Choir of Angels

Hello!

Let me first answer some questions so I don't forget. California is really slow I guess so I still haven't received any word about my speeding ticket... I guess it would be too much to hope that they just forgot about it... more likely would be that it got caught up somewhere in the post service and I won't get it till I'm 45 and it's grown to $500,000,000... which, of course, by that time will be about $50 in our money now when adjusting for inflation so I suppose it's a bit of a win-win here.

Yes I did get the box! Thank you! We have a pretty sweet Christmas corner in our apartment now complete with the mini Christmas tree that Aunt Katherine sent me last year that I found still kicking around in the apartment where I had left it last year. So that was pretty awesome. What are the odds right?

Also for Christmas we could just call... or Elder Brown and I were thinking we could just use Skype since we're allowed to now... so I guess next week you may as well send me your Skype username as well as phone number since I'm pretty sure I've forgotten it... yep... definitely can't remember.

Sounds like your Christmas program was pretty good. We don't really have any plans as a group for Christmas but the whole branch is throwing a Christmas party on the night of the 23rd at the Sunset building so that should be good. Also we're going to have a Christmas potluck party thing at our English class on the 24th... and then on the 25th... we'll just be going out doing service and stuff. Should be pretty fun. The potluck yesterday went pretty well too. The Cheesecake investigator DID show up. We actually went to the restaurant she works at on Saturday so we could make sure she'd come. It's actually this weird Chinese food vegan restaurant and she makes vegan Cheesecakes with Tofu and imitation cream cheese which sounds weird but was actually really good. I might even like it a little better than actual cheesecake just because it's not so rich. Unfortunately, Elder Brown and I think she may have heard something bad about the church and so she only came for like a minute and then was like "I have something to do so I have to go!" and then left... which was really weird cause she was super excited to come... Oh well, we know where she works so we can see what's up sometime later on. Still, it's kind of annoying to have so much random anti-church rumors/propaganda.

Speaking of which, our awesome golden investigator Gregory got pretty much shut down by his dad who apparently is Christian, but according to Gregory, doesn't really practice his beliefs. Elder Brown and I kind of predicted something like this might happen but it seems like a little more intense than we thought since we think they may have taken away his phone since it's been off the past couple days and he didn't make it to church yesterday... but I guess we'll see how it works out. Hopefully we can get the situation worked out. But it is so annoying to have people who don't understand our beliefs at all just come to really erroneous conclusions and then make irrational decisions. And family opposition is so inconvenient.

Also Alice Luo's mom fainted the other day and hurt herself really seriously and so is in the hospital right now and has been for about a week. However she is doing a lot better and Alice is still really enthusiastic about the gospel and being baptized so things are still going really well in that area.

We went to this high school winter concert the other day (with permission) since we had a couple investigators who invited us to go and we went and met loads of their friends there which was awesome. It was a pretty hilariously unprofessional concert where the choir teacher (this super tall black guy) was like calling people out in the audience who ware making too much noise haha. He was like "Hey! You, you, and you - not in the choir, get out of the choir section! You know who you are!" Haha. It was a really hilarious concert though and we got loads of good contacts. Hopefully we can get them all to church. Even and Joseph are two students there who are scheduled to be baptized on the 24th. Pretty awesome. I don't really understand why they like coming to church so much but I guess it really is just easier for some people to feel the Spirit and helps them have motivation to do the right thing. Joseph texts us all the time and is like "hey guys go on Facebook right now and check this sweet video I posted!" We're like "um.... we don't have access to a computer right now... but..." And then follow up on his reading of the Book of Mormon haha.

Anyways, we just got back from Fisherman's Wharf where we ate at an overpriced restaurant with very mediocre food. However the view out the window was pretty nice so it wasn't a total loss.

Yes I am writing in my journal pretty often lately... not too much in Hayward... but without roommates you have a lot more time in the evenings so I'm keeping up pretty well here.

Alright well I'll just go ahead and end there since I don't have a whole lot more to report. But thanks for your emails! Sounds like not having a car is pretty inconvenient... if only the States actually had convenient public transit! Pretty sure it's not really possible to not have a car any place other than San Francisco... and maybe NYC.. but taking the bus in Oakland was pretty darn annoying haha.

Love you!

-Ian

The Gathering

We had a pretty good week. We met a guy named Gregory Huey the other day on the bus. He's a 16 year-old kid who was born here but who's parents are from Guangdong. We taught him yesterday after he came to church and had a really great lesson. He has a really strong desire to follow Christ. On the bus he was like "I think I'm going to join the Catholic church because I want to be closer with God." I was like "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a second! Come to our church first!" haha. It was pretty cool. He had a really great experience although he doesn't really speak Mandarin very well... but that's ok. We speak Taishanese... ok just kidding, but he speaks English so that works too. So as of right now, 3 of our 4 investigators scheduled to be baptized on the 24th are in high school. It's interesting to me how interested they are in the Gospel despite the fact they're so young. Pretty cool.

Our other investigator scheduled for the 24th is Alice Luo and she's doing pretty well. Yesterday was her second time at church. We taught her on Saturday and she was like "sorry I can't come tomorrow, I need to go register for classes..." Elder Brown was like "no. You need to come to church." She was still being a little resistant so finally, I was like "just get someone else to do it!" She paused for a second and was like "hmm... you're pretty smart. I could do that." Haha. She cracks me up. Especially since she brought a notepad and paper to Sacrament Meeting so she could take notes and stuff.

I love church here. It's usually stressful and people don't have a good experience but our group here in downtown is really great. We had an awesome fast and testimony meeting yesterday where we had our recent convert Ian Yan (moving to Provo at the end of the month haha), a member who had been less active for 35 years because church was so far away but who is active now because of the new group, and a couple other really awesome members share their testimonies. It was so great. And then afterwards everyone just kind of hangs around and chats with one another. Church is awesome here. Also we have a potluck activity every second Sunday of the month after church which is coming up this weekend which Elder Brown says is awesome so I'm excited for that. We met a woman on the bus coming home yesterday who we invited to church and it turns out she works for this place that makes all kinds of cakes and pies and she said she'll bring 2 cheesecakes to church next week. I told her "looks like us meeting you really WAS arrainged by God!" Haha. Pretty sweet.

Anyways, the new movies about Jesus' life look really sweet. I'm excited for when we can start using them as proselyting tools and stuff. I guess some of them are already up on LDS.org. Also, I don't have much time left so I'd better go write a quick letter to President Wade. Zone Conference this week. Hoorah!

Love you!

-Ian

Standing Room Only

Hello!

How are you? Sound pretty good! Sorry I missed thanksgiving this year. But we did stay up for the midnight Black Friday sale though... they had a great sale on... um... scripture cases!... so... In any case, I really like that talk by Ian Ardern also. He had a great accent and an even greater name. I just wish I could get the general conference issue of the Ensign... for some reason the mission office is being really slow getting it out to us...

Anyways, I had a pretty interesting week. First off, our two people scheduled for baptism fell through. Bummer. One had a problem with the Word of Wisdom that came out only during the baptismal interview, and the other didn't like the idea of tithing which, in hindsight, we should have probably taught him earlier. Still, kind of frustrating. Fortunately, we'll still get to be able to continue teaching them hopefully and I have faith that we'll be able to help them work past these barriers.

We had 12 investigators at church, which was pretty ridiculous. Church went really well yesterday. Everyone stayed after it ended and chatted which was really great. We had about 25 people in total so the room looked a lot more full. We have more people at church than at English class! Which is kind of strange and probably means Elder Brown and I need to spend more time passing out flyers, which we did actually do for a couple hours this week... However, we're not really having any problems finding since we found 7 more new investigators this week...

Lately, we've been discussing how we can help all of the investigators we are teaching and who are coming to church set baptismal dates. We're going to redouble our efforts this week to set a baptismal date with every one of our investigators and help them progress towards that. We feel that with the sheer number of investigators we have in our teaching pool right now, if we're planning correctly, we should have very little time to find and loads of time teaching them and helping them to build their faith in Christ and progress towards baptism. We've decided to set more clear expectations with our investigators for more frequent meeting and also daily contact.
Elder Brown and I went on exchanges with a couple elders in the filippino ward here this week which went very well. I went on exchanges with Elder Salazar seems like a very good elder. He was telling me all these crazy stories about his conversion back in the Philippines which were really hilarious. He was talking about how he was baptized when he was 12 without his parents' permission and then he was inactive for like 5 years because the branch in the area where he lived like dissolved. Then after five years the missionaries came back into his area and he like kicked them out of his house and was like "I'm Catholic now. Don't come back." Except one of the Elders told him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon so he did like a couple months later and was like "if it's true, give me a way to go back to church." So the next day, the Elders went back to his house even though he told them not to and he was like "dang it..." since he said all his friends would make fun of him if he went back. Anyways, to make a long story short, he ended up moving and was like "yes the missionaries won't be able to find me anymore!" Except he moved right accross the street from one of our chapels in another city and then proceeded to run into both one of the missionaries he first kicked out of his house and then one of the other missionaries who had tried to reactivate him who both got transferred to that area hahah. So random. It was pretty funny the way he told it. I guess if God wants you to join his church, he'll find a way haha.

In any case, I got my first ticket last night which was a real hoot. We were coming back from the baptism of one of my investigators in Union City: Ethan Wu... and I wasn't really paying attention to how fast I was going and got pulled over for speeding... I had no idea our Toyota Corolla could even go that fast: 150 mph... Ok just kidding. Only about 80. But knowing California traffic police, they'll probably charge me for an 150 mph speeding ticket...

