August 13, 2014

Believe it or not, a shouting match between three native speakers is really hard to participate in, because you have to remember tones while trying to convey your emotions in a loud voice. Usually, as soon as I start trying to include emotion, my Mandarin starts sounding really white. I still have this going for me though, missionaries from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have all said that our family actually sound pretty Asian, most especially me. I might have told you that before, but it still makes me happy when I hear that I was apparently born with the wrong skin, hair, and eye color. As far as my vocabulary is concerned, I am always learning new words, but I can carry on a decent conversation on a good number of topics now. I still can't talk about the economy though. I learned how to say aneurism last week though, 动脉瘤. Also, there is no clear translation in Chinese that I can find for "restraining order". Elder Wang couldn't think of one either when I asked him.

We got a surprise visit from Brother Tyler Williams on Sunday, the members kind-of mobbed him. He said he was originally planning on coming with his family, but in the end it was just him.

We also had a surprise visit from Steven Hernandez, my former comp from Peekskill. I'm still not sure how he got my number, when I asked he just said "I have my methods".

I also learned yesterday that eating dumplings (or as P. Morgan calls them, Dumprings) for lunch AND dinner equals a very unhappy stomach. I came dangerously close to hurling last night, but I'm still able to say that I have been able to handle everything I've eaten on my mission without up-chucking.

I bet Holly's "Mission Mode" probably looks similar to your pageant mode mom.

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

August 5, 2014

We weren't able to meet with Xxxxx again last week, so I guess all we can do is keep praying that one day he will be able to sneak out, or even better, that his mom will soften her heart.

With Sisters Lee and MacKay now gone, Chinatown is down to 6 elders and THREE sisters. We currently only have 4 areas in Chinatown, which is a far cry from the 8 we once had. There are currently a number of missionaries out of Chinatown, and there is supposed to be a new sister coming in next transfer, but the most I would expect to have happen within the next transfer is that they split the current trio of sisters into 2 areas, making 4 sisters, 5 areas, and 10 total missionaries. This place has changed a lot since I first got here.

We are teaching a dude who used to be a member of the Chinese Congress. He was also basically the governor over the province of BeiJing about 20 years ago. Currently he teaches architecture in a college in ShangHai, and is lecturing at Yale, Harvard, Columbia... Basically, he's SUPER connected, and uses a vocabulary that makes my head explode. Thank goodness he is going back to ShangHai before the end of this transfer. Trying to teach him without a native companion would be impossible, even after this long in the field. He's really awesome though, he has gone to Salt Lake City, he was extremely impressed with the temple, and he has a strong feeling that this church is better than any other. We might not baptize him, since he goes back to ShangHai on the 18th, but they recently changed the rule in ShangHai. You are now allowed to be baptized in ShangHai WITHOUT ANY RELATIVES WHO ARE ALREADY CHURCH MEMBERS! The previous policy was that you were only allowed to be baptized in China if you had a family member who was already a member. Otherwise, you had to go to Hong Kong to get baptized, or else leave the country completely. We heard this update today from Elder Wang Shuang Zhe, whose dad is currently a Branch President in Hainan (no where near ShangHai, but still in China).

Craziest bed head of my mission to this point. I swear, it looked like that when I woke up, I didn't touch it at all.

This one was about 2 weeks ago. Again, I did nothing to it. I couldn't even style my hair these ways if I tried.

Elder Wang loves to run, when he has the energy for it. Last year, we were running basically every day together, but this year we have only really run twice, the rest of the time he is so tired when he gets up that he doesn't want to run, and I don't really push the issue. The exercise band you sent out has been a life saver mom, all the weights got hijacked by Elder Leung because he wants to "get big", and so the only workout equipment available is our bodies and that band. I still weight about 162, I fluctuate a lot within a gap of about 5 pounds 2.5 either way, but I don't really leave the gap too far before returning to within it.

I made Banana Cornbread muffins. Just smash a banana up and mix it into the batter, pretty tasty, the cornbread isn't quite as crumbly either in my opinion.

Just send the card and the mix to my mission office, we don't check the mail that often here, and we are asked to have all our mail sent through the office anyway.

