Christmas Draws Near

Elder Liu and the paper Christmas tree. Also, the maps of their area and the Chinese members that T.J. charted out while Elder Liu was ill a few weeks ago.

First Apartment with T.J.'s desk. It is neater than his desk was at home-progress!

So this week, while a little warmer, made things a little more dangerous.  As the snow melts, and ice forms, more and more missionaries are slipping.  As long as I don't slip I'm ok. There is a tradition here that if you slip, you have to buy doughnuts for your district, which is pretty good.  No one in my district has slipped, so no doughnuts, at least not yet.  But the melting snow did help me to find a name tag I had dropped in the snow near another missionaries apartment.  So that was good at least. 

This week we have also been starting another system for getting fed.  Each ward has 1 day each week to feed us.  Seven wards for Seven days of the week.  But this week it was difficult because we had previous appointments, and it is messy to try to combine to sets of missionaries schedules (Us and Tagolog North, because we share a car).  But it did end up getting us a lot of dinners, which was great.

We did do some phonebook finding this week, which actually went well.  We are refining the process, finding better times to do everything and what not, so that is good.  We did have a great chance to actually go into someone's home this week.  We were out doing finding, and we knocked on the door, I really didn't think it was a Chinese home, but it was, and an old lady, who Elder Liu now calls Yang nai nai, or Grandmother Yang, and she let us in to see her Buddah statue.  It was kind of massive.  She told us she didn't believe in any form of deity, but her daughter had put the whole Buddah shrine thing together for her.  It was massive.  The house was large and neat, the front room only had a couch, loveseat, chair, and a coffee table, and then the shrine, but the shrine took up like half the space.  So it was pretty good.  But Grandmother Yang invited us back to come visit her, so we are actually pretty excited about that.  She was really interesting, and spoke no English, but she had learned Russian... not that that helps us any to communicate, but it was interesting.

This week I've continued to read from the Book of Mormon, which just has had such a great power for me this past little while.  I have really loved reading it, and I am looking forward to finish.  I am currently at 3 Nephi chapter 9, when the Nephites start hearing the voice of Christ.  But I did read this week in Alma 24:19, which is talking about the Anti-Nephi-Lehis.  I won't quote it, but I read that and I thought about all the times I went to text, and I put the wrong word in earlier than it should be, and then I can just backspace and fix it.  But Mormon, writing on plates didn't have that opportunity, so he had to do what he did there. 

Anyway, this has been a great week.  I have had a great time, I got some Christmas packages on Monday, which was great, and now Elder Liu and I have a paper Christmas tree in the apartment.  And we are really excited for the next week days as we get closer to Christmas. 

Talk to you all next week!  Miss you!