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...