April 17, 2013

Zone Conference: Hiding just left of center (as they say).  Click to view large image.

Please...ACCEPT THAT OFFER [to work in the campground at the Hill Cumorah Pageant]. That is all I have to say on the subject. Will the Dones keep coming still without the calling, or did they get a different call?

I'll make sure to send pictures as I get more of them collected. Speaking of pictures, did my last SD card with all my MTC pictures arrive? You said I needed to use the right postage. Do those bubble wrap ones need more stamps?

We had transfer meeting today. We lost Elder Williams from Chinatown, he's going upstate to YorkTown for a few cycles, but we got Elder Folley back (he was a zone leader in upstate for a few cycles, now he's a companionship zone leader with Elder Mok.) We also got one new sister, Sister Chen (the symbol for her name is the same as mine.) She's from Taiwan, and speaks decent English too. We got another 33 missionaries in, and one of the old APs left.

I had already heard about the bombing in Boston, some of the ward members filled us in on it. Sad day, but there isn't much that we can do as missionaries to help provide service or relief, especially since it's outside of our mission boundaries, so we're just focusing on our work here.

I have a million crazy stories I could write you, but I'm saving some of them for when I get home, both because I want to see your reactions when I tell them, and also because some of them are just things that aren't particularly relevant, and I have limited time to use the computers.

The weather has been very nice these last few weeks, we haven't had any snow really at all, and only a little bit of rain. Most of the cold just comes from the fact that it is always windy. ALWAYS. I'm not sure why all the people I'm writing in Utah are complaining about the cold, it's really decent here (watch though, summer will be death.)

Teaching English class is...interesting. We have a number of ESL books that we resort to, and we also have a few native speaker missionaries who are able to help explain if we run into problems typically, its just fun sometimes since they can't speak English (verb=wourb type stuff.) And also the fact that I never really figured out how English works anyway, so I'm having to relearn Elementary English so as to be able to teach it. As for me learning THEIR language, I'm starting to have some words that have reached synonymous meanings in my head, especially when praying, I find it really easy to slip back and forth between English and Chinese. I'm understanding more and more of what is being said in lessons, even with Lin's Fujanese accent (yes, our blind friend is still meeting with us, although Zhou (the new investigator Elder's Williams and Cook found on splits) dropped us.)

So as I'm sure you noticed, I said that Elder Williams went up-state. This implies a change in my companionship. Say hello to Elder Murray. He's a piano performance major at BYU, and his older brother was my RA. He was also trained by Elder Williams (which makes him my [mission] brother), and now he's my follow-up trainer (which makes him my [mission] mother).

Love you all, Don't eat raw duck (cooked duck is delicious though, trust me.)
Elder Christensen New York Style

April 10, 2013

Conference was a blast, I've never enjoyed it that much before, nor have I ever gotten that much out of it.  An English Copy of the Ensign would be good, and look for some pictures of me in it, there was a photographer at the temple taking pictures for the ensign. Plus, they give us Chinese ones anyways.

If you could get me the address for that cheesecake place, then I can use my personal card to pick some up there. The Blairs (senior couple in Chinatown (don't speak any english)) are going to take me out to dinner on my birthday, so that will be fun too. On the subject of food, I think you might need to send me another box of the Nature Valley bars. Last time I checked, I think I had 4 left.

Life as a missionary feels quite normal to me now, I'm thinking that going home after spending most of my 2 years in this small area will make this place feel just like home to me. When we street contact, we typically start by asking them how their day is going. They usually blow us off, but if we can get them in a conversation, then we start bending it towards the gospel and BoM. Our 2 primary forms of contacting are that and tracting (yes, I am still sneaking into doors.), although on a long day with nothing to do, we might go up to Columbia University and work there. Our boundaries technically are...the mission. But we stay in Chinatown 98% of the time because that's where most of the Chinese people are. The bishop is really good, he speaks solid Chinese too thankfully, and we've got several key players in the ward leadership who are from solid wards (aka, they understand how church culture works.)

