August 27, 2013

My new address:

636 Main street, Apt. 1,
Peekskill, NY 10566

The first difference that I feel I need to mention between "upstate" and UPSTATE is that here, even though there are tons of trees, and the houses have bigger lawns/are bigger themselves, it's still quite crowded here. There are houses on most streets, its more like a suburb with bigger houses and lawns than true upstate where there are small towns, and then a long stretch of road with just a few farm houses here and there.

I exercised way more in the city than I do here. We had to walk to the Chapel and back at least once every day there, which was a guaranteed 25-30 minutes of walking minimum everyday in Chinatown. Here, we have a car with about 2000 miles on it a month, and we don't actually have any bikes, so we don't typically walk much at all, only when we have a few hours to go tracting, we drive to a street where the houses are closer together, and walk up and down the street. It feels extremely familiar for some reason. (*gathering fast offerings as a deacon/teacher*) Thus far, we haven't really met with any of the investigators yet, just tracking down less active members and tracting, with a large number of meal appointments thrown in, and doing some service for members as well (Landscaping is fun until they start having you try to lift 70-700 pound rocks, then the 4 by 4 beam you are using as a lever snaps in half on the really heavy ones.)

Oh, there was one other Elder who was transferred out of Chinatown too, Elder Leung was transferred to the Bronx with Elder Murray (my follow up trainer). Most transferrees out of Chinatown last 1 to 3 transfer cycles. The soonest I could expect to go back down would be October 2nd, and the latest I think I can probably expect to go back will be December 18th. If it starts to get cold, I'll wear my jeans to bed, and there are several extra blankets here in the apartment (which is HUGE by the way). Did I mention that we have a view over the Hudson River from our back porch which is really awesome?

I finally have witnessed something in myself that I never thought I would see. City mentality. This last week has been a little bit of a slow down, starting to realize that I had picked up a little bit of the "Constant Motion" of the city, but that everyone up here moves at a much slower pace, even though its only an hour or so from the city. I never realized just how minor and yet huge of a difference it was until now.

I speak some Chinese with Elder Wang, but he really wants to practice his English as much as possible, so we're going to try and set some kind of goal for when we speak Chinese and when we speak English tomorrow during weekly planning. Oh, I forgot to mention, we do have one investigator that I've met thus far, his name is xxxx, he's probably about 50-60, he's lived here for 3 years, he was originally contacted by sister missionaries in Maryland 3 years ago shortly before he moved here, and he's been coming to church here ever since, but he doesn't like to have the missionaries come over and meet with him during the week, but he's come to church most every week for the last 3 years. Which is impressive as all get out since he's from ShangHai China, and doesn't speak hardly any English. We're planning on inviting him to be baptized this Sunday, since we realized that (1) no one has ever asked him to be baptized up to this point, (2), he lives the word of wisdom already, and we're assuming he's actually keeping most of the commandments already, minus tithing. If he gets baptized, then it's going to be really cool, he's a great guy. (He didn't have any translation for any of the meetings until Elder Williams got here in April.)

Love you all, have fun remodeling the cabin!
Your son/sibling in service,
Elder Christensen

PS, when are you going to get the basement of the house finished, or replace the floor in the kitchen, now that you've taken another big makeover project?