The reasoning behind the departure date is because if we leave more than 30 days before our original departure date, then P. Morgan needs to get approval from Salt Lake, which is super MaFan. I could leave Dec. 6, but most of the group I die with started Jan. 22, they were Spanish speaking, not Chinese, so they wouldn't be able to leave before the deadline on the 18th. Since it is a little problematic to get dying missionaries to the airport, it just made sense to have us all leave together.

Love you all, go do some good in the world today.
Your son/sibling in service,
Elder Christensen


�少�

July 30, 2014

From Left to Right: Elder Wang Shuai (current companion)

-My probable departure date is either Jan. 2 or Jan. 5, president hasn't decided yet.

-My debit card (personal one) expires in August, so if you could figure out how to send a new one, that would be good.

-Pig's blood pudding is actually nowhere near as disgusting as you would think, and the only problem with the intestines is that it is super chewy.

-Beef Tripe stew is weird. Okay tasting, but weird.

We have no new missionaries in CT, but an old one has come back, Sister Toronto came back from Yonkers, she's killing sister Lee (this is the third time she's killed a missionary). Elder Wang Shuang Zhe (my first companion upstate about a year ago now) has also come down to Chinatown, he lives next door to us.

Don't get me wrong mom, I love Elder Wang Shuai, but I've also found that the way I grow the most/fastest is in a changing environment. Spending 5 transfers with with one companion, you don't get quite as much of the constant change feel that a mission normally brings. I'm perfectly happy though having another transfer with him.

Contacting has been picking up a lot recently, not a lot of new investigators out of it, but a lot of potential Investigators, so we'll see how they do.

We are currently working with a 17 year old named Xxxxx. He and his dad are from a city called TianJin, it's about 2 hours away from BeiJing. The kid is RIDICULOUS. Let me set the back-ground so you understand his life a bit. He came to the USA 5 months ago (maybe 6 now) with his dad. They needed documentation, so the dad (already divorced) married a woman who had a green card. Post marriage ceremony, they found out that in the bargain he had also picked up a wife who has some mental problems, and an estranged step-daughter who inherited them. The mom kicked her out of the house and told the dad/Xxxxx to never have contact with her, or else she will file for divorce. She is a hard core buddhist who took away Xxxxx's phone and computer access once she realized he was talking with us, and also told him he isn't allowed to come to our English class anymore, because she realized we would be able to talk to him for a while afterward. The dad though is super awesome, he's been trying to reach out to the step-daughter, since he feels like he should take responsibility for her, considering her mom isn't. He also noticed a huge change in Xxxxx's attitude when the step mom would get mad at him (like I said, she has mental problems, she shouts at him a lot.) So the dad wants Xxxxx to continue meeting with us. The loophole that was eventually found was by changing their medical coverage to the doctor who works on the 7th floor of our building. Xxxxx comes occasionally for physicals or other stuff, and we meet with him after. He spends most of his time at summer school for ESL, so he hides his BoM in his back-pack, since his mom would throw it away if she found it. He believes it is true, he reads during breaks between classes and after school. He has read to Jacob 5, he said he was laughing in the Isaiah chapters because he didn't understand, but also noticed that Nephi says (paraphrased) "I know you didn't understand that at all, and that's because you haven't prayed enough/exercised enough faith yet' so he realized that it doesn't matter too much if he doesn't understand everything yet. He also said he will sneak out to meet with us whenever he can get away from his mom. He turns 18 in February, currently it doesn't look like there is too high of a chance for him to get baptized while I'm here, but so many crazy miracles have already happened from the story of how he and his dad were found by missionaries up to now, I honestly wouldn't be too surprised if I do see him get baptized before I take the tag off.

I talked to a crazy Taiwanese lady yesterday. She gave us apples that looked like they were fermenting in their own juice. She also hates people from mainland china.

On the subject of holding to the straight and narrow path, I think that the most important part in making sure that youth of the church are firmly holding onto the rod is summed up in a quote by Elder Holland "Let us not confuse the Savior's ability to forgive sin, which he has an Infinite capacity to do, with condoning sin, which he never did, not once." We need to learn how to live in the world, and to live around people who hold very different standards than us. Not only that, we need to learn how to tolerate their view points and even strive to love them. In all of this, it is very important to hold on to our knowledge of what will bring us personally the greatest happiness, and still hold to our personal standards. In the Testaments movie, when a son goes astray, he asks his father why he isn't happy for the success he is enjoying. The father's response would be fitting I think for many of us talking to others who hold different standards "I am happy for you, because you are happy. But I am also sad, because I know that your happiness cannot last."