Transfers are next week. President warned us that missionaries who came out 6 weeks ago should be ready to train now, not at 12 weeks, so I might be going without a senior companion sooner than I thought. We'll see come Saturday when transfer calls come. Odds are, I won't get moved anywhere for at least 1 or 2 more cycles, though. My Chinese is getting better, and we've gotten better at SYL-ing. We're getting 2 more sisters and 1 more elder down here, plus Elder Folley (upstate) is coming back down, so that brings the total number of missionaries in ChinaZone to...20. In 1 ward. Coordination meeting and Ward Counsel are starting to get just a little bit crammed.

Our new investigator that was found while we were on splits last week (Zhou) is a 60ish year old lady from Beijing, she really wants to get baptised before she goes back to China. She was converted Christian after some experience with heart surgery, I didn't understand that part much at all. Her baptism date is May 12th, we're going to meet with her every Friday and Saturday. (Our first lesson was 3 hours long. Hopefully that isn't an indicator of future events.)

We went on splits this week, Elder Cook (MTC companion) came to my district. We spent most of the day contacting, I ran into a really nice Fujinese man, but couldn't understand most of what he was saying. We also had to teach English class together, which was interesting.

I FINALLY CAN GO WITHOUT A SUIT JACKET! IT'S 79 DEGREES OUTSIDE TODAY! This is going to be a very long hot summer if we don't cool back down for a while.


Love you,
Elder Christeeen (as the ward members say.)

April 3, 2013

I'm already starting to see my face filling out a little, I can't wait for it to get warm enough in the mornings that I can go running. (No, I still don't like running, but I need to do it if I want to remain in decent working order as far as how my clothes fit. Actually, if you wanted to send out a scale, that would be nice.) I can turn down sweets in the store just fine, but when you mail them to me, I feel obligated to partake, since you put so much money into them already. My companion/appartment mates would be more than happy to remove this obligation from me however, so if you want, you can send it to them instead, and just know that if I want anything out of it, I'll take what I want. Their names are Elder Williams, Elder Cook, and Elder Blonquist.

I'm still cooking a fair amount, we have Quesadillas, Chicken Alfredo, and Rigatoni Mozerrella planned for this week. I think the recepies from Bro. Allen should be in a blue folder on my desk somewhere, if you could find that and send it, it would be good. The canned ham...tastes like spam. Not joking. It's not really bad, but it's also not really good, it's just kind of there.

I've decided that Chinese take-out is by far the healthiest fast food you can get. I eat more vegetables here than I ever did back home. I even had some mushrooms in the Hot Pot Soup we all went for on Monday, and I actually enjoyed them (that said, it was a sichuan resturant, I got the weakest spicy soup they had that was still spicy, and it was quite warm in my throat and sinuses for a while after I finished.) It's actually funny that the food we eat is by and large all the same, despite the fact that we typically get it from different resturaunts.

I've decided that the fact I have to teach English class is Karma for the fact that I never payed attention in English class in school. Its fun though. I've finally started to feel like I somewhat understand what people are saying to me, so I can finally start really focusing my language study again on words I don't know/grammar. We've been picking up talking in Chinese at the appartment a little more. The bright side of being here is that even if we don't get completely immersed, I can already understand more of Fujanese, Cantonese, BeiJing, and NanJing accents than most Taiwanese missionaries can when they've been out twice as long as I have.

Guess what? I did the math, and I think my birthday is my 100th full day on a mission. How's that for cool/random fact? A CTR ring would actually be a nice present for that, I think my finger is a size 9 ring if I remember right. It might be 9.5 or 10 though. Just don't do a too expensive one, in case it's not the right size. Also, if you want to count in cycles (transfers) mom, April 17th is the end of my first full cycle here, and the end of my 16th cycle will be the 2 year mark, so I have 15 transfers remaining (don't worry, I'm not counting down, if anything, I wish it would go slower, I just thought you might like to count that way, since it's a smaller number than fast sundays left.)

