Week Four

Here I am back with another P-Day email! Just a quick note before we get into things: I’m going to start putting a TL;DR at the bottom of these for those who don’t want to read long emails but still want a taste of what’s going on. 

Here we go:

The temple is closed for cleaning this next month so we all suddenly have a lot more time for emailing which is nice. Hopefully it will open up early enough in August for us to go one more time before heading out. 

This week was one of those weeks where you are so busy it almost feels like you never did anything. The week started out pretty standard although there were still a lot of Apostles walking around Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday, my companions and I walked passed T3 (one of the new teaching buildings) right as Elder Gong and his wife walked out. He waved to us and we waved back but right as we walked away we realized we should have said something in Chinese and they might have stopped to chat for a second. Especially seeing as two of us are going to Taiwan Taipei, the mission he was mission president over. (Also we are pretty sure both he and his wife served there as regular missionaries too) Anyways, That was a seriously missed opportunity! As we regretted our failure we walked right past Elder Rasband talking to a bunch of other missionaries which kind of rubbed salt in the wound!

On Wednesday my district was tasked with being hosts for the new missionaries coming in. It mostly consisted of making sure families dropped off their kids quickly and walking the new missionaries to check-in to their dorms. The main problem was that Wednesday was crazy hot. Or as we Chinese Missionaries would say “Feīcháng Rè!” I hosted this one elder who was limping on the way to the dorms and I asked him if he hurt his ankle or something while checking in. He said no, he just has a broken leg. This kid literally had surgery 4 weeks ago after a rope swing gave out on him and he sustained major leg damage. We are talking bone sticking out kind of damage! After that I felt I had to carry his bags to make sure his leg didn’t give out, but this kid lived on the top floor of his resident hall and there are no elevators. So I’m trying to carry these two giant bags while this new elder limps behind me. I know I don’t have the strongest arms in the world but I think those bags had to have been breaking the 50 lb limit!

The same Wednesday our 14 new elders and 5 new sisters arrived as well. It’s crazy because our Zone just tripled in size and none of us older missionaries feel like we have the experience necessary to be in charge. Every new missionary is stressing out and we just have to keep telling them, “Yes the first few days are really hard, but it gets better.” The older missionaries and I are also a little stressed  because a few of the new Elders have a lot of Chinese experience and the rest are catching up quick. We are hoping they don’t get better than us too quickly!

Yesterday was our first Fast Sunday at the MTC and let me tell you and I don’t think I have ever fasted to such a complete degree. It helps when they don’t actually make breakfast or lunch and keep you so busy there would be no time to eat, but it wasn’t too bad. As long as we were doing something relatively engaging and feeling the spirit it took my mind off of food. Everyone’s main complaint was dinner when they served Chicken Cordon Blue which is literally the worse possible thing they could have served. By some miracle there were ribs in the left overs line and honestly the line for the ribs was usually longer than the normal line. Why they didn’t do ribs as the normal dinner is beyond me. 

Beginning of summer sounds crazy as always. Hope it all goes well with Girls camp. Hopefully Kimball will also remember to take pictures in Thailand!

Being Zone Leader hasn't been too much so far. I am still in a trio which nicely spreads out the work load. My main job so far has been to be the designated carrier of the Zone leader cell phone which is not as exciting as it sounds. We can only call the information desk and so far we really haven’t had to use it much. Saturday night we had to interview the district leaders after they finished interviewing their districts. Everyone is doing more or less alright but we three had a quick brainstorming session with each other and then with the Sister
Training Leaders (who are, funny enough, also a trio) on how we can helpthe Zone and a few individuals. It’s kind of nice to feel like we can make a difference in the lives of those in the Zone.

The spirit has been strong as always this week. We watched a filmed talk by Elder Holland on Tuesday where he talked about making sure we give all of our time and effort on our mission to The Lord, and allow Him to change our life through our missions. Elder Holland shared a quick poem that I can’t remember word for word but it went something like this:

He told us to go to the edge

We said No we’ll fall

He told us to go to the edge

We said No we’ll fall

He told us to go to the edge

We said No we’ll fall

He said Go To The Edge!

We went 

He pushed us

And we flew

If we let Him, The Lord will help us fly.

Elder Neilson

TL:DR: My companions and I missed a golden opportunity to talk with Elder Gong. I had to host an Elder with a broken leg on one of the hottest days of my MTC life. The 19 new missionaries in our Zone came in on Wednesday and some of them are better than us 4 week old missionaries at Chinese. And on Sunday the MTC fed us the worst possible diner on Fast Sunday. 

 Unfortunately in all the commotion this week none of us took any pictures. I can however supply a photo of our Bob Ross bust that was handed down to us from the previous generation. It got us extra points on this week’s room check: