October 29, 2014

This crab was given to us by a recent convert. I ate it for dinner on Monday, it was tasty. We also got free sushi from our new Ward mission leader's convenience store/sushi bar for lunch yesterday. Elder Christensen is Happy Elder Christensen when he gets to eat good seafood.

These donuts were made by Sister Palmer. We thought they were pretty funny.

The group of missionaries are the ones who went  to watch Les Mis with Elder Wang and I last week. 

The show was really well done, but the part that had the greatest impact came after the show was done. I have often experienced a period of, for lack of a better term, melancholy at the end of reading a good book through for the first time, or else after watching a play. It has been something that I have been trying to understand for quite a few years actually, and I finally figured it out in the subway on the way back from the play. I think I feel that way because those particular activities give a sense of feeling to the fact that this life is like an explosion of fireworks. A few brief flashes of light, and then before you know it, it is all over. I get somewhat of the same feeling after I go to the temple as well, but a more positive, if still equally contemplative state of being. The difference is that at the play, it displays a persons entire life in the course of an hour or two, showing just how fast it all is, while going to the temple makes me contemplate on the significance of the flash of light that is our life, and how necessary that flash of light is. The entire purpose is for us to develop the correct attributes in order to stand against the night that follows when the fireworks go out. I hope that made sense, these thoughts bring out the (untrained) poet in me.

We passed off Xxx Xxx Xxxx (dude from the north with very thick accent) to Elder Wang ShuangZhe, he's the guy who understands him the most, and we didn't understand enough to have it make sense for us to keep teaching him instead. We've been able to meet with a few new people though over the last few days, so we might see some new stuff coming up soon. I've had to teach a few late night lessons by myself due to Elder Kuo being one of those people who has to get minimum 8 hours sleep or else he might be pretty grumpy the next day. The latest recently was a conversation with a less active member that kept me up till 12:40. I am so grateful that I went through high school with so little sleep, otherwise I would have struggled so much more on my mission. Instead, the days where I only get 6 hours don't bug me at all. P.S., anyone who ever says that as a missionary, the spirit goes to bed at 10:30, is a total liar.

We went to FAO Shwartz for PDay today.

The Ward isn't doing a Halloween activity, but we are going to do a big thanksgiving dinner, which was a big deal last year (I've been told numbers around 300 people and 17 extremely large turkeys for last year's). The reason is because no-one wants to eat Chinese food on Thanksgiving, so all the Chinese restaurants are closed that day, which means that we have a ton of less actives who never show up that will pop out of the woodwork (or at least that seems to be what happened last year, and we are hoping it can happen this year as well.)

I got your Halloween package Mom, thanks for the sauce, I will do my best to use it all before I go home.

Love you all,

Your son/sibling in service,

Elder Christensen
陈少驹