很好的工作

 大家好! Christmas week on the mission was a little weird but so awesome! We weren't able to have a lot of lessons because most of our friends were busy or gone for the week but we had a lot of great member visits.

The sweaters Luda gave us

Tuesday we went to Luda's again and she gave us all sweaters. Mine was too small and I think maybe a women's sweater but she made us all put them on anyway haha. We also dropped off some more homemade ornaments to members. Each time someone was home they'd always give us some food which is usually apples so now we have a ton of apples in our apartment. We met some of the less active members of our branch which was awesome.

The trio

Thursday didn't feel like Christmas Eve that much. We had another visit with Luda and Lai but then from 4-9 was technically P-day. Our Zone did a white elephant gift exchange which was really fun because everyone got joke gifts. One of our members Andy made dinner for the 6 of us Chinese Elders. He's a really good cook and made some super good Alfredo pasta and Roast Beef. He's the only member of the church in his family but he wants us to slowly start teaching his son so we got to meet him when they dropped off the food. One of our less-actives Lei Jiao who we call about every week brought us some sushi from the place he works and it was so good!

The squad

Friday was the first Christmas I had from home. It was weird not being woken up at like 5 in the morning by my little brothers and telling them to go back to sleep. In the morning I opened up my presents and talked to my family for a while. For lunch, some other Elders came over and we made hot pot. We prepared a lot more food than we needed and put too much ginger in the broth but we learned a lot for the next time haha. Our member Nancy called us and wanted us to go with her to the Tang家庭 house. At first we were hesitant because it was Christmas but we went anyway and it was actually really awesome. It was another one of those hour long language studies where I was just trying to keep up with what was being said but I felt like I did better than the last time we were there. We also went to see the temple lights with a member Jay while the other Chinese elders brought their friend Sheila. They are both about the same age, speak Chinese, and Sheila seems really interested in the church so we wanted them to meet and see how it went haha. It actually kinda worked and they seemed to connect pretty well so well see where that goes.

Sushi from Lei Jiao

Saturday we met with a lady who had been referred to us. When we met with her she seemed like the perfect person and just immediately ready to get baptized, but then she pulled our her Book of Mormon and she had a picture of her being baptized years earlier haha. Someone how her records got lost and missionaries hadn't visited her for years so it was cool to talk to her. She wasn't feeling well so we gave her a blessing in Chinese which was so cool! That's the first time we gave a blessing on my mission and the Spirit was so strong. We also got to meet up with Esther and her family at the park! They were so sweet and gave us some more groceries.

Our Hot Pot

Sunday instead of our usual church meeting we had a virtual tour of the visitors center. Our mission wants all companionships to get seven members to take a virtual tour so we just worked with the other Chinese elders and got all 15 members of our branch to attend at once haha. It was really cool and a fun experience. Also, our friend SunYuan who we were having great lessons with randomly dropped us which was really sad. We weren't quite sure why and she ghosted us. It's so hard to remember that people have their agency when you just want to help them get eternal salvation.

Meeting up with Esther

Anyway sorry for the super long letter this week, a lot happened. Next week is transfers but we still haven't heard anything about Taiwan so I bet I'll just stay here in Hayward for a couple more weeks. 我愛你們！

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