In the Zone...Leader

Hey Mom and dad! Howsit?!

That's too bad you can't go to Ukraine mom... Luggage handlers are pretty important... What is Michelle thinking going without one!?!... Although I wouldn't probably recommend you... considering the San Francisco fiasco of the past couple days :D. It was good to hear from you though on that day that that airplane flew by and I heard your silent voice saying hi and stuff.

So in other news, I'm being made Zone Leader in Hayward which is exciting I suppose. I actually am pretty excited to go there since I'm gonna be companions with.... ELDER LUO AGAIN!!! Hahaha. Pretty funny. Elder Luo is the man though so it'll be really fun... I just hope I don't fall into trainee mode again after being three transfers of senior companion in charge man. Point is, I've heard there are like no GuangDong people and lots of Northerners there which is really exciting cause, not that I'm racist or anything, but I'm really tired of GuangDong people saying things to me such as "M SAAEEEK! MOU HENK CHOIIIII!!! SEEEN FAT GAOUUU!!!" And people who speak mandarin are just much easier to communicate with and generally much more receptive. Although my Cantonese was coming along pretty well here... not that it was that useful since I could only really contact in Cantonese but... still... pretty funny language.

Had a fairly disappointing week this week... but I think that's just because of how successful the week before was since we still had more lessons than we have had all the weeks this transfer except for last week so I can't complain too much. We did have quite a few lessons fall through this week though which was rather annoying but I guess that's to be expected in missionary work. Although something I've decided to start doing more of is just letting our investigators and those we set up appointments with really have a concept of the value of our time so they don't think they can just not come to our appointments whenever they want. So I guess we'll see how that works out. In any case, we had a disappointing week with regards to our investigator sister Meng. She seems to be encountering a lot of opposition that's really testing her testimony. Which I suppose is good to have before the baptism rather than after but is really frustrating in any case. We're not entirely sure as to the exact nature of the concerns but there are definitely a lot there. Unfortunately we were only able to meet with her once this week since she got really busy all of a sudden but I hope that Elder Lee and Elder Ho will be able to keep working with her in helping her progress towards baptism. And perhaps give her a little more time and not rush her into something she feels unprepared for... which is tough for me to do since I'm generally rather impatient with people who want to put off baptism but I think is probably necessary in her case.

Our other investigator with a baptismal date, Sister Luo, is doing very well. Despite the fact she is 68 years old, she is in excellent shape and has a really active mind. We ran into her as we were running around the lake the other day and she seemed to be running faster than we were haha. She is building stronger and stronger faith and although she mentioned some concerns about her baptism this sunday being too soon, I think they are fairly easily resolvable.

We've had to drop a few investigators this week as well just because they aren't very willing to meet with us again which is always frustrating but rather necessary and probably is a signal to me that I need to improve my teaching skills to really get them more engaged. Although sometimes it really is kind of out of our hands since we had an excellent lesson the other day with these two high school students and they have since stood us up and ignored our phone calls so... guess you never know.

On another note, we had a pretty hilarious church meeting yesterday. First off, in sacrament meeting we had this Cantonese speaker give a talk which nobody understood and then there was this return missionary from Dallas Texas who's dad had remarried a ShangHai lady so he was in the Chinese branch giving a kind of homecoming address. I translated for his talk which went pretty well on the translation part (I defnitely have seen the Lord's help in my learning Chinese here, kind of Shenqi actually...) but the talk was just really hilarious. He was talking about charity and shared this hilarious story about how one time he got 60 dollars from home for Christmas and then took his district to lunch at a buffet. And then told the waitress he didn't want his friends to know it was him paying but they found out anyways but it was ok cause he still felt good about it. And through doing this, he learned a valuable lesson about charity. Pretty funny. Then we had this combined relief society/Priesthood meeting for the third hour in which we had a couple from the stake that came and talked to us about the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous which the church has adopted and how it's basically a cure-all for everything. Just such a random meeting that seemed like it would've been more in place at a workshop or something.

Whatever the case, yes I did get that stuff in the mail and thanks for reminding me cause I should probably send that shuffle back to you today I guess. We're going out to eat at this really great ice cream place in Piedmont with the senior couple who is in our district, the Mayos. They are awesome. Don't know if I've told you about them yet but I think I could probably spend paragraphs trying to describe them and still not do them justice.

Alright, well I hope you get the pirate crisis worked out there dad. Sounds pretty HAIRY!

Thanks for your letters!

I love you!

-Ian