We're going to the Manhattan temple to watch General Conference. We have live streaming. If we have an investigator with us, we will watch the Chinese translation. If not, then we get to watch the English.

Tender Mercy of the week was when I ran out of cash and we were going to go out to eat as a District for dinner (most places here don't take cards). We went back to the apartment really quick to drop some stuff off, lo and behold, I had a letter from Dad's parents with 3 dollars in it, which was just enough to pay for dinner.

Tracting is about as effective as it has ever been, but street contacting is slowly picking back up, people aren't quite as desperate to get inside a building now, so we have slightly better odds of getting them to stop and talk. Yes, we still only use Mandarin when contacting. It's really awkward though when the missionaries for another church are set up across the street with their own tables. That said, the Jehova's Witnesses just make it awkward whenever we go to the temple. They always have tables set up in the subway at columbus plaza. Oh well, love them anyway. We've decided to try a new contacting method. We just walk slowly around town, and as we find ourselves walking along side someone, we just start talking to them until they get to their destination. It has worked really well for the sisters in the past, we haven't tried it yet though. We're also planning a trip up to Columbia University to go work the campus there at some point.

I forgot to mention, I had to help teach Gospel Principles in church. It's the sunday school class for recent converts and investigators. Not a very easy class to teach actually, because most of the investigators are too nervous to answer any questions you ask, and most of the recent converts go get something to eat during the second hour so they can come back for Relief Society or Priesthood not as hungry. We need to work on that.

Our investigators are doing well, we may be doing a fast with Henry to help his Aunt let him be baptized. Chui came to church, which was a bit of a shock actually, but I don't think he got anything out of it because his Mandarin is pretty bad. We really want Li xxx (JieMei means sister) to come to Gen. Conference. We're trying to set that up with her over the next few days. Liang xxx is doing well, and we even found a new investigator yesterday named Zhou xxx. We were on splits actually, so Elders Williams and Cook found her, but since they were in our area, Elder Williams and I will be the follow-up with her. I don't really know anything about her though, so you'll get the details next week probably. Lin xxx xxx (blind one) is moving, which must be a real pain for him, but he won't let us help him at all. He already told us the new adress though, so we'll go check up on him once he's settled in.

Love you all,
Relative in service designated Elder Christensen

Look who showed up... Brother (Craig) Done!

March 27, 2013

Elder Christensen with President and Sister Morgan

On the subject of food, we do eat out a lot (dumplings and Mianbao are my friends here). They actually give the Chinatown missionaries a little extra money just because they know we don't get member-offered meals ever. I cook dinner about 70% of the time though. We found a regular grocery store. I've had Quesadillas, Pot Roast, Chicken Alfredo, a lot of Ramen noodles, sloppy joes, I think we did tacos one night... basically I'm probably going to get pretty good at cooking on my mission. Thanks for the cornbread and all that such stuff by the way, it was much more helpful than the candy (are you TRYING to make me fat?). Have Robin tell brother Allen that I might not have used his recepies in college, but I've used them out here, and I don't even have them. I just do it from memory. Also, I have had the tea a few more times, and every time it has given me a headache, so I don't think I'm a tea guy.

We do most of our lessons in the Chapel. Only 2 of our investigators thus far have allowed us to meet them in their house, and one of those 2 is blind (can't come to the church on his own). The other is 86 years old (Chui, the old man we found, and we probably won't be visiting much any more). We finally managed to overcome the language barrier thanks to elder Ling, (cantonese native) and apparently the man has no interest at all in religion, he just wanted someone to talk to.)

Regarding having an Easter program in the ward here, your guess is as good as mine. I can't understand the announcements made in church, so I don't know if the bishop said we are or not. On a random note about the chapel, we had a man walk in yesterday and ask if we had any BoMs in Russian. He wasn't a member, he just looked us up on the web and found the Chinatown chapel, and wanted to get a copy of the book for himself (yes, he was Russian, had a pretty thick accent, said he had been in NY for a few years.) and give some info so that the missionaries in Russia could find and teach his friend. Really weird/cool.

I was able to buy the hymn book online myself using my mission card, so no problems there. The back pack works great.

We don't really speak the language much simply because Elder Williams and I are always forgetting to do stuff in Chinese, and we do a lot of our lessons in English anyway. We're working on talking more in Chinese though. I have an hour set aside for language study every day, so I don't worry too much about my level going down, its just a matter of how fast I keep it going up.

Contacting is still okay during the night, but we usually try to tract during that time, more people are home, and we don't seem as threatening as when we stand on the street at night and try to talk to people as they walk past. The Jehova's Witnesses took our favorite street contacting place though, so we need to find a new one. Its not actually that cold most of the time, so we don't mind the contacting.

Our investigators haven't changed much: Henry (20s, college student, he believes, but he lives with his aunt, if he gets baptized, she's going to throw him out.), Lin xxx xxx (blind one, still can't understand when he speaks), Liang xxx (friend of a RC, she's open to the idea of god, but has a really busy schedule.). The one new one is a former investigator named Li Xiao Jie (Xiao Jie just means miss/Mrs.) She's been taught the first 2 lessons, but mostly seems interested for the sake of learning, not for the spiritual aspect. She has 2 kids, works full time, and does night classes, and has her kids doing Kungfu, piano, and violin. We really want her coming to church so we have a regular meeting time with her.

P days...thus far, we haven't really gone anywhere, we've been feeling a bit lazy, so we stay at the appartment, we played Monopoly one time. I haven't really been taking pictures that much (at all), but I'll definitely do so when I go somewhere for Pday, and I'll try to take some more overall.

Fun story, Sister xxx (Missionary from Singapore) has found an investigator. Problem is that he's interested in her, not the gospel. Should be interesting to see how that plays out.

Don't worry, I'm staying busy.
Your relative in service
Elder Christensen

March 20th, 2013

Regarding the recent announcement regarding missionaries emailing friends and family other than parents, President Morgan is either out of the loop, or else ignoring the announcement, because at the trainers/trainees meeting yesterday, he went out of his way to say to not email anyone except your parents. He even said not to email siblings on missions, so I went and double checked with him that it was okay I kept emailing Ethan, seeing as I don't know how to get a real letter to him.

Although the Chinatown ward does take a bus to HCP every summer, and some mission presidents have in the past allowed missionaries to go to help translate, President Morgan stated in no uncertain terms that that would not be happening, so I guess I won't get to come see the Hill Cumorah Pageant this year. It was a long shot anyway.

President's goal is for every companionship to have 21 lessons a week, and 1 baptism a month, so 5 isn't actually a very large number at all. I will state right now though that such an event has not occurred in Chinatown (in terms of that number of lessons) in probably years, if not ever. We have had that rate of baptisms before, but right now, its going pretty slow, partially because the missionaries are working on getting the ward to be able to stand on its own (teaching people how to fill callings, trying to put together a ward directory/list of less active members.) Also, if we had that number of baptisms sustained throughout the year, given our number of missionaries, we would have 84 baptisms in 1 year in the 1 ward. Currently we have 3 for 2013, and not too many people are unhappy with that, because it means we get to work on hunting down all the million baptisms we've had before that vanished, and getting them to come back/getting the men to attend/learn enough that we can give them the priesthood.

Tell Cam that I'm sure he'll do great on the Oboe and Sax (when he gets there). As for Chinese, make sure he practices tones and pronunciation a lot. The smallest difference in either can completely change what you are trying to say.

Point of clarification, most of my emails will not be as long as my previous one, we went to the LDS services building on 14th street to email (so Williams could send pictures), and there is no time limit there, so I spent about 80 or 90 minutes on that email. Most of the time I'll be limited to somewhere closer to an hour.

