December 10, 2014

So this is a plan that might take a little while to figure out. Allow me to explain. You may or may not be aware that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is going to be singing in Carnegie Hall next first of July. That is the Wednesday before pageant starts. One of our members (Qi Xiao Dong, he is in the picture below) said that he, for some strange reason he couldn't figure out, bought 8 tickets, when he only has 3 people in his family. When I mentioned that I was planning on coming back to visit during the summer right before pageant, he offered to take our family. The problem is that it is the Wednesday before pageant, so I don't think mom or dad would be able to make it, since you need to be at the pageant on Tuesday for staff meetings if I remember right. Then I realized that one possibility was to come down to the city for the weekend, have mom and dad drive the MotorHome up on Monday or Tuesday as needed, then have the 5 kids (5+3=8) stay, go to the concert, then we ride up with the Buckner family on Wednesday or Thursday depending on the time of the concert. If there isn't room in the Buckner car, we could also either rent a car for a day to drive up ourselves, or pull a car behind the MotorHome on the way out, which provides us with more flexibility once we are at pageant, since we we will still have an actual car. These are just some ideas, but I would really like to go to that concert if possible.

They (the stake) called on the missionaries to usher at the stake Christmas carol concert. It was pretty fun, but we ended up just holding the door to the stairwell open for a lot of the time. We did get to act as elevator servicemen though, just standing in the elevator pushing the up and down buttons a lot.

Elder Perkins of the seventy came to our Ward this last week. It was pretty cool, because he speaks Chinese. Problem was that I was busy helping set up the refreshments for after the combined third hour, so I didn't get to sit in his lesson at all, which was kind of ironic.

Xxx Xxx, our convert back in Feb, got a phone call from his mom the day he quit his job in Rhode Island. He was planning on taking 2 weeks off, and then had a new job set up less than an hour away from the city, in a much nicer restuaraunt. Then his mom called and said he needed to go help in his sister's restuaraunt in South Carolina. So his whole plan he had been working on for 6 months to let him come to church more and get a better job just got destroyed. Now he is in South Carolina working pretty crappy hours, and no chance of coming back up here any time soon. Needless to say, he was upset.

John goes home today. Weird.

They are renting a jumbotron in Times Square for the He is the Gift project non-stop for a month. I think they are stressing that more in our mission than in any other.

That's about it for this week.

Love you lots,

Your son in service,

Elder Christensen

陈少驹