Anyways, my time is almost up here on the library computer here so I'd better sign off. However, I hope you ahve a great week!

Love you!

-Ian

Return to Chinatown

Nov. 21, 2011

I'm loving being back in Chinatown. Our area is really really great. We have loads of investigators and our English class is doing really well. I really notice a difference when we have that kind of an awesome free service to offer people rather than just having to chat them up on the street about the Gospel... which works sometimes, but English class is so much more effective for stuff like that. Elder Brown and I are working really hard to get the group going here. It rained yesterday which was a bummer because Chinese people are not fans of the rain and when it rains they aren't as willing to go places. Despite that fact, we still had 9 investigators at church which was really good. Especially considering the fact we only had 9 members there including the two of us and the 2 speakers from an English ward. Pretty interesting. It was a funny Sacrament meeting. I like it alot though. Kind of reminds me a little of meeting in China or overseas in a place where the Church is pretty small and not super established. I was playing the piano (really really horrible keyboard hahaha), blessing the sacrament, and translating for one of the speakers. Fun stuff.

Also we had a baptism yesterday. Our investigator, also named Ian incidentally, Ian Yan, was baptized yesterday. He's a 28 yr-old guy from Taiwan. He's seriously hilarious. I like him a lot! He's super nerdy and draws comics for a living. Not the funny kind but he is really really funny in an awesome nerdy way. His baptism was really great and another brother from the Daly City chinese area was also baptized at the same time. Next week we have another brother, Jason Lei, set up to be baptized. We have a goal of baptizing 5 people in December which is definitely achievable. We also started teaching Alice Luo again and she is planning on being baptized on Christmas which is exciting. This time she definitely will be since our church is so convenient to where she lives. She came yesterday and seemed to have a tolerably good experience haha.

Our awesome PeiKe Wang (member present lesson king... or in this case, queen), took our whole district out to eat lunch at this sweet Sushi buffet called Kome over in Daly City. So I'm basically very full right now and rather sleepy. We're here at a public library on a road called Ocean Avenue. Which I think there's a song about... but I can't remember any of that Babylonian nonsense now that I'm a missionary... so...

Sorry I can't make it back for Thanksgiving this year. I'm sure it'll be grrrrrrrreaat! We're going to eat at a member's house that night so... don't worry, we'll still be fed. I think Sister Ma has been the states for a while now so it'll probably be pretty good.

In any case, it's fun being back in the same district as Elder Luo. He cracks me up so much. So hilarious. Unfortunately, we're not in a three person companionship since he's with some English missionaries in Sunset, but that's ok. We see enough of him anyway haha. Incidentally, Elder Brown's Chinese name is also Luo... so... pretty close!

Anyways, my time is almost up so I'd better wrap things up. Thanks for your letters mom and dad! Love you!

-Ian

Old Stomping Ground

HERROW!

The big news here is that I'm being transferred! To.... guess where?!?! DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO! AGAINNNNN!!!! Hahahaha! I didn't think I was going anywhere cause if you get released as a Zone Leader you usually get called in the morning by President Wade... but I didn't get a call... and then at night when the Assistants called us they were like "Elder Christensen has been transferred to be the Zone Leader in the San Francisco West Zone..." I was like... "wat? Engrish?!" And then they were like "also President Wade's made kind of a fun change in the San Francisco West Zone, now it's a Chinese speaking area in downtown San Francisco." Hahaha. I am actually really excited to go back though because they recently started a new Chinese group in downtown San Francisco in the middle of Chinatown. So basically it's going to be great to work with all the people who were baptized while I was serving there and help lots of people get reactivated since I think most people in downtown San Francisco were just unable to attend church because of how dang far away it was in Sunset. But now they have no excuse not to come since it's A) Only Sacrament Meeting! and B) Right in the most convenient location ever. It's apparently held in the place where they teach a new English Class there in the An Lao Zi Zhu Chu right through the tunnel as you head into Chinatown. I'll still be senior companion and my new companion is Elder Brown who I knew in Oakland so that should be good. I'm excited to get to work and really help the group there grow like crazy. I have the feeling that we can really just baptize tons of people and get a branch going in no time. Apparently they already have about 25-30 people who attend the group on Sundays including the OuYang family and the Tan family (formerly very less active).

President Wade is so inspired. Ever since I heard about the new English class and Sacrament Meeting services in San Francisco downtown I really wanted to go back and get involved... but I always thought it would not be possible. So awesome though. ALSO, since we're Zone Leaders, we have a car now. A brand new Toyota Corolla. But we'll also still keep our bus passes... so basically when it's inconvenient to use a car, we can take the bus and when the bus is inconvenient, we can drive. Win win. However the best part is that Elder Luo is going to be in my district as district leader AND since he's going to be training for the last transfer of his mission, and his new companion will be 2 weeks late into the field, he's going to be in a tri-panionship with Elder Brown and I for the first 2 weeks hahahaha. So basically this will be my 3rd time becoming companions with Elder Luo. So that's what's new on the missionary front. Pretty exciting.

Apparently, aside from the OuYang family beginning to attend church, Ying Meng is still super active and awesome in the group there and Sister Zheng, who has been inactive because church is so far away, will definitely have loads of potential to start coming every week since it's so near her house. Basically salvation for everyone! I'm excited to go back to the area. It'll probably be pretty weird though... plus i'm a little sad to be leaving so many awesome members behind. Fortunately, one of them is treating our whole district to lunch at their restaurant and then another member is taking Elder Wu, Albretson, Lee, and I to dinner at the Texas Roadhouse... so basically I will not be hungry today. In fact very likely quite the opposite ha.

Anyways, I hope you are having a wonderful birthday. Sounds like you had quite the crazy bike odyssey over the weekend. And for dad, a crazy Taiwanese arrested woman odyssey in Kansas City. I hope they don't arrest you just out of spite when you move there next year... just try to play a low profile and blame everything on your subordinates dad. Better them than you! Right?!

Love you! Hope you have a great week! Next email I send will very possibly be from a library or apple store in San Francisco!

Bai bai!

-Ian

Jam Packed Week

Hellow!

Had a wonderful week! Elder Lee and I were able to accomplish almost all of the goals we set for ourselves this week which is great. We were really excited about that. We hope to be able to continue improving and keep our investigators on the straight and narrow towards baptism. This area is great. I would love to stay as long as I can. I feel things are really moving along and I know that with faith this Chinese group can really reach a larger potential. There are prepared people everywhere.

Our family home evening type activity went really well yesterday surprisingly. We thought there would be like no one there but then like 10 people showed up from the Ward down in southern Fremont which is out of our mission. It was interesting. However, it gives us hope for the next one. Sister Breen hopes to have an activity like this at least twice a month so we're definitely going to get investigators lined up to come to the next one since it really is a very effective fellowshipping tool. Pretty good though... although we only had like 5 members from our group show up. No worries. Next time we'll get it all on lock down.

We put together a bunch of activities this week and it really made me realize how great the members of the Union City ward are. I guess I already knew but really they are amazing. We went to the young single adult fireside with Elder Scott (well not really Elder Scott since he got sick so Elder Wilson of the 2nd Quorum of the 70 stepped in) with three of our investigators who are students at Cal State East Bay and that was a great experience for them to see the temple and participate in an activity like that. One of the members, Ben, a young man preparing for his mission, was able to take us all up which was really helpful. Although at most they probably understood about 70%, Elder Wilson did give a great talk and the Spirit was there which I'm sure was helpful. Also, although only 2 of them previously knew one another, our other investigator from Beijing (Ethan) got along really well with them and so we're kind of using our investigators to fellowship our other investigators, which seems to be working pretty well. Ethan is pretty awesome and went out to Shunyi on the weekends when he was in Beijing haha so he knows exactly where ISB is and all that other stuff, pretty small world eh? Anyways, he asked one of the other investigators that came (Ryan) if he had been baptized and he was like "no" and then Ryan asked Ethan if he had and he answered "no, but I am going to on the 27th!" It was good to hear an answer like that and we're feeling really good about Ethan. He really enjoys church too! So that's a definitely plus.

We also took our English class up to the temple on Saturday which was quite crazy. We had about 17 students sign up and had 27 actually show up. Miraculously, we had enough members there to seat everyone and had absolutely no seats left over once everyone was on board. It was pretty crazy. It could not have gone better than it did though. We went in and listened to the Cristus recording and then watched the 20 minute Restoration movie after which we split into 2 groups and one group we took around the visitor center and the other was taken by the Chinese sisters to the temple grounds. It was a pretty spiritual experience for all involved. We're doing our best to follow up with everyone that went so we can capitalize on this experience and help them begin to learn the gospel. We've already had 1 lesson from it last night and set one up for tomorrow night. We'll continue to make phone calls to set more up. We have some pretty tricky investigators lately with complex concerns having to do with Buddhism and what not so I've been trying to find out ways to straighten that out in my gospel study. It's interesting how many people think that more than one religion can be right at the same time and that they are all right because they all get people to do good things. And I guess they're partially true because all (ok maybe most) churches are good, but only one church is true. Sometimes it's a struggle to get that all straightened out with people though.

One thing I really liked from what Elder Wilson said the other day in his talk that kind of has to do with that scripture you shared mom is he said "the people you meet are those that God has put into your life curriculum. Your job is to learn how to love them." I thought that was pretty profound. It always seems like wherever you go, and we've been quite a few places now I suppose, there will always be people who test your patience or who you don't really get along with or find annoying or are just not very endearing and I'm pretty sure that's how life will always be until you learn to become more Christlike and love everyone. I'll probably still be working on that for a while.