Yes, we do go tracting/contacting in the snow (the boots are nice). Tracting is hard because so many of the buildings have an outside door that is locked before you can even get to the apartment doors, so it's really hard to get inside to even start knocking, basically we just walk the streets till we see a door that didn't close all the way, or loiter while someone opens it, then grab it before it closes all the way. We've only had one good contact from tracting thus far, his name is XXXX XXX Hong, he's a 70+ cantonese man who speaks decent English. Basically he's just super lonely at night because his wife is off gambling in Jersey from 2 to 10 every day, so he invited us in, offered us a drink (he doesn't realize that you can't offer alcohol to minors. We declined.) So he gave us tea instead. Apparently Chrysanthemum Tea is allowed for missionaries to drink according to everyone. I hated it. It tasted okay, but it gave me the biggest headache ever, so if he offers again (we're going back tonight), I think I'll decline.

The language is hard. We mostly speak English at the apartment, that is something we are working on. My biggest problem is working on trying to understand people's accents, once I can get that down, I'll start to get a grip again on what vocab I need to practice, because right now I'm just struggling to follow what's being said. It is slowly coming though, so you can rest easy there. A lot of the people we talk to have at least a little English too.

As for adjusting to missionary life, I still have yet to have a moment of "Holy crap, I'm on a mission", and I'm starting to think it may never occur, I've already adjusted to this life pretty well overall. Maybe when I get transferred upstate I'll get that moment, because it will be more like a standard missionary experience. As for noise, I personally don't find it that loud. The subway, yes, but when we are out tracting/contacting, I don't even notice the noise, it just seems natural given the number of people. Plus, it actually is pretty quiet in our neighborhood come night when we go to bed. The loudest it ever got at night was one time when some street racers drove down East Broadway blasting music and the cops were trying to chase them down.

We got to go to the temple for a Mandarin session on Saturday. Really different/strange. I understood enough that when combining it with how well I knew the English version, I never got lost, but there were some points where I had no clue what words they were saying.

As for things I could use, I think a backpack would be good. Basically no one here has a shoulder bag, and it isn't big enough to carry the full set of both English and Chinese everything that I need. One or the other, yes, but not both. Also, if you could go online, find me a Chinese (make sure Mandarin, not Cantonese) hymn book with Pinying (the phonetics) in it, that would be super helpful. My book is somewhat workable, but only characters is a bit troublesome.

Love you all, and given the number of calories you recently sent me, I'm going to get fat,

Elder Christensen

March 13th, 2013

I saw Chris Whirthlin in the MTC. Very unfortunate that he was hurt. Hopefully he can get out into the field soon.

Did I have an immediate interview with the Mission President?...no. We took pictures with him, and they said they would send it the next day (a week ago now, so you should have gotten it by this point probably). He said that since there were 40 of us, he would be coming around to interview us in the areas, since it would probably take up a full day for him to get a meaningful interview with everyone.

As for groceries, there are some regular grocery stores here too. Unfortunately, granola bars (and other food) are expensive as all get out here (it costs about 5 bucks for a box of 2 nature valley bars). On the bright side though, Chinese food is actually pretty cheap in Chinatown. Did I mention yet that I deeply enjoy Mianbao? It's like rolls, but with various things stuffed inside. It is quite delicious. We haven't eaten at any members houses yet though, so I'm guessing I haven't gotten the 100% true Chinese food experience yet.

So...Chinatown. DANG. I thought that being in an area this small for so much of my mission would feel constrictive. I could live here for the next 10 years and easily not get to know what/where everything is and who all the people are. We have 4 investigators right now, a 30 year old man with a massive Fujanese accent (I don't understand 99% of what he says in Mandarin, and he speaks 0 English). Investigator 2 is 29, speaks pretty good English, but she keeps meeting with the Jehovah's Witnesses too though, so we need her to stop doing that. Number 3 is a college student, plenty of faith, good English, taught all the lessons, but he lives with his aunt, and he's worried that if he gets baptized then he'll get kicked out of the house. I haven't had a chance to meet our other contact yet. I wasn't expecting that of my first 5 lessons, 4 would be in English.

