I'm getting used to this hot weather. Walking outside is
actually kind of fun because we get to talk to a lot of people. When I
knock on doors, I vary my knocks now, to not sound to intimidating. The
things you learn…
Apparently this area, Riverside, is (was) the most baptizing
mission in North America. Now it's a close second to somewhere like Hawaii
– interesting. People here in California are a lot nicer than back east.
By nice I mean they won't necessarily turn you down as much, even when
they don't want to actually meet with you. Sometimes I think I'm home in
Shanghai when I watch drivers on the road, they're crazy, feels like home! But
when we drive back home (we're on a hill) we can overlook the city and it's
beautiful, lots of lights.
It's weird, because we have a phone, it's an old flip phone
but it has a full keyboard and touch screen... Feels weird in my pocket! We
actually use it a lot, to call people and schedule meetings.
We went to a Japanese restaurant a couple weeks ago, and I
forgot about this in my past emails, but they saw we were missionaries.
They're Korean which was interesting, but they gave us food on the house
because they were Christian as well. Very nice people, we left them with
a Book of Mormon.
Being back in the states gives me the opportunity to learn
new phrases, like "kick rocks". It's nice! (learning the
phrases). But yeah, kick rocks doesn't mean come in and have a glass of water.
Other people are really nice though. They still offer us bottles of water
when we talk to them. We meet a lot of people by just walking up to them
in their driveways. People here love to just hang out in their garage
with the door open.
For part of my Chinese study, I memorize vocab, but I also
try to read from a Chinese Book of Mormon. I can actually read like 70%
of it, which is fun – learning fast though. I'm excited to start teaching
Chinese people (whenever that might be).
We have dinner pretty much every day at a member's house.
One of the nights this past week, we went to a Samoan family's house for
dinner and it was a feast... we ate so much (I thought I went to Yi Cafe [our
favorite buffet in Shanghai]). I was going to burst. They cooked a pig.
There's a lot of planning we do daily to figure out our
days. We try to plan for whoever we're going to see. One of the
highlights of my week (aside from Riverside World Cup every Monday) was meeting
this couple. They were talking about getting married when we talked to them
in their garage. When we sat down with them, I got a really strong
impression to tell them that they could be sealed together for time and all
eternity in our church (temples to be more precise). Don't know why I
said that, but hopefully it left an impression on them. We'll hopefully
continue to meet with them.
We had a multi-zone conference with lots of missionaries.
They talked about planning and having members at all of our lessons.
Lots of commitments to keep going forward but it should help us be more
effective. I'm really getting into the groove of missionary work. It's
coming easier to me now.
My eggs finally cooking right
My zone of missionaries
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