We finally found a weekly service opportunity! We clean the park where we play frisbee!

Elder Leung (my comp for one transfer when I first got back to CT from upstate)

Me, duh.

Sister Dong, came out my 4th transfer, goes home in October.

Elder Wang Shuang Zhe

Elder Radford

Elder Guo, currently on his 3rd cycle

Sister Ng, from Hong Kong, started in February.

Love ya!

Your son/sibling in service,

Elder Christensen

�少�

July 23, 2014

Sister MacKay left Chinatown today, she flies home to Draper UT tomorrow Morning. I'll have to see if I can't find out the details about her homecoming so that you can attend if you want. The sisters that started the same time as me are gone. Time to start my mad dash of focusing as much as I can for the next 6 months until it's time for me to bite the dust.

So, if you didn't notice, transfers happened today, which means...NEW COMPANION! not. I'm with Elder Wang still, this is the 3rd consecutive cycle, 5th total for the 2 of us. He hopes that we are companions still for 2 more transfers after this so that I can send him home, but that would be almost half of my mission with one companion. I'm not sure how exactly I would feel about that. At the end of the day though, it isn't my decision to make anyway, so if that is what happens, I'll enjoy it just the same.

Elder Cook finally left Chinatown, he served here the equivalent of a full sister's mission already, and there is a decent chance that he will come back before we go home, unless he gets called as an AP (he has served for 7 transfers as a Zone Leader, and he is serving as a zone leader now in the Stamford Zone in Connecticut, he is in New Canaan, which happens to be the richest Zip Code in the USA).

We have an investigator who I may or may not have told you about named Xxxx Xxxxx, he is...odd. But he seems to have a desire, we can't really tell what is going to happen with him currently, but our last lesson ended with a 5 minute shouting match between him, Elder Wang, and sister Xu (the old lady who was with Jen and Olive Wang at the pageant). I just sat out on that one, my mandarin is nowhere near good enough to be able to shout people down. He's still progressing though, we are meeting with him again on Sunday after church (most lessons with Xxxx Xxxxx actually come pretty close to a shouting match.  Now that I think about it, it was just sister Xu who randomly walked in and sat down halfway during the lesson that was the straw that broke the camel's back.)

The comment on people hitting on me that I made recently was simply referring to the fact that I have run into more gay or bi-sexual people on the street who hit on me than I ever would have expected. I also have been somewhat surprised by how many of them are Chinese.

We saw a really old guy drop his pants and @#$%^&* on the street a few days ago, I've been waiting to see how long it took before I saw something like that (it actually happens more often than one would hope in Harlem and the Bronx, just not too often down here in Chinatown/lower east side.)

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


�少�

July 16, 2014

Elder Allen came out once to my mission when we got the iPads
installed. Pretty cool guy.

I still haven't gotten those cheesecakes. Going to be honest, probably
never will.

Not much happened this week. Contacted a lot, rained a lot, sister
MacKay from my MTC district goes home a week from today.

Going for another bike ride in Central Park, got to go! Anything you
want to say, send it before 6 if you want me to respond.

Love, your son/sibling in service,
Elder Christensen

�少�

July 9, 2014

I went out to dinner with a member last Saturday. He took us to a
restaurant on 33rd Street and Madison, Elder Wang said it was the first
authentic SiChuan (his home province) food he's had since coming to
NYC. We had Curdled Pigs Blood and pig intestines as part of the meal.
The blood actually just looks like really dark tofu and tastes like
nothing, the intestines tasted okay but were SUPER chewy, which
surprised me. I was expecting the stomach to be chewier (I've had the
stomach quite a few times, it is actually pretty tasty.)

Everyone here is obsessed about the World Cup. Did you know it only
happens once every four years? I didn't.

Today is my 18 month mark of entering the MTC. No way to get around
it, my time left is starting to feel a little short. I guess just
keep working away as focused as I can.

I saw that Mom wrote her email at 2:30am and laughed inside, knowing
that mom has such a hard time with staying up late. Don't worry Mom,
you can sleep the whole ride back to Utah in another 2 weeks or so.

Sister MacKay made a Café Rio dinner for the missionaries as our 4th
of July party. We had to eat in the stairwell again because the
building our chapel is in was closed for the day. We also were allowed
to go up on the roof to watch fireworks, after roughly 9-10 months of
my mission having lived in this building, you would think I had gone
up on the roof at some point. Nope, that was my first time.