Street contacting is weird. We stand on the street, and contact people who walk past. Problem is, they usually have somewhere they're going, and so just don't even respond. Especially during the winter when it is cold/wet outside. Hence, fewer investigators. It also seems that in my case, every single person I've managed to get to respond only speaks Cantonese. At least that's what they tell me in Cantonese. At which point, elders Mok, Ling, Wang, or sisters Woo, Chan, or Khong take over, since they all speak some level of Cantonese as well as Chinese (they are all from Singapore, China, or Hong Kong, so they can pretty much do all 3 languages with no issues.)

We get to go to the temple typically once every transfer at the date of our choosing (specifically, our Zone Leader's choosing). Due to us being lucky, we scheduled our date as the 20th of March, then got word that we are allowed to attend the special Mandarin session that will be held this Saturday, so we get to go to the temple 2 times in less than a week, super excited for that. If I didn't tell you, the Mission President said we are allowed to attend Yankie's Games if they are in the afternoon on Wednesday, which there are usually 6-8 of those during the season, so I suspect I'll actually probably go to a professional baseball game, not just during my life, but during my mission. Bit unexpected there.

The missionaries in our Chinatown ward have to teach Gospel Principles (Sunday School) class. I'm not looking forward to doing that. We also teach an English class in the chapel during the week, and most of our lessons are in the chapel, because people's apartments are so small and/or dirty that it would be uncomfortable/embarrassing for them. A lot of them work in restaurants 6 days a week, 12 to 15 hours a day too, so it's hard to teach lessons with active Church members on hand as well. English class is mostly attended by elderly women who have nothing to do, and want to try to learn a bit of English. I learned I can't explain a prepositional phrase, because I still can't figure out what it is myself. Just teaching vocab is fun though.

The lack of smell is coming in handy too, I enjoy the subways a lot more than most of the missionaries seem to, due to the fact I don't have to smell dried urine the entire time we're down there. Also, I don't think that Chinese people watch the commercials about how smoking is bad for your health. Another 10 points to faulty olfactory capacities. Actually, now that I think about it, I should probably get my suit dry cleaned soon, I'm sure that all that stuff has to seep into your clothes at some point.

Love you all, stay clean, stay safe, your sibling/son in service,

Elder Christensen

 

March 5th, 2013

My trainer is Elder Williams from the 7th ward. When I finish, I'm sure he'll come hunt me down so I can tell him the follow-up on people he leaves behind. We haven't had to do a lot in Chinese yet, but we haven't taught a lesson yet either, so we'll see just how much I know then. There are 16 of us, including the 4 who rotated in, so there are now 2 districts in Chinatown. The mission president told us that we have had 84 baptisms in Chinatown in the last 20 months, so still following the cycle of about 1 baptism a week.

Wednesday is my P-day. We email from the local library, I'm not sure what it is called, or what the address is. Apparently I need a piece of mail in order to get a real library card (the mailing address is 221 E. Broadway apartment 8A), Its right next to the intersection with Clinton, the building is called the Mayflower (if you can look it up and find it on G-earth). Right now I'm just using the guest portal. We get 47 minutes on the access, so a little longer to email thankfully. It doesn't really feel too cold here to me, the wind makes it a bit more so, but overall, not bad.

Story time. The ride into town on the subway was interesting. I had no clue how different the stations on the outskirts of the Bronx would be compared with the stations in central and lower Manhattan (a lot nicer there.) Also, they couldn't fit the luggage for all 40 missionaries on our 48 seat plane, so some of it (most of it) got diverted to La Guardia. They had us wait on a bus for an hour or so while they went and picked it up from there. They put us up in a hotel too instead of the mission home, and the Mission President interviews will be scattered throughout these next 2 weeks or so.

As for trying to "pack it all in", the only thing I really felt like I was packing in was all my books into my suitcases. I ended up having to leave my laundry hamper in the MTC, I'll buy a new one out here probably. The vacuum bags were a life saver, though, so props to whoever slipped them into my bags.

Love you all, looking forward to getting to know this place really well (the chapel is about a 15 minute walk away, which gives you an idea about walking times using G-earth).

Your son/sibling, Elder Christensen version 3.0