I am glad you enjoyed hearing about my temple experience. It was great. I don't know if I told you, but the mission president just made a new rule. We can now go to the temple to do Baptisms for the Dead with Recent Converts once a transfer, so I should be able to go back pretty soon. I am very excited for the new change. As for the glasses, I bought them in Jamaica. I have always thought glasses were cool, and I found some plastic lensed ones for like $2, so I couldn't pass them up. I wear them for special occasions, to look smart. Haha.
I have not met with Brenda yet, hopefully this week. I will let you know in the next email.
Again, I am really sorry about the whole Bible thing. The new one should have came out last Monday, so it should be available and everything. I have actually held one already, that the Branch President had. I sent the number and everything in an email last week. I will send it again if I can. I have already thought about giving the bible to someone. Maybe just keep it though, I still really like it.
Ok, so now that that is all done with, the real big news. As I told you transfers were this week, and you'll never guess what happened. Ok, now that you are all excited, nothing crazy happened. LIke I told you, I am staying in Lynbrook, which I am excited about. i really like it here, though I do really miss the city and all it entails. But I am excited to be here. So it is just a new companion this time around. His name is Elder Alverson. He is from Mesa, Arizona. He has been out 6 weeks less than I have. We are already getting along incredibly well. I am really excited for it. I hope, and he has already told me, that we stay together for two transfers. It would be really awesome. So we are doing great. He is a jock, so we enjoy talking about basketball and such. But yeah, i am really excited for this companionship, we will do great.
The work is going well. Things are really picking up. We have made some awesome plans and we have some awesome goals for this transfer. We are going to be working really hard, but enjoying ourselves while we do it. That really is the key. Missionaries that are not enjoying themselves are never successful, regardless of how hard they work. But we have a few really good people we are working with, and a few potentials. We are also trying to work with the members a lot, and get them to get excited about missionary work. If you have any ideas on how to get them excited, let me know.
Man, missionary work is so awesome.
It sounds like everyone is doing pretty well. That is always nice to hear. On the Lilo situation, is there any way that you can have it amputated, and get like a wheel or something. I know that sounds weird, but I think I have seen it before. It might be cheaper, and then with the wheel leg, it would lower the risk of tearing the other tendon. It was just a thought I had a few nights ago when I couldn't sleep. I was just thinking that having the surgery and fixing it, it might be a pretty big risk of just tairing it again anyways.
Well, as you can see I am doing great. I don't really have any complaints right now at all, other than that I am tired a lot. Haha.
I think I will include a picture of a new game I have learned on the mission. It is called Xiangqi, or Chinese Chess. I learned how to play it when I was back in China Town, and have got a hold of board and started playing with my companions in the night before we go to bed. It is way fun, and I am excited to bring stuff like this home and show everyone. It just shows how true and awesome it is that I am surrounded by so many different cultures. I get to learn a little bit about everyone.
We should be going to the temple to do baptisms within the next few weeks, so I am very excited. I didn't even get to go to the font last time, so I have never even seen it, so it will be really exciting to go, and perform a few baptisms. I am stoked.
I have been tempted to save up a few pennies every month, and buy a nice pair of glasses instead of the plastic ones I have. They work fine, but they coudl be easily broken, but I don't know. I don't know if I can really justify buying glasses for a lot of money, when I don't really wear them. But we will see. But yes, I am a dork.
Things are still going awesome with my companion. We get along super well. It is really nice. He is really into the Chinese Chess too, so we play that when we get a bit when we are at home before we go to bed. I don't know a lot about his home life so far. Just bits and pieces. I know he has brothers, four, two of which served missions. He has step brothers and sisters, and his dad passed away when he was like 13. He lived basically just with his mom from 13 until now. BUt other than that I don't know the details. He does really like it warm. Him and you would probably get along pretty well. Haha. But he is super cool and a great missionairy.
I really don't know what to say in a few paragraphs. I will try to come up with something and send it in another email.
The weather is starting to cool down a little bit. Speaking of which, if I was to buy a few sweaters at the store with my card, would you cover it? That woudl be great. I have one sweater I bought last year, but a couple more would be awesome.
Oh yeah, I learned about Chinese Chess while I was serving in Flushing and Dyker Heights, those are the chinese areas, and I am realyl good friends with all of the Chinese Missionaries. So that is when I learned. I just got ahold of my own board this transfer, so we are having fun with it.