One of the less active members that only shows up on fast Sunday to
give a pre-written testimony for 10-15 minutes didn't show up. We
don't know why, but we just hope he doesn't come again next month. He
kills the spirit during the meeting, and it gets really lame,
especially because half the congregation (Chinese natives included)
can't understand a thing he says because he shouts everything and
reads a bunch of random scriptures super fast.

Elder Cook, Elder Radford and I set a deal that we would all read
the BoM all the way through in Chinese by the time Elder Cook and I
head home. I set a similar goal back in January you may recall, but it
failed epicly due to lack of support group/accountability/still
didn't know a ton of the characters. I know a few more now at least,
and my reading speed for the ones I do know has gone up a lot.

We've started working with a new guy named Xxxxx, he is a sophomore in
high school, pretty solid, basically the whole issue just revolves
around whether his family will be willing to come to church with him
or not. He said that they have Sunday set as side for family time, so
whatever they do, they have to do it together. Hopefully he can talk
them into coming.  He said his dad at least might be down for it. Oh,
his family is from 天津市, it's a large city about 2 hours away from
BeiJing, so yes, he is Chinese, and has a wonderful pirate accent to
boot. (People from the north often swap out a lot of other sounds for
an "Arrrr" sound, which makes them sound pirate-y, and also a lot
harder for me to understand.)

Go find someone who has been prepared to hear the gospel before
performance time, and keep in contact with them so you can find out
when they get baptized a few months later!

Love, your son in service,
Elder Christensen
�少�

June 25, 2014

I talked to a JW missionary in Chinese last night. I didn't even try
to talk religion with him, we were standing underneath the Manhattan
Bridge, which means that every 2 minutes a train passes overhead and
you can't hear anything you or the other person is saying, and the
rest of the time it's still really hard to hear them, let alone the
fact it is in Chinese, and there is a less active member who was
baptized 2 years ago that no-one has seen since standing next to you
getting confused about if Heavenly Father is Jehovah or not. Talk
about a run-on sentence.

We ate rabbit for dinner a few nights ago, and we had chicken heart
pasta a few days before that. Food in Chinatown can be weird
sometimes.

I was on a split with Elder Radford yesterday.  We were doing language
study after lunch because of a meeting we had with the Bishop.  I
noticed Elder Radford fell asleep, so I took my ring off and dropped
it on the table really loud, he jumped a bit as he woke up, and
literally 2 seconds later, Xxxxx walked into the chapel. We weren't
planning on meeting with him today, so Elder Radford went from
completely asleep to teaching an unplanned lesson within 3 seconds.
Speaking of Xxxxx, he wants to get baptized! He's planning on moving
to Missouri in August for college, but I might get to see him get
baptized after 3 years of investigating. That will be super cool.

陈伯颜 is back!! He was in Tennessee for a long time for work, but he
finally quit his job so he could come back to NYC to try and go to
college. It was a pretty big step for him because it was a family
restaurant, and he basically got disowned by his family when he
decided to leave and come back. He's really cool though. He only did
it because he knew that his family would have him working in the
restaurant 12 hours a day for the next 40 years (he's 21). He's been
in Tenn since Mid April, and we've been teaching him over the phone
once or twice a week for the interim.

We taught a guy after English class who was super cool, but he went to
North Carolina for a while. He should be coming back though.

The Smocks left this week. Brother Smock was the first counselor in
the bishopric, so we should be getting a new counselor soon.

Have fun at pageant!
Love, your son/sibling in service,
Elder Christensen

June 18, 2014

I'm District Leader again for another cycle. I'll give you the rundown of what Chinatown looks like currently

District One:
District Leader: Elder Christensen
District Monkey: Elder Wang (4th cycle together total)
Zone Leaders; Elder Cook (MTC Comp), Elder Radford (Cook trained Radford last July)
Sister Dong (from Taiwan, will probably leave the same time as me, Cook, and Wang)
Sister Ng (from Hong Kong, started this February)

District Two:
District Leader: Elder Leung (my comp during Jan-Feb)
District Monkey: Elder Guo (Elder Leung started training him in May)
Sister Lee, Sister MacKay (both came out with me, they go home the 23rd of July)
Sister Palmer (tripanionship with Lee and MacKay)

Chinatown Missionaries currently banished to the English Program:
Elder Atkinson: serving in Harlem, this is his 3rd transfer out of Chinatown
Sister Chen: (from Taiwan, goes home the end of this transfer) serving in Monticello
Sister Astle: Serving in Middletown in the Newburg Zone, 3rd transfer out
Sister Toronto: Serving in Yonkers in Westchester Zone, 3rd transfer out.

