May 14, 2014

First things first, Mothers Day Skype will be from the Buckner's house at 5:30 NY time, 3:30 Utah time. One thing you might want to look up before the Skype (I can't believe I'm going to be saying this) is when does winter semester registration at BYU start up/when does the semester start exactly, because that will probably play a role in what time I go home. Interestingly, if I go home before Christmas, I will never have Skyped on the day I was actually supposed to.

This last week, I had possibly the most ridiculous night possible without breaking any rules. We needed the WiFi for some lessons later on, but due to it being down at Delancey, we got permission from the APs to...visit the East Broadway Elders for Monday night. One juked lesson with a potential investigator over the phone and 2 lessons with less actives who are out of state because of work (Conn. And New Hampshire) later, we finally got to bed at 12:40 am. Since there was only the one set of beds, Elder Wang took the couch and I claimed Elder Murray's study desk chair for the night. Since they didn't have any late night lessons, they got up at 6:30, so we did as well, and went through the whole day like normal, complete with 3 hours contacting at the tree. Definitely falls in the top 10 most tired days of my mission.

Contacting recently has been a lot more effective, but currently I would say that our most promising person is a 21 year old named Xxx Xxx Xxx. He's really smart, he taught me how to say Einstein in Chinese. He had a really hard time saying Tesla in English, too. His favorite way to mess with me is to use 500 year old Mandarin poetry when he talks (imagine a Chinese version of Shakespeare). He currently is in Tennessee for work, but comes back some time in the first week of June, and hopefully will be able to start at a community college here in the city during the fall. We have a Facebook Lesson with him tonight.

Currently, I'm scheduled to do 4 baptismal interviews on Sunday before Skyping. All of them have been people who have had some serious issues, be it faith or personal life, but if all works out well then on a week from Sunday we should be having 6 or 7 people getting baptized (a couple of them are from the other district in our ward.

Our recent convert from Rhode Island is Xxx Xxxx. He is still coming every week, which is really good. He has to leave early some weeks, but he has only ever missed once, and it was because he was sick. I ordained him as a priest 2 weeks ago (first time I ever did an ordination I think, definitely for the first time in Chinese, I need to review how to say that stuff more often.) He is going to be called as the ward librarian next week, which we don't know for sure how that will work when we just have a large cart we throw all the books on, but it should still be good.

We haven't been able to find a Chinese thesaurus here either, I honestly question if they exist, but definitely try Cameron's teacher.

So the running I was doing with Elder Zander has definitely stopped. The interesting thing is that we really aren't exercising at all currently because we don't get up until we need to in order to get ready for the meetings we have during the mornings a lot of the time, because even sleeping till then we aren't getting the full 8 hours president asked us to get. My weight has dropped a pound or two since Zander left, but it's hard to say if it is fat or muscle.

You can try getting Robin and Wes to do this, some elders do it, but most of them are Spanish program, and they get fed so much they don't really have any control of if they put on weight or not, they just do.

Love you lots, see you on Sunday!
Your son in service,
Elder Christensen
先苦后甜-it translates literally as "first bitter, then sweet"