That sounds like a rather insane bike ride mom. Are you sure you want to do that? I would discourage it because I don't want you getting picked up by "cute" paramedic guys. Just have dad drive alongside. Having a car is very convenient. I can't even imagine living in the States without one. But then again, you could probably manage with a bike mom.

In any case, that's about it for this week. We had 3 dinners last night. It was pretty wild. I was a little more conservative but Elder Lee was suffering haha. The first was scheduled. The second was at the FHE activity, and the 3rd was unscheduled but forced upon us. Pretty crazy stuff.

Love you!

-Ian

The Parable of the Sower

Herrow!

That's interesting news about Scott Bickett. Although I suppose his death, as you mentioned, was not altogether a surprising experience, it's still too bad that his choices led to such a poor health condition. We had a returned mission president in our ward a little while ago (he just moved) and we went over to his house to eat dinner and he was talking a lot about our choices and how they really determine who we are and who we become etc and especially about people who let themselves become obese and are thereby marginalized when they grow older and can't do the same things that a healthy normal person can do. I think it has to do a lot with putting of the natural man. For example, my natural man was really into playing computer games and I've now realized that that is (and don't quote me on this MOM since I KNOW you said it to me like EVERY day!) a colossal waste of time that I could be using to do some more worthwhile things. Point is, that's just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

Had a great week this week btw. Accomplished almost all of our goals except investigators at sacrament meeting and progressing investigators where we were off by one. We were blessed this week to be able to set baptismal dates with 3 new investigators which was pretty good. 2 of them are looking fairly solid as they made it to church this Sunday and had a pretty good experience however the other, Sister Ren, committed but then didn't show up. Elder Lee and I are still trying to figure her and her husband out since we have pretty good lessons with them, show up with members who would be excellent fellowshippers and then they commit but don't keep their commitments. They didn't even come to the Halloween party we had on Saturday night right after we taught them that same afternoon and they said they would come. So, we'll hopefully be able to get ahold of them and find out what concerns they have. A chapel tour might possibly be in order.

We taught the Word of Wisdom twice on Tuesday. The first time failed rather miserably as our investigator, Brother Lu, told us "I live to smoke. Smoking is the purpose to my life..." Which was an opinion rather shocking to us and we didn't really know how to respond to. Elder Lee was like "that is absolutely 100% wrong." It was an interesting lesson to say the least. However, we've been back after that and he does have a modicum of desire to follow Christ and some slight hope for change, however we're going to have to continue to help him build his faith and have decided to continue working with him to give him a chance to righteously exercise his agency. However, our other investigator, brother Zhang (with a baptismal date for the 27th of November), accepted it right away and didn't even finish the rest of the ice tea he had been drinking and just threw it away right then and there. Pretty great faith. He definitely is having many spiritual experiences as he has been reading the Book of Mormon and praying which is really good to see.

It is kind of interesting to see different levels of preparedness among the people that we teach. For example, some people require pretty much no skill or concern resolving and will just accept everything you say and be baptized whereas others may require quite a bit of time and study and prayer before they'll accept anything you say and then there are still others who no matter what you say will never do anything you tell them. I always find it gratifying when people who already have a pretty good life are willing to accept the Gospel just on the basis that they feel like it's true. Not that that makes the conversion of someone going through trials and accepting the gospel as a way to improve their life any less real or miraculous but I always think of what I would do in the position of my investigators and I'm not sure I'd be as receptive unless I felt a real need or emptiness in my life.

In any case, our recent converts are doing pretty well. Brother Zheng got interviewed for the Aaronic Priesthood yesterday and will be getting it next Sunday after church and we have Sister Sun set up to get an interview for a temple recommend so she can go do baptisms for the dead.
We also have organized a trip up to the temple for our whole English class on Saturday and have about 15-20 who seem interested in coming which is pretty exciting. We hope it will be a great experience which will help us use English better as a proselyting tool. We left our ward mission leader a message saying that we might need his help coordinating rides and he called us this morning and said he'll have 6 people on standby to drive people up on Saturday which was pretty cool and kind of makes me think that we should coordinate closer with him since he really seems capable and willing to help.

In any case, we had a pretty good training meeting last week by President Wade. Talked a lot about raising our vision, getting referrals and a variety of other topics including merging the doctrine of Christ in with everything we teach. Pretty good. Lots of things to do better.
Also our "FHE" I guess is kind of set up for next week after church at Sister Breen's house... which is kind of news to us but we'll hopefully be able to get it done pretty well.

Good to hear Uncle Eric's doing well. And your biking excursions. Always a treat. I'll probably be on exchanges this week in a bike area so I'll let you know if we do any epic bike rides.
Anyways, thanks for your emails! I love to read them. Have a wonderful bunderful week!

Love,

-Ian

A Few Stripes...for a Good Cause

Hai!

Had a pretty average week last week. Some good things that are happening are that our recent convert, brother Chen, came back from his trip in southern California and we're now working with him to get a family home evening type activity set up for our Chinese group which we are also coordinating with the Bishop to get in place. I really hope setting up these small family home evening groups will improve unity and fellowship within our groups and help everyone to become more active in the church. There are only about 15 or 16 members in the Chinese group. Although it seems like on a good Sunday we'll have at most about 10 and some of them leave after the Sacrament for work, so there are some struggles...

I went on exchanges with one of the assistants, Elder Webster on Saturday in Oakland again which was a good experience. We had a pretty funny experience where we went street contacting for about 30 minutes and get yelled at by like 3 different people for things like racism against african americans and the like and got rejected by basically everyone we talked to. So we decided perhaps that wasn't the best place to go looking for new investigators haha since half of them were indie hipsters (michelle's friends :D) and the other half were like belligerent older men.

Unfortunately, we lost a couple baptismal dates this week since one of our investigators moved to San Francisco and the other 2 aren't answering our phone calls (brother Zhao and Wang Kun...). However we've been finding quite a few new investigators, especially up at Cal State which I'm fan of since young college students seem to be my forte and Elder Lee and I are going to focus on being more bold in inviting our investigators to set a date and then set plans with them to solidify their resolve and turn it into action.

Our recent converts are doing pretty well too. We accompanied one of our recent converts, brother Zheng, to meet with the bishop yesterday to do a preliminary interview about the Aaronic Priesthood and he's very willing to accept it and serve more in the Ward which is great. I just hope we can find more prepared people like him.

Also, remember Ying Meng? Our super diamond investigator in San Francisco? Well, we didn't attend the funeral of Brother Kwok on Saturday since we had English class but Elder Wu and his companion did and said that she was there playing the piano for the service! So cool! So she's basically still really active and awesome which is great! Especially in a Branch as unlively and scattered as San Francisco's is. Pretty good to hear. Although I wish I could've seen her... oh well. I'll probably be back there at some point anyways haha.

That's great to hear about Uncle Eric's surgery. Too bad his mouth is gonna be a little drier from now on... but that's a pretty small price to pay considering how ridiculously large that tumor was. Did they give it to him afterwards? That'd be pretty gross I guess...

Anyways, love you guys! Thanks for all your support and emairrsss!!! Have a wonderful week!

-Ian

Priorities

Hellow! Howsit?

Yes I can send you the memory card for my camera. It may or may not surprise you that I haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately... mainly because the scenery in Union City isn't exactly all that exciting but also because I'm too lazy and you're not allowed to take pictures during proselyting time so... it's hard!

So in any case, this week went much better than last. Although the beginning was still a little rough. We had two of our investigators who were scheduled to be baptized yesterday (Xia Yong and Xia Yu) tell us that they don't really believe in God and don't think it's really necessary to join the church etc etc. Of course, they tell us this only in the last week before their baptism where the whole time they've been telling us that they feel really peaceful as they pray and read the scriptures. After meeting with the younger brother on Friday night, we discovered that their father is also rather opposed to their joining the church, presumably because of the law of tithing which would reduce his son's income for the family. It does make much more sense that their concern would have to do with family opposition rather than the concerns they were telling us about but it's still kind of a bummer because they were doing pretty well and looking really solid before this. But we'll continue to invite them out to activities and hopefully be able to continue meeting with them although their father declined to come downstairs to talk to us when we went over which was rather rude of him and will make it awfully difficult to resolve the concerns that he has.

Our other investigator originally scheduled to be baptized yesterday, brother Zhao, is still doing pretty well. We went by and visited him late on Saturday night and discovered that his lack of communication is not a result of any doctrinal or social concerns but a result of him being very busy with his job lately, which produced the same effect of him not being able to meet with us/come to church/be baptized, does help us maintain hope that he will be baptized in the near future when his work settles down a little. Unfortunately, he did say he would come to church yesterday but then didn't end up showing up which we can only assume is because he was again called into work. This assumption was then solidified as we went by his house later that day and he wasn't there. Still, we pushed his date back to the 30th and are optimistic that he'll be ready to be baptized on that day. Dependent, apparently, on his work schedule.
We did manage to find 6 new investigators this week which was great. We found a pretty cool family from ShenYang who we're really excited to be able to continue teaching. They also speak pretty good English which bodes well for them being integrated into the ward a little better so that's good.

I read again one of my favorite scriptures again today in D+C 131:6: It is impossible for a man to be saved in his ignorance. This scripture really helps me understand the importance of missionary work and why we do what we do. Because sooner or later, everyone's gotta know what we know or they're not going to be saved.