That comment you made about knocking 500 doors reminded me of something Elder Snow from the 70 said when he came a few weeks ago. He served his mission in Germany I think, wherever it was, it was in Europe, and they weren't exactly very open to listening to the gospel. He said that on his mission, they would always remind themselves, "Don't worry, for every door that gets slammed in our face, someone is getting baptized in Mexico." We all thought it was super funny.

You know you are in for an interesting week of food when you go to a Chinese grocery market. I've had more forms of fungus than I knew were edible before my mission, and after this week I'm going to be able to cross off Chicken Hearts and skinned rabbit from my list of things I haven't eaten yet. Thank goodness elder Wang knows how to cook. Did you know that Preserved Duck Eggs are actually not bad considering they look like black chicken eggs once peeled, with green/brown yolk? Pig's stomach and intestine are also pretty tasty.

We have a couple of other people we are working with, one is named Xxxxxxx.  He is a really cool guy, he goes to another church called 家庭教会 (Family Church), but he seems pretty willing to give our church a try. He's from a province called AnHui in China, but he has a bit more of a Northern accent than is usual I think for that province based on the other people I've met from there. There was an interesting moment while we were meeting with him and his grandmother. I was saying the closing prayer, and I suddenly had the "stupor of thought" effect, I had opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn't remember what. Then I got this random feeling to ask for them to have good health. They didn't have any special reaction after the prayer, but I was glad that I had the chance to follow a prompting, even if in just a small way.

We have an investigator who is one of the Greenest people I have ever met. He's trying to bribe us into letting him get baptized via taking us out to eat tomorrow. That should be really funny to watch when he figures out that we don't even have the authority to baptize him period unless bishop approves.

Happy Father's Day! The ward (sister MacKay) made a ton of cupcakes for all the men on Father's Day. They passed them out right after Sacrament. Not to be outdone, our Elder's Quorum President bought 4 large cakes to cut up and give to all the sisters after the 3 hour was over. The awkward part is we think he left during the second hour of church to go buy the cakes, which is especially ironic since the gospel principles class was on keeping the Sabbath day holy. He meant well, so...

Love, your son in service,
Elder Christensen
陳少駒

June 11, 2014

Well, transfers are underway. Elder Murray is gone, which means me, Elder Cook, and Elder Wang (who I'm going to be companions with for another cycle) are now the oldest Elders in Chinatown, and that after this next transfer when Sisters MacKay and Lee go, we will really start to feel old. I saw Elder Christensen (Robert) in the transfer meeting, he seemed like he was doing okay, he said that I look more and more like Clark every time he sees me, which was super unexpected, and he called me Jacob as he walked away, which felt really strange, because no-one has called me by my first name in probably a year or more, aside from when I've Skypeing home.

I'm afraid I don't quite understand what your responsibility is in regard to the campground. Is it that you have to be in the campground the majority of the day? Or that either you or dad needs to be there at all times?

We have heard that the next senior couple coming into the mission is in July, but we don't know if they will come to Chinatown or not, they might get assigned to somewhere else.

We ran into a less active [member] on the street that no-one in the ward has been able to find for the last couple months. Apparently he has been busy with work, doesn't normally get off until around 11 or later, but it seemed like there might be other reasons why no one has been able to reach him, since his schedule isn't too different from other restaurant workers schedules. We'll keep working with him.

Our baptismal date for Xxxx Xxx Xxxx was moved back, his boss forced him to take Mondays off instead of Sunday, which means he won't be able to come to church for probably a couple of months, which means that while we can keep teaching him, he certainly won't be getting baptized soon.

I'm still doing the whole district leader thing, my third transfer doing it. We held our district meeting this week at 8 pm on a bench in the park because Elder Murray's exit interview with President went long during the morning when it was originally scheduled, and that was the next time when all the companionships in my district were free. It actually was a very spiritual meeting, I learned a lot during it.

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