April 23, 2014

Well, I guess I'm 20 years old now. We had a nice dinner outside of the sisters' apartment on the 6th floor of East Broadway because we can't actually go into the same apartment with them anymore now that the Blairs are gone, and the chapel was closed early due to it being Saturday. My special birthday gift was I got to go do baptisms for the dead for the first time in almost 2 years. I didn't get in the water at all, but we helped with being witnesses and doing confirmations (the confirmation prayer is shorter in Chinese). No mom, I still haven't gotten a cheesecake from that deli yet, I think I might just save that for next year in the summer when we come out here either before or after pageant (it's happening, plan on it).

Elder Zander kicks the bucket a week from today, so he is in the temple with Elder Blonquist and all the other missionaries going home. President takes them there and then out to lunch on their last P-day, so I am currently with Elder Murray for the day. Due to Elder Zander going home soon, a number of meal appointments seem to have materialized out of nowhere. I don't think we have had to provide any of our own lunches or dinners since Saturday. We went to the Larson's for Easter dinner. They live across the street from the Freedom Tower and the Memorial Pools. It was really weird to have a home made meal that wasn't Chinese food (ham, deviled eggs, rolls...)

We opted out of a long run this last Saturday because we didn't really have anywhere we felt like going, so we did a speed work instead. I will admit that it is nice to be able to run for quite some time while playing Frisbee and not get out of breath, but I definitely won't do it every day after Elder Zander leaves, because we never work anything else. We had our first stay-in day last week in probably 3 weeks, and I could only do 10 pull-ups (this compared with the 55 I did one day at the very beginning of my companionship with Zander). If I had to chose, I would run 2 days a week, one being a light speed workout, plus Frisbee on Wednesdays, and then the other 3 days we stay inside to work out.

I would be fine with just an email if Grandpa dies before I get back. What kind of time frame are they giving him?

I guarantee there are other words that I mess up here and there, but since if I knew about them, I wouldn't be doing them, hence I can't tell you what they are. I do know one Elder once accidentally gave a priesthood blessing "by the authority of the Holy Melchizedek Uppercut". That was a really funny one.

Our mission president set a goal that the mission will have 100 baptisms between the 20th of April and the last day of May. They highest number we have gotten before was 57 baptisms as a mission in September 2013, the last time we had more than that was over 9 years ago now. We will see just how much we can push ourselves.

I have a roughly 1 in 3 chance of getting a training call tonight. We shall see what happens.

I have a dictionary already, the problem is you often need to cross reference with either another dictionary or else someone who speaks the language to make sure that you understand the translation correctly (or that they translated correctly in the first place.) If you can't find a thesaurus, I'll just try and look for one when I get home, you probably need to be able to look through Chinese websites to find it.

陳少駒