So we had some shocking news yesterday in church. The first counselor in our bishopric, brother Kwok, passed away yesterday morning. I was really really surprised by the news. He seemed to be perfectly healthy although apparently he had been struggling with depression for a while. I don't really know any details but it was pretty sudden and big news. t's really too bad too because he was the only leader in the Ward who could speak Chinese so it's unfortunate to lose him. Apparently his wife, Sister Kwok, was the person who taught Steve Toronto his Chinese, according to what she said. And she has lived in Beijing and stuff and is from Taiwan. Pretty sad for her.

Anyways, I don't really have too much else to report. That's exciting you're going to Taiwan! I met a girl in San Francisco who graduated from TAS haha and we talked about a mutual friend we had there. Small world. Maybe I'll run into her when we go back... unlikely... but you never know!

Love you! Thanks for your emairrs! Have a great week!

-Ian

The Natural Man

Oct. 10, 2011

Hahaha! I was wondering myself why you bothered to include the pronunciations of these places myself... but I read them all out loud just to make sure it wasn't done in vain. So don't worry.

Well that sounds like a pretty cool vacation replete with all sorts of European old world quaintness and beauty but also fused with new world extreme sportiness and excitement!

I was sorry to see Elder Lin go but it's cool being back with Elder Lee. And yes we are both Zone Leaders although I am now the senior companion which is a bit of an adjustment again since I'd been getting used to being junior zone leader for the past 3 transfers and while a zone leader is a zone leader, a junior companion is still a junior companion. But I do kind of like being more in charge as well since it gives more opportunities for growth and taking responsibility. I really like the scripture in 2 Nephi 2 where it talks about how God created things that act and things that are acted upon and it seems to me that most of the time you're either one or the other and it's pretty easy to tell the difference between people that act and people that are acted upon. I feel like it all also kind of ties into the whole putting off the natural man doctrine since I'm pretty sure the natural man is always getting acted upon by Satan and whoever. Also, it's kind of part of the reason why we've run every morning since August. Gotta put off that natural man somehow and it always seems in super good control in the mornings so I gotta beat it down early.

Anyways, had a pretty good week this week. Except for Sunday... which was probably one of the most discouraging days of my mission so far. First off, none of our investigators came to church and about 5 of them promised they would. That, of course, includes our 3 investigators who are scheduled to be baptized this Sunday. Then, we weren't even able to meet with any of them yesterday because they didn't answer their phones. We have managed to contact brother Zhao this morning and hopefully will be able to meet with him tonight, but we still need to continue to try to reach our other investigators with a baptismal date to help them progress as soon as possible. So so discouraging to have them all do that. With no good excuse whatsoever.

I have been thinking a lot yesterday and today about the future of our Chinese group and have really come to realize how important it is that we work with our leaders to determine what we can do to improve the unity and stability of our group. I read chapter 13 of PMG today and it seems like every time I read that I'm reminded again of loads of things I could be doing to work more in harmony with the ward. One thing I was surprised to read about because I've never seen one before is the "convert action list" which definitely seemed like a really good idea. It's more of a challenge in our ward however because most of our leaders don't speak Mandarin so it's pretty difficult for them to feel a real personal connection to those that get baptized into the Chinese group since they can't exactly communicate with them. But we're arranging to set up a time with our bishop this week that we can discuss it a little more with him so hopefully we can get some goals set and plans made since, according to President Hinkley, there is absolutely no point in doing missionary work if you can't hold on to the fruits of that effort...

Anyways, so that's what's been going on here this week. There was a lot of other things that happened obviously, but I cannot record but a 100th part of these occurrances in this email.

Love you! Have a great trip back to the US of A!

-Ian

Something Old, Something New

Oct. 3, 2011

Hey parentals!

Croatia sounds like a blast. I know all about Diocletian from that Byzantine History class Joel and I took. Pretty cool pretty cool. That sounds like a really annoying keyboard. I remember using crappy ones like that back in China.

Well, it's been a pretty great transfer with Elder Lin. Seems like he just got here and he's now packing out again. However, I'm really excited to be able to serve a new/old companion: Elder Lee! I feel very excited to be working in the Chinese group here just because of all the potential there is for improvement here. We had a pretty good week last week. Unfortunately we were not able to find any new investigators which is a first for the time I've been here in Union City and is not good at all, but we will definitely make that more of a focus in the coming weeks so we can continue to build up our teaching pool.

Our 3 investigators with a baptismal date are looking very solid. 2 of them came to General Conference and the other one really wanted to come but got called into work so wasn't able to make it. We did meet with him last night however and he's excited to watch the conference online perhaps on Tuesday. We actually had a rather upsetting but, in retrospect, slightly amusing experience last night with said investigator brother Zhao. We taught him the Law of the Sabbath and we had invited a member along who had brought along her other member friend. Anyways, as we asked them to share their experiences keeping the Sabbath day holy, it kind of ended up turning into them sharing their experiences violating this commandment and talking about how it was more of a "try to keep it as best you can but if you can't then God will understand" kind of recommendation... It was pretty bad. We did our best to salvage the lesson but may need to reteach that commandment... Turns out it really is important to prepare members to accompany lessons... However not as bad as one time I guess Joel had a member who was like drinking beer or something during a teaching appointment and wouldn't throw it away haha. So I guess it could be worse.

General Conference is over... once again. It always seems to go by so quickly. It was very good this time though. The only drawback was that I had to watch 3/5 sessions in Chinese because our investigators came and we needed to sit with them... but it's still true in Chinese... And the translators seem to be getting better. Last time they had like no expression but this time seemed to be more emotional. It was kind of funny actually I think there was one point where one of the female translators was kind of choking up and the speaker wasn't at all haha.

I'm kind of warming up to the idea that you're going to be in Taiwan when I get back. That's pretty cool. Even though they have a girly Taiwanese accent. As opposed to my MANLY Northeastern Chinese person accent. Seriously, everyone I talk to is like "How do you have a dongbei accent?..." I'm like... "well... it's like this..." And talk about how I was born and raised in ShenYang... just kidding. But I don't think it's THAT obvious. However everyone else seems to think I speak Chinese exactly like a Dongbei Chinese person. Which, admittedly is better than a white American person. Plus, they speak pretty biaozhun Chinese anyways so... take that!

So I don't have that much more to write now but still have quite a bit of time since Michelle and Joel didn't write me and this is the only email I got... but that's ok, I'll just go look up some of the conference talks in English and see if they were any different than the meaning I got out of them in Chinese haha.

Love you! Have a wonderful bunderful time in Croatia! I wish I could go...

-Ian

Chinese Potluck

Sept. 26, 2011

Herrow!

So we had a pretty good week here! One thing Elder Lin and I are really considering lately is improving the fellowshipping power of our Chinese group. Really, aside from meeting together every Sunday for church, they don't really have much other outside contact that builds their friendship and unity. So we've been talking with our members and are starting to work with them to start a kind of Chinese group potluck family home evening activity where our Chinese group members could meet together at least twice a month and that we could bring investigators to and use to build more unity in our group. We talked to the bishop and he's really supportive so we're really hoping to get that in the works so we can help improve retention.

I'm really beginning to understand more and more that scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants that talks about being actively engaged in a good cause and that it's not enough to just obey commandments in a robotic fashion but that we need to get going and take initiative to build the kingdom. Our great recent convert Chen Bing really understands that. He does have shortcomings of his own but he is definitely very enthusiastic about getting our Chinese group more established and unified so we can build up to eventually the level of a branch. I think it would be great if we could get that vision instilled in all of the members of the group. We talked about it with a couple of the older group members and didn't feel like they really had much of a grasp of it... but that's ok, we can keep working on them.

Meanwhile, we are definitely seeing some great success in this area. We seem to be adding more and more really quality investigators who have potential to progress. We took Brother Zhao to the Visitors Center last night and he had a really good experience and is looking very solid for his date on the 16th of October. He's also doing well on his commitment to give up alcohol.

We are also teaching the nephews of brother Zheng and they have a lot of potential. One of them has a baptismal date for the 16th and we're going to try to set that goal with his older brother tonight when we meet with them. Unfortunately, they did not make it to church yesterday which was really frustrating because they just woke up late and didn't tell their uncle they were coming today. Guess that was kind of our fault as well since we should be planning for that kind of stuff to make sure we're doing all we can to get them there.

One of our older investigators, brother Jiang, is back in the picture since he just lost his job again. He does like to meet with us and I believe he has had a witness of the truthfulness of our message, but he's kind of still being held back by the old concern of "his lawyer told him not to get baptized". We had a pretty intense lesson with him yesterday where we told him his lawyer has absolutely no authority to advise him on things like this... but he still insisted that he needed to wait to be baptized. Pretty frustrating, but we'll keep working with him. Hopefully by building his trust in the reality of God's power, we can get him moving forward since he still seems a little shaky on that point.

We had a great sacrament meeting yesterday where the speakers talked about how God will accept nothing less than a complete sacrifice of everything we have. We must be willing to give everything for him including our will and desires. It was pretty good. One of the speakers said "If you don't read scriptures and pray, it's not because you don't have time but because you don't think it's important." So true. I just wish I could use a priorities straightener-outer machine to get everyone on track so they'll stop "laboring for things of no worth" etc etc.

Anyways, that's pretty exciting that you're getting to go to Croatia this week. I wish I could go with you!

A bunch of other missionaries just came into the room though so it's really hard to concentrate haha. But I'd better go anyway.

Love you! Thanks for the letters and support!

-Ian

I Dream of China

Hello!

