4 weeks now.  The time is all kind of starting to blur into one now, so you'll all have to excuse me if I forget a few things.  So this week has been good, we've been really busy again.  Lots of Mandarin.  We have a new teacher, Wu Lao Shi, which also means a new investigator.  Xiao Lao shi was reassigned as a language rater, so she's not with our district anymore, which is kind of sad because I thought her class was the most fun one of them all.  Oh well.  

On Tuesday for our devotional we had M. Russell Ballard come to the MTC, which was pretty awesome.  He said he just wanted to talk to us like a grandfather, which was pretty accurate...  And it was a great devotional.

The language is still hard, I feel sometimes like I'm not progressing as well as I would like because I'm able to get by with what I used to know from before, but I'm still working on it.  One issue for me is my companions.  One really doesn't like to prepare until we are about 10-15 minutes out from teaching, which just bugs me.  We were walking to TRC, Teaching Resource Center, Saturday, and that was when he wanted to decide what we were going to say.  And I just let him know that we had already had our time to prepare, that it was come and passed as he slept or did other things.  Oh well, I'm senior companion this week, and he's the district leader now, so he won't be the senior companion for three weeks.  So I guess I can exert a little control over how we prepare now.

Anyway, its great here.  I love getting mail!  Dear Elders are awesome.  Talk to you all next week.  

Elder Samuel Smith and T.J. Ethington
Buddies in China, now at the MTC together!