I am tired do to work, I am not getting sick, so I am good. You will be excited to hear, the mission is going to provide us with Flu Shots this year, so we don't have to pay for them or wait for a million years in lines. So I bet that makes you happy. I still haven't got with Brenda because we have been super busy, but this week shoudl be a little slower. Sorry. I think i am pretty good on supplies as for right now. Do you still need taht little box back? I knew I said I would send it forever ago, and I still haven't. I should be sending it this week, because I need to send some stuff home anyways.
Things going great though. I am really loving the branch that i am serving in, just some awesome members. A new family that just moved in from Chicago had us over for dinnner, cooked us baked potatoes and steaks, it was so good. They are a very stereotypical mormon family too, tons of kids, all love BYU, except one. It is really funny. It was kind of weird being at there house, because it was a totally different environment than what i have bene used to for the last year. But at home it would have felt totally normal.
Well, all is well in Lynbrook. I am looking forward to the fall, my favorite time of year. The only problem is in New York fal lasts about a week, and then it is winter. Haha. But it will be nice.
Ok, so sorry that I did not send an email a lot earlier, you were probably freaking out like i was dead or something, but MyLdsMail was down, I don't know why, and so we had to wait it out, and now it is up, so I am emailing you now.
Okay, so obviously the high light of my week was the temple. Oh my goodness, it was amazing. I want to go back so bad. But to answer your question, we just went through and did a session. We met at the mission office, then they gave us a little talk, gave those of us that needed metro cards cards and we were off. You hopped on one train, right outside the mission office, and then you transfered to another train at times square, and get off and Lincoln, and you walk outside the station and the temple is literally right there. You always hear that the temple is like a place to get out of the world, that is cut off from wordly things, but it is no more blatant anywhere else than the Manhattan temple. It is busy, noisy, all sorts of stuff, and you walk in through the first set of doors, and it is still noisy, then you walk through the second, and you are in the actual temple, it is completely gone. Amazing gone. You can not hear anything from outside. It is amazingly beautiful inside too. Very small, and very amazing. That Temple very quickly became one of my favorite, if not my favorite temple. The session was amazing. One of my really good friends on the mission was there too, so that was awesome. After the session we went outside, took a few pictures, and got back on the train. It depends on who you go with, some missionaries go on a brief walk through Central Park, but we didn't get to. Oh well. The city is crazy. Even though I was in it for like 15 minutes total, you can just feel the difference. It is way different than Queens or Brooklyn. I get the appeal of it now. It almost felt cool. But yeah, so it was amazing. I can't wait until I get to go back. I will include a few pictures, and I will send some more in the coming weeks.
Okay, well I don't have much more time to write, but also tomorrow is transfers. I will be staying in Lynbrook and getting a new companion, and my comp will be leaving. He is going Zone Leader in a different Zone. And from the rumors, my new companion will be older than me (mission wise is what I mean) so we will wait and find out tomorrow, and I will let you know next week I guess.
Other than that everything seems to be going well. I love you all very much. I will talk to you next week.
The landlord is not up to my discretion to teach. That is the other Elders area, we have mentioned to them to talk to her, but it is not up to us. We aren't allowed to teach people outside our area. So we'll see.
I wear most of the ties. Some of them are pretty old and kind of falling apart, so I don't wear them as much just so they don't fall apart.
It sounds like everyone is doing pretty well. That is good. I hope that you enjoyed your trip. I bet that was fun. I am jealous.
This week was about the same as the last week. It went by pretty fast, but it was also really slow as far as work goes. Almost all of our investigators were out of town, so we obviously couldn't meet with them, so that is kind of frustrating, so we did a lot of finding. A lot of knocking doors and such. It's not the most fun, but I guess it is what happens. We also had tons of appointments that we had with liek recent converts and such cancel on us, almost all of them. But this next week should be pretty good. We already have quite a few set appointments with a bunch of people, and our investigators should be back in town, so that is exciting.
I don't even know if I have told you let, but I get to go the temple this Wednesday. I am so excited. It will be great. It has been so long since i have been. I really miss it. It is a really big group going. They had to combine the missionaries at there half way mark and the missionaries that are at there 2 year mark because the temple was closed when we usually do the year mark trip, so there will be like 29 missionaries going and then President and Sister Nelson will be going with us, because they always go with the departing missionaries. But it will be really fun. I am really excited.
Well, I think that is about it for me. We have a Labor Day BBQ today, that is district wide, so it will be most of Long Island, so that should be really fun. I love you all, I will talk to you next week.