The interview with Elder Edwards went pretty well. It was pretty short and simple. Just asked some questions like "is your apartment clean? Do you get along with your companion? Are you obedient? Etc etc..." To which I all answered in the affirmative so I was able to pass pretty easily. I knew all the answers so it wasn't that hard. Haha. Our Zone Conference was pretty good though. He talked a lot about following the Spirit and how the Spirit doesn't work well on demand haha. So you have to create an environment into which the Spirit can flow and help you teach and learn and whatnot.

He didn't mention anything about the covert Chinese mission, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed haha. Last night for some reason I dreamt that I was serving a mission in Beijing but not in the Chinese language cause we weren't allowed to talk to Chinese people about the gospel so I was serving in the Beijing Branch and like teaching foreigners haha. It was pretty weird. I was like "hey it's cool I get to serve in Beijing but kind of weird that I'm serving in my old branch... speaking English... In China..." Haha.

In any case, we had a pretty good week last week. We found 3 new investigators and they all seem to have a lot of promise. We also set a baptismal date with brother Zhao for the 16th of October and he's doing really really well. He said he feels really good every time he meets with us and we shared with him the Word of Wisdom yesterday and he said he would stop drinking alcohol which he used to drink pretty regularly. So he's on the right track.

So, our investigator Linda Xu got baptized in some random Christian church yesterday which was pretty annoying... I guess we weren't able to provide her with what she was looking for, namely: a Chinese speaking social organization that also study the Bible sometimes. It's just discouraging that we would teach her for such a long time to really no avail it seems like. Probably the biggest problem that I feel kept her from being converted was that she didn't read the Book of Mormon regularly and therefore wasn't able to establish her faith in it even though she said she believes it is the word of God... but if she really believed that and understood it then it wouldn't make very much sense for her to get baptized into another church. Although we did explain it very very clearly in a way that she could not understand why our church is the only true one and the others just aren't. I think she's a little less interested in what God thinks and more interested in what she wants to do. I was thinking about this during my personal study today and read in the Joseph Smith history where Joseph talks about how when he was stirred up to all kind of uneasiness and thought over the matter of religion he said in verse 8 I think "although my feelings were deep and often poignant, I still held myself aloof from joining any of the religious sects..." It sort of helped me understand that there could definitely be feelings from the Spirit or from some other source that can result from attending different churches but you can't always discern truth from that. But then again, it is easier to be a member of other churches.

Also I don't know if you had this in Taiwan, but it seems like every educated or uneducated Chinese person who has heard MoMenJiao before thinks we're a cult and it's impossible to convince them otherwise. So obnoxious. Last night we were going to teach a sister and her husband but then they cancelled on us cause her husband called and was like "hey, so what gospel do you teach? Like... the Old Testament and the New Testament...?" Of course, I wasn't going to lie to him, but it was really stupid because there's really almost no persuasion that can be done over the phone....

That's too bad about BYU... I heard they beat Texas though... which makes it kind of funny that we'd get destroyed to bad by Utah. But fortunately, neither Michelle, Joel, or I are going there at the moment, so we are effectively protected from the shameful depression resultant from such a sound thrashing.

Good to hear you got the job in Taiwan dad. Although Vietnam would be more exciting... do you know when they'll be making that decision?

Whatever the case, love you! Thank you for everything!

-Ian

Baptism and Promising Area

Hello!

I decided to reply to you first dad since your letter is very long this week. Although not as long as Joel's blog entry which I just read haha. Pretty funny though. You have all kinds of blogs to check up on these days! I'll try to be as clever and witty as Joel was in his blog but I'm afraid I might fall short. Mainly because it takes much more effort and time than I have or am willing to expend.


However, Tony Zheng is actually from SiChuan and owns a SiChuan not-mongolian-barbeque restaurant. We've only eaten there once since we happened to be there when they were starting lunch for the workers but what they made that day wasn't really that great so I don't think we really got a sample of how their food really is. However, they don't get a lot of business because (Brother Bing Chen, his fellowshipper and our #1 go to fellowshipper man, suggests) their food is too authentic and they don't have enough variety to attract the local general population and certainly not the American population who seek after oily American imitations of Chinese food. It's kind of funny actually since brother Bing Chen is always using our appointments lately to do business... which isn't that ideal... but there you go. He has sort of gone into business with Tony Zheng to write some software to help his restaurant be more organized and help him attract more customers. We'll have to wait and see how it works out. Hopefully well.


In any case, Brother Zheng's baptism went pretty well. We didn't get a huge turnout from the ward which was a little disappointing, but the Spirit was there and it seemed to be a good experience for him. There were a couple things that were really ridiculous though. For example, the person we invited to do a talk on the Holy Ghost, Sister Ren, didn't show up... because... she forgot. So we weren't too happy about that. I ended up giving said talk. Also the person we invited to play the piano said she couldn't play the first hymn and could only play the last hymn... so I ended up playing the piano. Our ward mission leader wasn't too pleased with the turnout either which is understandable... but when he talked about it it felt a little like he was blaming us for that... and I suppose we could have taken a little more initiative in inviting people to come, but at the same time, I don't really feel like it's completely our responsibility that no one was willing to make time to come and we did invite a fair number of people who didn't show up. But that's ok.


I'm really excited about our area and the Chinese group here. Elder Lin and I are working really hard to find more people who are ready to receive the gospel and I feel we are being blessed a lot to find them. Although we didn't have any of those we expected to be to at church actually come, there was another Chinese brother who randomly walked into our meeting and we then were able to begin teaching last night who seems very humble and prepared. He's named brother Zhao and does renovation work in the bay area. There are definitely still some challenges to his progression as he likely smokes and sometimes has to work on Sunday but he definitely is willing to change and I have faith that as he continues to build his faith these things won't be a problem. He also suggested to us that him and a lot of his friends have interest in studying English but only have time at night so Elder Lin and I are thinking of starting a night english class because I'll bet there are a lot of Chinese of a different demographic of the ones we have in our class now who could make it at night. We're also considering making a lot of changes to our English class to make it a better finding tool than it is now which is really exciting cause I think we can find a lot more people through English class.


We also have stake conference next week which is cool. And brother Chen Bing is going to receive the Melchezidek Priesthood! Which is really awesome especially since I thought you had to wait like a year before you could get it but brother Chen was baptized only about 4 months ago. Maybe Bishop Lee is trying to get a Chinese branch established as soon as he can so is trying to get the Melchezidek Priesthood leadership going.


The weather has been very mild and temperate here for as long as I can remember. And that's all there is to report here in California haha.


Sounds like your stake president was a clever clever young man haha. That sounds like the most dangerous thing ever! But I guess you just gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. Boys will be boys. That's just the way it is sometimes. It is what it is! Etc etc.


I'd better go so my companion doesn't have to keep waiting!


Love you! We have a 70 in town to visit our mission named Elder Edwards and for some reason he's doing 1 on 1 interviews with all the zone leaders. Which means me! So we're going up to the mission home tonight at 5... which is kind of annoying cause it cuts off some of our p-day but on the other hand, it should be a pretty unique experience. I've never had a 1 on 1 interview with a general authority before.


I'll let you know how it goes.

Love you!

Have a great week!


-Ian

Caution: Do Not Wear a Wig to Your Baptism

Sept. 5, 2011

Helllowww!

That's a sweet story about Nymka! That's exactly what I hope would happen with all our investigators. For example brother Jiang! Who we can only meet with on Wednesdays cause he's so busy and doesn't have time to meet with us any other day or get baptized. We also heard from one of our members who was down by his place of work, that she saw him smoking again... which is a bummer because it was pretty miraculous that he was able to stop... but I guess he's probably back in an environment where all his coworkers smoke so it'd be pretty hard to resist that kind of a temptation. Oh well, I hope there are more things in store for brother Jiang because his faith has definitely been weakening.

We have a couple really heavy people in our ward here too. It is really pretty sad that people would let that happen to themselves. There is definitely a genetic predisposition to obesity but I also believe that there's no reason to be obese if you have the will not to be. For example, I've been running every morning (except Sundays) since August 1st... although it's really hard and it seems like I have to force myself every time to build up the willpower to do it, it's definitely worth it. Hopefully.

Sister Sun's baptism went pretty well on Saturday. Not a huge turnout, but most of our Chinese group was there to support her which was great. I ended up being the one to baptize her cause we were a little pressed for time preparing her baptism and couldn't think of anyone else to do it haha. But it was a good experience. Kind of funny actually since she was wearing a wig (it looks so real!) and it kind of came off when she was baptized... but that's ok, at least we only had to do it once haha. She was like "this church is so much better than my church in China!" Haha. She is going over to Chicago this next week on the 13th but then we found out she's coming back after like 10 days and she'll be here for a couple more months which is really great cause we can continue helping her to understand the gospel and make sure she understands clearly that she needs to keep going to our church when she goes back to China.

Good to hear you're going out with the missionaries a lot lately mom! It'll definitely be a blessing! We have a really cool investigator scheduled for baptism this Saturday named Tony Zheng. I've probably talked about him before. I was a little concerned to teach him about the Law of Tithing since he owns a restaurant and really works pretty hard to earn what he has but I guess I should've had more faith cause he accepted it without a problem. We're going to go to the visitor's center with him tomorrow morning and getting everything set up for his baptism. It's going to be really great. Last week he was like "I want you to come by my restaurant more so we can talk more about the gospel" haha. We were like "Ok! No problem!"

That's interesting I was the center of attention in your primary cause we also went and did a presentation type thing in primary here too!

There aren't really any sights in our area... so... but we'll probably play some piano etc etc.

Anyways, I'd better go since there are a bunch of people waiting to use computers here in the FHC... but thanks for your letters and support!

Love you!

Ian

Where Angels Fear to Tread

Hello!

