we were asking her to introduce herself, and instead started asking Xxx Xxx Xxxxx about his life (blind, marriage issues, health problems...) and all of a sudden he sounded a lot more like his old self. We managed to get things back on track once the lady left though, and he promised to talk with his wife about being baptized on the 23 of Februrary.

We have a new bishop! After 4 years of service, Chinatown is waving goodbye to Bishop McConkie, who was released this last Sunday by President Buckner. Our new Bishop is Bishop Huang, his full name is Huang Kai. He was Bishop McConkie's first counselor, and is a convert of around 10 years or so I believe. Bishop McConkie will definitely be missed here though, he and his family are moving to North Carolina temporarily, with later plans to move out to Colorado or Utah.

For my year mark, on the hour of when I first sat in my MTC class having my teacher spout Mandarin at me and me not understand at all, but be expected to duplicate the sounds, exactly one year later, I was doing the same thing again, but this time in Cantonese! We have been asked to begin learning basic Cantonese in order to help out the sisters area that is a Cantonese only area (they help the members/investigators who don't speak Mandarin, both already spoke Cantonese before the mission, one natively.) Cantonese is so much worse than Mandarin.

We went to South Manhattan today, I took some pictures of the Wall Street bull and such. I'll send them out some time soon.

Stay safe,
Love, your son/sibling in service
Elder Christensen

陳少駒