You can tell Cameron not to get down about it [difficulty reading Chinese], I couldn't read the boards for the first few months I was here. I knew what they said, but if you had written the characters in a different order I wouldn't have noticed. Chinese is just one of those things that takes a ton of time.
We had 2 extremes this week while running. The first was our last long run. We decided to go for broke in case we weren't going to be companions next cycle (we are), and we ran to 50th street and 7th ave. In other words, we ran through Times Square, for a total distance of ~6.4 miles. I've never had my foot go numb while running before, but I can now tell you that it is really annoying. It should be mentioned that for that run we were probably doing more like a 10 minute mile, we tend to go slower on the long runs, but the goal is to eventually get it to pick up to about 8 minutes or so for the long runs by the end of this transfer. The other extreme came in the form of elder Zander misreading the weather on Siri. He said it was 46 degrees, and I was considering just going with a t-shirt and shorts, but decided that because I hadn't been very warm during the night I should probably still use the hoodie and underarmor pants with the shorts. We got outside, and DIED. We ran about 3/4 of a mile and were blocks of ice. We got back to the apartment and I checked the hourly forecast. Elder Zander had looked at the high for Tomorrow. It was currently 22 degrees with a wind chill of 5 degrees. Running in single digit temperatures is not fun.
Basically the weather here just keeps alternating every other day. Warm days are about 43-50 degrees, colder days are 20-30, but we haven't had any snow for a week or two I think, so hopefully we are done with the white stuff for the year.
This Sunday we had a funeral for a member who died. His family came from China for the services. His mom had to be forcibly removed from the coffin so they could start the service, they had already delayed for 30 minutes waiting for her to calm down/stop sobbing so loud, but in the end they just picked her up and carried her screaming out of the building because she wouldn't stop (she didn't attend the viewing basically, but she left in the caravan for the grave site, which we didn't go to). A good comparison apparently for how much less we as members tend to be saddened by death as compared to atheists, thanks to additional knowledge we have been blessed with regarding the Plan of Salvation.
I'm a District Leader. It's a somewhat different job though when there are no definable areas within the ward, geographically or between companionships or districts. I'll describe it to you more as I figure out what I'm doing.
We received the following instructions from President Morgan recently. "It is important that you get 8 hours of sleep every night. If you have the ability and Less Actives or Investigators who would benefit most from phone or online lessons that are after 10:30pm, teaching those people is the priority, and getting 8 hours of sleep is the next priority. Following the schedule as stated in the white handbook is necessary, but if you go to bed an hour late because of lessons, push back the time you get up by an hour, then follow the schedule as outlined" This is something unique to Chinatown only. When such lessons are not scheduled, the regular schedule is expected to be maintained. We are also still not allowed outside after 9:00, so this is for lessons [over the internet] only.
I was told this week that Taylor swift is going to be the antichrist of the Book of Revelations. Considering the guy who told me this reads the bible 3-5 hours a day, I think his interpretation is probably accurate. ;-) I think he still needs to figure out though that reincarnation is not a true doctrine.
陳少駒