I wish we had a good earthquake here to call people to repentance. Sometimes I feel like we need that here.

This elder next to me was telling me an elder from Hawaii who got called to Oakland and who's patriarchal blessing said he would get called to a city where even angels are afraid to walk hahaha. So that makes me feel pretty hardcore. Fortunately, I'm over in Union City/Hayward/Fremont where I'm sure some of the more courageous angels would endeavor to take a stroll.

In any case, that sounds like a pretty golden investigator that those sisters have. We have a couple who are pretty golden as well... and also some who need a bit more work... However, we had a great week this week. I have never taught so many lessons! We taught a total of 15. We also added 3 new investigators even though we didn't spend a whole lot of time doing traditional finding like street contacting or tracting or that kind of thing. It was really great.

We also added 2 baptismal dates that were immediately dropped on Sunday. 1 because she urgently needs to return to China and may not be coming back which was really too bad because she is really prepared to accept the Gospel. Another because he didn't come to church along with his wife who is one of our more stable investigators, Linda Xu. Really frustrating that the two of them seem so flaky. Something that really bugs me is people who profess to have a very strong faith in Christ but then don't keep the commandments. It seems so hypocritical. But then I suppose I can't say that I'm perfect either and so I shouldn't judge them so harshly. It is frustrating however and we'll definitely strive harder to help them shape up.

Things are actually going really well with Elder Lin as my new companion. He's really motivated to improve and be very diligent which is wonderful and we're getting along very well. I'm also learning a lot about how to be a more effective zone leader since Elder Lin is very organized and planned out. Also, we only speak Chinese one with another which is a very pleasant surprise. I didn't even need to say anything, that's just the way things are going. I think Elder Lin wants to improve his Mandarin as well and he does actually speak it pretty well. I think probably the best out of all the Hong Kong elders in the mission. That was Elder Luo's analysis anyway.
That sounds like a pretty lame anticlimactic hurricane experience. I heard they had an earthquake here on like Tuesday night but I must have slept through it cause I didn't feel anything. Also I've only heard one person talking about it so maybe there wasn't one...

Yes dad I did get that dictionary which is really good! In fact it's sitting by my side as I write. Thanks!

Anyways, Elder Lin's done with his email so I'd better wrap up. Plus we gotta go play some piano. We're teaching a lesson today to a sister who is getting baptized on Saturday, Sister Sun! She's pretty golden. She's actually been baptized before into a church in China but we explained authority and she was like "oh ok I'll get baptized again I suppose." Haha. She's actually here on vacation visiting her son and so we're helping her get baptized and then sending her back haha. We are kind of pressed for time to finish teaching her though so we scheduled an appointment this afternoon so we can get everything taught in time for Saturday.

In any case, love you! Thanks for your emails and support! Have a great week!

-Ian

One Year Older and Wiser

Herrrowww!

Yes I am 20 now. So I am no longer a teenager. It doesn't feel all that different. However I might be a little more brief in this email since we have to go back for Elder Luo to pack.

Why pack you ask? Well I'm glad you inquired. He's going to SUNSET! Chinese speaking still!!! It was pretty funny since we were joking about him getting sent there and now he actually is. Not that Sunset is super horrible... but it is cold, and dark, and members don't really like the missionaries that much over there... and there is hardly anyone to teach... However I'm sure he can turn it around. My new companion will be an elder from Hong Kong named Elder Lin. He's actually coming over from the English program as a zone leader in San Francisco West zone. I've heard he's super super obedient and doesn't like to speak Chinese with white people so I might be speaking a lot of English in the next 2 transfers before Elder Lin heads back to Hong Kong. In any case, I'm sure there's a lot of things I can learn from Elder Lin.

We had a pretty excellent week this week. I really feel like we were able to find a lot of the elect in this area. We found a very golden investigator in our English class this past week who actually approached me and asked, "How can I develop a faith in Christ?" So we immediately met with him once class was over and started to teach him. We gave him a Book of Mormon on Thursday and by Sunday morning when he came to church he had finished 1st and 2nd Nephi. Pretty crazy. I don't think I've ever had an investigator who has had such an excitement for reading the scriptures. He owns a restaraunt in Fremont and is pretty busy but is really humble and willing to learn about and follow Christ.

We also went to the Visitor's Center with one of our investigators Linda Xu who is coming along really well. She loved the visitor's center and it was almost magical the way the Spirit worked upon her since out of the blue she mentioned the Word of Wisdom which is a commandment she had previously said she wouldn't be able to accept. She was like "I think I can live it now." It was pretty great. The only concern that she has is she doesn't really like coming to church because she can't understand English and doesn't really like listening to the translation. So she's planning on going to the Oakland branch this coming Sunday to check it out which is something that we discouraged because we'd love her to get integrated into the group here but she's not to be dissuaded. Which is kind of strange because she has been developing some relationships in the Ward here. However, we're still working with her to help her resolve any other concerns and continue building her faith in the Book of Mormon.

Anyways, I've gotta go email the rest of the kiddos. Meaning michelle and Joel.... but anyways, thanks for your letters! That sounds pretty exciting about the basketball game dad. Did you look it up on Youtube? Cause that sounds pretty funny haha. Also since you were able to chew out the Chinese DCM which is always fun.

My birthday wasn't anything too fantastic although I did really enjoy all of your presents. And despite what you think about the cookies not being fresh, they were actually really delicious. Also, the socks are very comfortable.

In any case, I love you! Have a great week!

Ian

If You Fail to Plan...You Plan to Fail...

Herrowwww!

Howsit? I have not yet received said cookies or said birthday box, but that's ok. I'm sure it's just a matter of time. With packages, they generally just leave them at the mission office till someone in the zone goes there for some reason and picks them up. We haven't had anyone go to the mission home for a while for any reason so we still haven't gotten any of the stuff there.

In any case, your trip to Philidelphia sounds pretty exciting. Despite the fact it wasn't planned very well. But that's ok. When you make plans, you lose spontaneity and romance and stuff. At least that's my motto. Except not really cause we plan everyday now and I guess I've been at least partially converted to it and my motto is no longer the opposite of dad's. Although I still have a lot of work to do before I actually master goal setting and planning etc. Although Elder Luo and I have been running every morning for the past 2 weeks and are going strong on week 3... so... I feel pretty accomplished about that. I've heard (from Julie Belnap and from no other source so I can't hardly be sure if it's true or not... I'm inclined to think not...) that to establish a new habit you have to keep it up for 3 weeks before it becomes solid. However, I've discovered that a large part of life is about doing challenging things that you may not really want to do but learning to love it. Or something like that.

We didn't have any investigators in Sacrament Meeting this week which was a bummer. Linda had to go to San Jose for some reason and then no one else who promised to show up did... However Linda really is our only investigator with a fair amount of promise. We went over to her (Sister Ye's) house yesterday and talked to her for awhile and set some good expectations of meeting 3 times a week and having daily contact which we think will really help her progress. She's just meeting quite a bit of opposition from friends who seem to mindlessly regale her with accusations of our church being a cult. (Can you use regale that way? Oh well I just did...). However, she does have a fair amount of promise. I do really like her though. She's really funny and has a weird twitch type thing when she blinks where she just crinkles up her whole face. Also her new husband (she married him! which is great cause it remove a barrier to her baptism) and her are always arguing, but in a kind of hilarious way where they're both randomly voicing their opinions and neither really listens to the other and then they start turning to us and explaining themselves as if we might have some solution or judgment of who's right and who's wrong. Pretty funny.

Our new member, brother Chen (who's also reallllllyyyyyy hilarious because he's always got this really funny grin on and his accent is ridiculous since he pronounces his Y's with an R sound like Ruan Lai and Mu Ru and is always saying really funny things) was like "wow I think you really have qing diao or like romance or something haha.

Anyway, it's funny that you mention the weather cause it's not hot or humid here either... although it was pretty hot yesterday... but for the most part it's kind of like paradise here.
Also, that's interesting that you came over to Marina Food the other day dad. Looks like I should've gone there proselyting. You probably saw our church then since it's right across the street from Marina Food. Pretty exciting. I guess that just means there won't be anything for me to take you to see when you come to pick me up at the end of my mission. Oh well. We can just go to the Oakland ghetto.

That's pretty crazy that Alicia's engaged right now. I can't imagine being engaged. She actually sent me a letter this week and mentioned she was going to go to California to meet her boyfriend's family which does sort of indicate a level of seriousness in the relationship, but little did I know the true extent of it. That's cool though, I'll have to write her back now I guess haha.
Congratulations on your passing the tour guide test thing mom! You're gonna be the best tour guide ever!

Also Brother Jiang has kind of fallen off the map just because he found a new job that works him 12 hours a day and hasn't had a day off yet... kind of frustrating because it's not as good as his last job was and now he has the original problem of not being able to come to church... sigh... I'm sure the Lord has a plan for him somehow I just hope he can get baptized sometime soon.

Thanks for your emairs! I love you! I'll miss you on my 20th birthday on the 20th of August, which sounds pretty auspicious although I'm sure it'll be much like any other day... oh well!

Love you!

-Ian

Things Are Lookin' Up

Herrow!!!

That's a sweet story about Sister G and her friends! I wish every member was like that! It'd be so great! I watched some video on lds.org that Elder Holland was speaking in where he said that nearly 1/10 of the population of Ulaan Baator are members of the church. Which pretty much blows my mind! Here's a link to it in fact: http://lds.org/church/news/elder-holland-instructs-mongolian-saints-missionaries?lang=eng&query=mongolia+ulaanbaatar.

