Man not fair at all. Good thing i'm sure i'll be getting a fair share of blessings myself. I mean. Cause that's the only reason I’m doing this. Cause like... no blessings, no payoff or whatever. Haha that actually reminds me of this guy we contacted a while back who we ran into yesterday again who I was like, "What do you think brings the most happiness?" and he was like "Money!" and I was like, "don't you think there's some happiness money can't buy?" And he was like "NO MONEY NO HONEY!!! HUA HUA HUA!" And all his friends started laughing. I guess it was pretty funny. I hope he really was joking though... haha.
Beautiful day here across the country too btw. Although it's getting a little cold. Starting to wear this large coat which at least covers up my hair in the back. Tell Eric I didn't really expect him to break anything... but I mean, you never know. I've just heard people with red hair are like that. And that they also are big on eating red stuff like tomatoes.
Whatever the case, this week went pretty well. Ok, not that well. It seems like all of our progressing investigators aren't really progressing anymore which is kind of annoying. That 72-yr-old guy Brother Chen is kind of slowing up since he keeps not coming to church since A) it's too far, B) it's too early and, I guess, C) he thinks he'll just come up with too many unanswerable questions about the church or something like that. Basically kind of annoying. However, we're still working on it and are hopeful for this next week. For some reason, Brother Chen always goes to sleep at like 2 in the morning since he stays up reading books and stuff like that. “Professor's habit,” he says. And then we have this 70-yr-old woman from Vietnam, Sister Loi. Although she was looking really good earlier this week when we managed to set a baptismal date with her for the 12th (requiring her not to miss a day of church till that date) and got a pretty solid commitment to come to church. She then went to San Jose for a Thanksgiving celebration with her family and when she got back, she missed an appointment with us on Saturday night since she was still there. Then she couldn't make it to church on Sunday for some reason. It was really weird since we called her the night before and told her we were gonna come pick her up the next morning which she said was ok but then we got there and she wasn't home... which is weird since one of her concerns was that going out at 9:30 was too early. Anyways, then we kept calling back all day since we have later and later sacrament meetings with other wards and she never got back home which was really weird and rather frustrating. Then we called at like 9:30 pm and the phone was busy. Anyways, mysterious, so we're gonna have to check and see what was going on that day. I still have no idea. The bad news with that is that now we have to automatically shift her baptismal date a week or probably two back to the 26th since she still has to get to church 3 times before she can get baptized. A bummer.
We have another investigator who lives here in chinatown named Brother Zhang who's like 80+ yrs old. He's already been baptized into another church and so doesn't feel like he needs to be baptized again. However, the last lesson we taught him was super spiritual and we basically told him if the Book of Mormon is true, then we really are the only church with the proper priesthood authority to perform those kinds of ordinances. He said he believes the Book of Mormon is true and so we asked him to pray to know whether or not God wanted him to get re-baptized into our church which for some reason he was really reluctant to do. Elder Luo and I think he already knows he needs to be baptized again and just doesn't want to go through all the hassle of doing it since our church is pretty far away and he says he doesn't want to pao lai pao qu all the time since he's already like 80 something years old. We were very close to a commitment I feel and so we're going back tonight to teach another lesson with recent convert, Brother Zheng, who we baptized last month and who's situation was pretty much the same since he had already been baptized and didn't want to have to be rebaptized but finally changed his mind. Basically, really awesome since he's also like almost 80 years old so we're thinking it'll come off pretty well. At least we hope so. I guess I'll let you guys know next week.
In other news, we got a couple new investigators this week which is cool. Things are looking up in our area apparently since I heard that before, downtown was like the hardest area with no investigators or baptisms and nothing really going for it but I can't really imagine that since things seem to be going pretty well and we have enough investigators to keep our hands full (despite the fact that they all seem to be octogenarians).
Thanksgiving went pretty well. Actually, we had a lot a lot of members inviting us to eat this week. On Wednesday, had the stake president and his family take us out to dinner (which was kind of pan jiao [apostasy] since we stayed kind of too long... but it was kind of bu hao yisi to leave... and our district leader was there too... so yeah... I blame him)... and then on Thursday night we went over to Brother Yang's house which was really good and actually pretty American despite the fact that Elder Lee and I were the only 2 white people there since our whole district was there (all 6 of us!). Then on Saturday had another ward party thing with loads and loads of jiaozi which were really good. Then today had a member take us out to a buffet BBQ restaurant which was pretty darn good. Basically just blessed all over this week.... in the food dept. at least...
Haven't gotten a package from Katherine yet but I am waiting in joyous anticipation. I am almost done with a letter to her which I will send off as soon as I can but there always seems to be precious little time to write letters on p-day since most of the time is spent doing random stuff that takes a lot of time. Especially travelling...
Anyways, I am pretty impressed with your relief society acheivements mom. In office like a month only and already guanxi-ing it up with your subordinates. And by subordinates I mean fellow relief society members. But now that you're in a position of power or whatnot, I don't think it'd be too out of place to exercise some unrighteous dominion. Since I'm pretty sure that's what leadership positions are for right? Anyways, once I become assistant to the president I'm thinking I'll probably just have some more lowly missionaries make me meals and stuff. I mean... you know.. cause like... power.. and stuff...
I hope your blood drive is successful dad. I don't think giving that many pints of blood is really very healthy. I mean I'm no doctor... and I'm not that familiar with the imperial system of measurement but that sounds like too many pints for one person to give. Fortunately, I have AB negative or positive blood which is basically the most useless blood-type ever. Whatever the case, that's cool that William Xu is so active. And yeah I mean waking up so early would probably affect his studies at that incredibly academic institution. You know how ridiculously difficult American public schools are and everything...
Sounds like that Wikileak deal is kind of a mess. But I'm sure everything'll turn out ok in the end. Either that or we'll plunge into a state of anarchy and everyone will start eating each other and whatnot. Speaking of which, Brother Zhang was telling us a bit about the Cultural Revolution as he experienced it back in the day before he escaped to Taiwan which was pretty interesting (despite the fact that it kind of sidetracked our lesson... a lot...). Turns out Elder Luo's Chinese-censored education form of events is rather drastically different. He told me that the famine during the Cultural Revolution was due to natural causes which kind of made me laugh in an ironic bitter kind of way. I guess it was pretty natural that they had no food since no one was really growing any. Pretty interesting to learn about Elder Luo's Chinese take of the world. Like how in school he was taught that America will be a lot better when they finally learn to accept communism hahaha. Aiya. Kind of scary how Elder Luo seems so rational and yet is incredibly nationalistic. Although, seeing the plight of all the Chinese immigrants here in San Francisco I really can't fathom why any Chinese people would immigrate to the states these days which seems only to mean working really long hours, not being able to find work, or just struggling with the language. Hardly seems to be the land of opportunity anymore.
I need to wrap this up and go write Joel and Michelle a bit. Thanks for your emails mom and dad! Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Christensen
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