This week was way better than last week. Our area seems a lot more stable now and kind of more organized in a sense. Also very seldom went to Marina Food, which has become a loathsome and dark place in my heart haha. I really agree with you mom that maybe we need to find a new foodmart... although that's pretty much the one that every Chinese person goes to in the whole area. It seems like people should be a little bit more willing to come to church etc since it's right across the street... sigh... oh well, Cal State is proving to be a pretty cool place to go. Kind of like this area's AAU a little bit. Although not quite as many Chinese people I think. We went there this week and found out that we do have permission to go and talk to people about the gospel without getting arrested or told to leave. Even though someone told Elder Luo to leave when we were on exchanges, but that clearly a belligerent anti-mormon possessed with a dark spirit of rebellion against God. Ok probably not, but now we can wave the rulebook in his face and be like "neener neener we're allowed!!!" And that's really what life's all about anyway haha.

Unfortunately, this comes as kind of a result of the fact we only have 3 really stable investigators. Which is better than none admittedly and it does make it pretty easy to keep up daily contact and plan really well for them. We found one new investigator at Cal State East Bay last week who seems really receptive and willing to believe in Christ which is great. She actually seems a lot like the students I used to work with in San Francisco who were studying at AAU. The only difference here is that it will be a lot easier to get her to come to church which is fantastic. She's only been in the States for about 1 or 2 months and is still studying in the ESL program up at Cal State. She was planning on coming to church this week but then had to prepare for a test that she is taking next week. Hopefully she will be able to come next week. We hope that seeing her a couple times next week will help her come around. We were able to set a baptismal date with her for this month though which is really cool. I just hope we'll be able to help her be prepared in time.

Our investigator who was coming along really well, Brother Jiang, isn't doing too great now just because he's still not willing to be baptized. After two lessons of just trying to resolve his concerns, he's still unwilling, so we decided to back off for now so we can help him prepare for a later date. He's also still out of work and is finding the job search pretty difficult due to his lack of a green card. He does have a fake work card but he said now that he believes in God, he doesn't feel right about using it to find work which I really respect and feel is pretty strong evidence of his faith. He's also still reading and praying and I really believe his faith is increasing. I just hope God can help him find work soon so he doesn't have to become homeless, which I hope is an experience he doesn't have to go through.

Our other investigator, Linda Xu, is actually a new move-in to the area from Toronto, Canada. It's crazy to see how the Lord has been preparing her to join the church. She first had contact with the church in Toronto and had a really good impression of the missionaries. After she moved here to meet her fiance for the first time who she met online, she was introduced to our English class by the neighbors of the people she and her fiance were staying with. Just this last week she moved houses and is now staying with members! Basically the biggest, if I didn't believe that God was involved which he almost certainly was, coincidence ever. So she is coming along pretty well. She seems pretty receptive to our message, despite the fact that she is living with her fiance which is going to be a problem probably since they're not really getting along very well and haven't really set a date for the wedding yet. But I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.Our recent converts in the chinese group here are really great though. Our most recent, Rachel, is doing very well and we went with her to do temple baptisms on Saturday which was really good. She had a good experience and then had us and the other Elders over to her house yesterday for dinner. We're going to have her come along to a lot more lessons now since she's on summer break.

Anyways, I'd better wrap up since Elder Luo is finally finished pretty early today. I guess now that he's done applying for school things are much quicker.

Thanks for your letters and your support! Thanks for being such awesome parents! Have a great week!

Love,

-Ian

Opposition in All Things

Well Helloooo!

I am in complete support of your bid to Istanbul. That would be awesome! Maybe they'll just give it to you for all those years of dedicated service to the govt that you've put in and stuff. And yeah that sounds about right about the dictionary. I'm pretty sure it is that concise one that you mentioned. Also in answer to your question mom, my Sunday wasn't that great... we got rejected a whole bunch at Marina Food and then no one came to church... so yeah, I've had better Sundays... but also worse... probably... We did however, have some random chinese guy show up at church on Sunday which was pretty cool and we're going to go teach him on Thursday... so... hooray! Also, in our combined 5th Sunday meeting, we had a talk by OUR bishop on that Being and Doing talk... man! It's like it was all coordinated or something!

Last week was both excellent and horrible. We had a Leadership training which was was great. I definitely learned a ton of things that I hadn't been doing very well and could improve on and I truly believe will help me to become a better missionary and better leader and trainer. I also went on a pretty good exchange with Elder Joseph in Hayward 4th, an Elder from New Zealand who's just pretty awesome. However, Saturday evening and Sunday were probably the most discouraging days of my mission so far.

However, for the sake of organization, let's start with the positive. Elder Joseph is a great missionary. We had a wonderful exchange and he is incredibly humble, diligent, and hardworking. He also knows Ryan King haha! Pretty crazy. He said Ryan used to go and help teach a mission prep class on Sunday mornings that he would attend and that he went tracting with him one time. So random but pretty cool.

His companion, named, Elder Kleopfer, has a fairly serious speech impediment, but is in no way letting that stand in the way of his becoming a successful missionary. Elder Joseph is also not letting it stand in the way of their companionship working in unity. By all reports, Elder Joseph does not dominate the companionship at all, but is patient and really gives Elder Kleopfer the opportunity to speak and participate in the companionship which is something I really admire and I feel like is something that I'd have a lot of trouble with if I was his companion.

On another note, people are being really really mean lately. I don't know why, but people here are really causing me to feel a lot of frustration. Which is weird cause I faced about the same amount, if not more rejection in San Francisco while I was street contacting, but, I don't know, it just gets on my nerves so much more here for some reason. Possibly because the places where we can go here are rather more limited. We have spent a lot of time at Marina Food where there are loads of Chinese people, but a lot of them have seen us quite a bit and I'm really beginning to doubt the effectiveness of going there to find people to teach. Although to be fair, our investigator with a baptismal date, Brother Jiang, was found there so... not a total loss.

Speaking of which, it's almost ridiculous how much opposition there is to missionary work sometimes. And sometimes in places you hardly even expect. We met with Brother Jiang last night and he said he wants to wait to be baptized. After further investigation, it turns out his lawyer, who is going to help him apply for a green card, told him not to get baptized because, and I quote (roughly), believing in Christ is bringing him bad luck. This is of course, based on the fact that his boss fired him for wanting to come to church on Sunday and if God really was looking out for him, his boss would've said it would be ok to go late to work on Sundays or give him Sundays off. So, I'm no lawyer, but that hardly sounds like professional advice to me. Is that the kind of thing they're teaching in law school these days? I hope not. In any case, I really hope God helps him find work soon because his rent is due on the 5th and it seems as if he might not have the funds necessary to foot the bill. But I suppose he's got to get through this trial of his faith. I really hope he does. On the upside, he has pretty much completely quit smoking. He said he doesn't really even think about it anymore, which is pretty miraculous considering less than a month ago he smoked a pack a day, not to mention the fact that that was a 40 year old habit.

In any case, I was feeling pretty discouraged yesterday just because it seems like we've talked to everyone who speaks Chinese in this whole city and they all hate us (judging from the Marina Food representative sample), which I know is not the case, but sometimes it really feels like it. But I guess I can't give in to frustration and rejection etc etc and keep thinking of new ways to find the elect, since we really don't have that many investigators right now...

Anyways, thanks for your emairs and support! I got your postcard mom. Thank you! Love you!

-Ian

Two New Investigators

Hellow!

Howsit going? Sounds like it's going pretty well. Although I'm sorry you have to be back in Washington Humid Town. The weather is very splendid here to say the least. Like, really really nice. About every day. It hardly seems fair to the rest of the world to have such nice weather here. Especially since I've heard that the rest of the US is going through a pretty bad heat wave...

In other news, Brother Jiang is doing fanstastic. He has quit smoking altogether for about a week now, and after we taught him about keeping the Sabbath Day holy, quit his job so he can come to church. It really is amazing how strong his faith has become in such a short time of teahing him and Elder Luo and I can just see how he has been prepared by the hand of the Lord to receive the restored gospel. We are also trying to help him find a job and also find someone that can help him obtain a green card or some kind of legal status since he's been here for about 9 years illegally which is a bit of a barrier to his finding work easily. However, we visited with the branch president of the spanish branch here, President Deleon and he seemed optimistic that we could find help for Brother Jiang, since he said it's easier for Chinese people to get legal status than for people from south or central America, which is what he is more familiar with. Anyway, we're going back to see President Deleon tomorrow night and he says he will prepare some more information for us. I'm confident that God will bless Brother Jiang for his faith.

We also found a very promising new investigator through English class on Saturday. She just moved here from Toronto about 12 days ago where she had also had contact with the missionaries. She seems to have a very good impression of our church and even came to 2 hours of church on Sunday which was great. Unfortunately, her fiance, who seemed fairly receptive when we taught them, was unwilling to come to church for some reason we have yet to discover. However, we are confident that we will be able to unearth any concerns and will do our best to resolve them.Our zone focus this week is finding new investigators, which I think is also something that Elder Luo and I need to work on because although we are finding quite a few new investigators, a lot of them don't really seem to have much potential to progress. We also have a leadership conference this week which is cool. I'm excited to find ways that I can personally improve and help the rest of the zone to become more successful.

You could buy me some music to play... except I already have quite a bit of music... more than I have time to play anyway... You could get me some... socks? I don't know... It's tough to think of anything that I desperately want. I do want some Chinese study materials... like a dictionary. OH yeah! Elder Reed had a sweet dictionary called like the "Tuttle" something dictionary. For some Chinese proficiency test used in China called the like HSK or something like that... In any case, if you can find that dictionary based on the very detailed description I just gave of it, I would like that so I could have something to find common useful words to memorize....

In any case, I'd better go and let this sister sitting behind me get on the computer I'm using. That'd be cool if you moved to either Taiwan or Vietnam dad. I'd be supportive of either decision. Although Vietnam would be more fun...

Anyways, love you guys!

Thanks for your love and support. Have a great week!

-Elder Christensen

Sowing, Daily Sowing

Helloooooo!

Sorry I missed the reunion. Also sorry that Jarom has amnesia now... isn't that what usually happens when people get hit on the head by falling trees? That's what I seem to have learned from the movies...

Elder Luo and I had kind of a rough week last week. We did, however, find a new investigator with a lot of promise who we set a baptismal date with. A 68-year old man from ShangHai named Brother Jiang. He has, as far as I can see, one tooth left which I believe is likely due to the hard life he has led as a smoker, and likely devoid of any semblance of dental hygene. However, he is very humble and willing to believe in our message. Brother Jiang is kind of a refugee from China. He has been here for 9 years, previous to which he was something of a political victim of the Communist Party for years and years during which he was incarcerated twice for special brainwashing programs. One of them lasted two years, which is something I can hardly begin to imagine. I am deeply grateful to the Lord for placing him in our path and allowing him an opportunity to accept the gospel. It seems like those brainwashing programs aren't very effective though to be honest since he still seems radically opposed to communism, although he wishes he could go back to China to be with his family who lives there and it wasn't really his own choice to come to America since he wouldn't have without being persecuted so much by the goverment there. He rather miraculously made it to church yesterday too. He was telling us that he wasn't going to be able to make it because he works Sundays and his work starts at 9:30 so there was no way he would be able to have time. He was also not very willing to talk to his boss to get his hours changed since he just started this work and doesn't want to lose it. However, his boss called and told him he was going to be opening the restaurant late on Sunday which allowed him time to come to church. So you can imagine our surprise when we arrived at Sacrament meeting (late, since our stake correlation meeting went a little long... first time I've been late to church as a missionary...), and there was Brother Jiang sitting in the congregation. It was pretty great.

And aside from him, we don't really have any other investigators... which is kind of sad. Although we do still have some other investigators since we found 3 last week, but one of them has already kind of dropped us and the other is really busy. One of our investigators went to scout camp this week and the of the others, which compose the Pei family, the kids went back to China and the mother and father have friends in town from China and so they are going out of town with them for much of the next month.

So basically, our teaching pool is running rather dry. Elder Luo and I spent a lot of time finding yesterday, with disappointingly little success... we hope to be able to change that this next week... since we will have a lot of time to find. We are doing our best to work through referrals since that is clearly the best way to find, but haven't had any yet, and are running out of members to visit and ask for referrals from, which I suppose is the downside to a small Chinese group with only about 15 members at best.

In any case, to be perfectly honest, my gospel study is going rather horribly lately. I am so tired in the morning and while I hardly ever fall asleep during my study time, I find it almost impossibly difficult to focus. I definitely need more focus in my study just because if I don't have anything in particular that I'm studying for or focusing on, it seems rather impossible to remember anything or receive any kind of revelation, which is something I feel fairly lacking in lately. But I suppose that's the way it goes sometimes. I'm going to stive to improve my study next week hopefully through improving exercise in the morning as well as planning study around the lessons we are scheduled to teach that day. Anyways, I don't have a whole lot of time to keep writing. Plus I need to write Aunt Cammie back since she wrote me a couple weeks ago and I haven't gotten back to her yet.

But thanks for you emals! And encouragement. Yesterday was pretty lame... but I'm sure we'll find some people this week... we just gotta! Hua hua hua! Also I did read that talk by McConkie. Just cause it was in an Ensign that I was reading the other day. Pretty good. And yes, Marina Food is very unimpressive. But we mostly stand outside the doors and contact people... I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be too happy with us going in and contacting in the noodle aisle... etc...

Anyways, love you!

Thanks for being awesome parents!

-Ian

Happy 4th of July!

Herrrowww!!!

Happy 4th of July!

Hope the Culdesac of Fire is as spectacular as ever. Especially with all the new illegal, legalized fireworks... why would they even bother changing a law like that? That's pretty cool you got to see the fireworks display from the plane though mom. We only got to listen to it last night going to sleep... although I'm sure there will be more tonight. It's actually been super hot here lately... yesterday was pretty darn hot and we spent a couple of hours contacting out in front of Marina Food... and only found 1 person we were able to set an appointment up with...

We had a rather interesting week last week. First off, Rachel Luo got baptised last night which was wonderful. Her baptism went really well and was a good experience for everyone that went. She seemed really happy about it and shared a powerful testimony at the end of her baptismal service. I think she will definitely be a great addition to the Chinese group here. She had a great deal of family attend her baptismal service to support her as well which was great. Her aunt who I taught in San Francisco, two of her cousins and her cousin's boyfriend as well as her grandmother all attended the service and seemed to enjoy it. We hope to be able to have an opportunity to teach them since they are all really nice people but it's rather difficult since her aunt works in San Francisco during the week and only comes back here on Sunday night and doesn't really have any time to come to church and I think her cousin lives near Stanford somewhere so if we do get the chance to teach her, we would have to refer her over to the elders in San Jose.

Unfortunately, our other investigator, Sister Yu, lost her baptismal date and it is rather unlikely that we will get another chance to teach her because we left her the Restoration DVD to watch and her husband, who evidently is a devout Catholic which we thought wouldn't be a problem, got extremely angry after they watched it and told her she couldn't meet with us/come to church anymore. Pretty disheartening. Especially since we don't really have a lot of other investigators with the potential she had.... and to be honest... don't really have ANY other investigators... except for a couple ones with next to no desire to meet with us... SO....We are going to focus a lot more on finding this week.

We only found 1 investigator last week and she doesn't seem all that keen on progressing in the gospel. However, she is really funny since she's one of our English class students and is 80 years old hahahaI don't know what it is about Elder Luo and I and insisting on teaching octagenarians. In any case, people that old aren't generally too keen on change... although I do really like her personality haha.

Anyways, I'd better go... but thanks so much for your emairrs! And support etc! Hope you have a great week!

Love, Elder Christensen

P.S. I guess maybe just some chiense study materials for my birthday but I also talked to Joel already about that... not that I really expect him to come through any time soon since.. he's joel... JK!!! Except I can't really blame him since the post office is always rather far away... like this thing I haven't emailed to michelle yet for her birthday... however... I also don't have her address..

Progress

Hai! Howsit? Happy 30th anniversary! It sounds like it went pretty well! And why Croatia? That seems so random haha. But cool in any case. Why not San Francisco though?!?! Actually, nevermind, I'd go to Croatia too.

Our investigators are all doing fairly well. We added a couple of really good investigators last week from our English class and set a baptismal date with one of them who is very ready to accept the Gospel. Our investigator who is scheduled to be baptized this weekend, Rachel Luo is doing really well. She is incredibly solid and is very excited for her baptism. Hopefully her whole family will be able to attend and support her including her aunt who I taught in San Francisco. We still are running into the same problem I mentioned last week with investigators not being too willing to progress but we're continuing to work with them to help them build faith and gradually develp greater desire to follow Jesus Christ. However, we did have 7 investigators at church on Sunday which is the most I have ever seen come to church since being a missionary. Pretty amazing. Also, we had another man who took a bus to get to church and randomly showed up, but we weren't able to count him because he lives in the San Jose mission and we didn't have a chance to start teaching him anyway. However, we're going to get him referred over to the elders serving in Newark so he can start attending church over there with his wife who he expressed was also interested in converting.

We had a talk given by a sister originally from ShenYang but who's been in America for more than 20 years which was really good on small and simple things bringing great things to pass. Elder Luo said he almost didn't change anything in the translation, which is different from usual where he kind of just loosly follows the talk and kind of reads a lot of the Ensign and sometimes makes up his own stuff haha. He said his translation made one of his investigators almost cry one week before I got here because she was really moved and he said he felt really guilty hahaha. Pretty funny.

We went over to Rachel's house yesterday and taught her the 10 commandments and some other commandments and it was really awesome cause her aunt was there who always makes me laugh my head off just cause she's always like super hilarious and smiling and stuff. I love Sister Luo. So funny. Anyways, she gave us all this really gross food to take home with us which we didn't know was gross at the time but ended up being like this really really stale/moldy bread and these canned foods with suspicious looking labels... haha. Also she gave us this random guzheng music CD that her daughter Candice (the one with like 2 masters and I have like 6 of her business cards that her mom keeps giving us) recorded in 2005. It's not very good but it's fun to listen to just cause it makes us feel super chinese riding around listening to guzheng music haha.Our recent converts are very strong. I really love the retention in this ward. I think it's great that we have the strength of the English ward but also a rather unified chinese group. Our recent converts all seem to have very solid testimonies and we managed to get one of our recent converts to church who hadn't been in more than a month.

Yeah it seems like there are always connections that you find in the church. Like the kwoks in the ward here who I guess used to live in Beijing and know the Torontos et al. Pretty random. Plus there's this one recent convert from Taiwan who grew up in Dubai and went to an international school and so it seems like we have kind of a connection there.

Anyways, I'd better go. Elder Luo is applying for BYU provo since he'd rather go there than BYU Hawaii when he gets home.

But in any case, thanks for your emairrsss! I love you!

-Elder Christensen

P.S. I'd be cool with Taiwan or Vietnam. They both sound like pretty good options. Vietnam would be more fun though...