After Christmas

Dear Family,

I'm glad the calling worked out with grandpa's new phone. It was good to talk to you all again. I hope you're still doing well and that you had a good rest of christmas. I know I did. After I talked to you, I went to Chinese Church, then we went to one of Gibbons and Elkington's investigators, Jessica Yan(who miraculously just showed up to church and started investigating.) for dinner. There was waaay too much food. We talked to her 15 year old son for a while, who isn't technically an investigator, but he says he's thinking he wants to serve a mission, so that's really cool. He needs to join the church first, though.

The branch members gave us lots of Christmas presents, it was pretty cool. We got some cups and bowls, along with gift certificates for restaraunts, macaroni, socks, toothbrush, toothpaste, a mini leatherman and stuff like that. Besides the package from you, I also got some packages and letters from friends, and cards from family, friends, and ward members. It was a good christmas all in all. Thank you for what you sent. I have been eating Star Wars cereal every morning.

That's good that the girls weren't disappointed in how much stuff they got. It really is attitude, I think. On christmas morning we stopped by the Suns' house, and their only child, 9 year old calvin, got only one gift, a $5 chinese chess set. But he was still as happy as any other kid on christmas, especially since along with that gift was the promise that his dad would teach him how and play it with him. I think giving of your time is the best gift you can give.

If you send me temple names for endowments sometime, I can probably do some next time we go to the temple in a couple months. It's good that you got the chance to go do more sealings.

Yesterday, we helped some chinese eternal-investigators set up for their daughter's 5th birthday party. We blew up balloons, set up a moon bounce (one of those inflatable rentable jumping house things), helped cook, clean, etc. It was pretty fun. We got some cool pictures on the moon bounce. Most of the branch was there at the party. It was pretty fun.

Last night, we visited a potential investigator family. The mom's name is Jennifer Xie; she invited us for dinner last week, and they always let us in if we stop by. I have a pretty good friendship with the 9 year old kid Henry, so while Elder Jensen talked to the mom, I talked to Henry, and we both taught them each a lesson, and they were going to pray together last night; it was a good experience. We all prayed together before we left, and Jennifer felt the spirit; it was really good. So we'll see how that goes; we invited them to hear the lessons and they accepted so we'll be able to count them as investigators when we teach them on wednesday.

Well, I'm out of time. Have a great week, and a happy new year.

Love you all,
Love,
Elder Myers

Almost Christmas - looking for investigators

Dear family,

How are you? I'm doing well. I got a couple packages from you today, but I haven't opened them yet. I'm looking forward to it.

Our 1 progressing investigator left to taiwan today. Now we have 0. We better keep finding. We've actually been focusing on asking everybody for referrals this week. We haven't got any, but it will pay off eventually, I'm sure. We called a lot more bishops this week. We found one that baptized an investigator 3 weeks ago from taiwan, who has since moved. That should have been our investigator! Thankfully, now almost all the wards in San Diego know about us, we only have a few left.

Good news - Emily told Elder Gibbons and Elder Elkington that she thinks she's felt the spirit more lately and she thinks she wants to be baptized. So that's great! They're having some success up there.

Elder Jensen's grandparents are Myers. Cool, huh? I don't know if there's any relation, though.

Today, Elder Jensen and I, with another Elder named Elder Doria and a guy from our ward named Brother Sapien jammed in the relief society room. It was pretty fun. We played amazing grace and a song I wrote based on an old church movie called uncle ben.

Yesterday we made some flyers for Sunday church in Chinese. We're going to go down and carol at this Chinese store called the 99 Ranch. It should be pretty fun, and maybe we'll meet some people. We went there last wednesday and it was pretty interesting. We met a guy who works for a magazine called We Chinese in America, and invited him to a chinese branch party on the 22nd. Maybe he'll come.

Not much else has really been going on. We've been staying busy, though, and my Chinese is improving a lot faster with Elder Jensen.

I hope you have a good Christmas at grandmas. Will Julie be there? Thanks for the pictures of Ethan.

Yesterday we visited a lady named Jennifer Xie, and her family is so crazy. They were watching Chinese TV which has the weirdest commercials I have ever seen. I laughed pretty hard because they had people waving bags of cookies around and about 50 people waving around cell phones. Everything seems funner when they're speaking chinese. They also gave us some coconuts and chips to take home. We are helping them with finding employment through the employment office.

Well, I have to go. I hope you have a great christmas. I love you all.

Love,
Elder Myers

Dang it, the computer ate my email.

Dear Family,

Dang it, the computer ate my email. Sorry about that.

This week has been not too eventful. the big work of the week has been getting publicity of the chinese branch out to all the bishops and missionaries in the san diego mission, because we found that most don't really even know that we exist. We're hoping to get more referrals because of that.

I will try to contact Donald in the future; I know where he lives. You can tell him I live in Mira Mesa on camino ruiz.

As for Christmas calling, I get 30 minutes on the phone. You can call me or I'll get a calling card. I'll give you my phone number next week, since I don't know what it is right now. What times would be good for you?

That's great that you're inviting nonmembers to church functions. Keep it up. Invite them to the church service on Christmas.

It's been strange getting used to the new area, but it's a pretty small ward. We've met a few people. We don't have too many investigators in the ward, so we definitely need to find more. Our Chinese work is going all right; our main Chinese investigator is moving back to Taiwan in a week, so there's definite need for improvement there.

I look forward to the package of Christmas goodies. Thank you.

Well, sorry about the brevity and typographical errors. I tried to get through everything important in 6 minutes; I hope you understand. I hope you all have fun in utah. Love you all.

Love,

Elder Myers

Transferred to San Diego

Dear Family,

Sorry I didn't get to write yesterday; it was a busy day. I was transferred, and that was made official yesterday, so first I moved all my stuff to the other apartment, and we, wanting more space in the room, took apart our beds and my new roomates' (who were fine with it)bunkbeds, and switched. So, that took up a couple hours, settling in and getting the beds set up. I am now companions with Elder Jensen, who is from New York City. His chinese is the best in the mission, so it's cool to be with him. This morning for companionship study we read a chapter of the book of mormon in chinese. It was cool... but took about an hour :P.

So, yesterday, after we got set up, we went with Elkington and Gibbons to the park and played Urban Golf, which is just a made up game where you golf with tennis balls and clubs from a thrift store and try to hit something, like a garbage can or 2nd base. It was a lot of fun, but I lost because I've never done anything but minigolf before.

Then, at 2:00, we had to leave to go help one of our investigators named Steve Dow who was moving. He's having a hard time in life and the situation of moving was hard, and we ended up helping him until 6:00. At 6:00 we were in carlsbad but we had to go; we had another appointment at SDSU in san diego, so we had to drive a while down to make it to... the very end of the appointment. But a set of Elders from the San Diego mission were there and taught her, so it went okay. Then we had another appointment near campus, which we made it to on time. Her name is Tiffany Yeh, and she is leaving back to Taiwan in 2 weeks, but she is developing a testimony. By the time that was finished, it was 9:00, time to go home, but Steve called a member we were with and wanted to meet because of his personal crisis. So we met with him and president leung in the church, and I think we really helped him, and gave him some spiritual direction in life. Anyway, we got home at 11:30, which is way past our bedtime, but it was pretty important and we try not to do that sort of thing.

So, that explains why I wasn't able to write yesterday- we were exceptionally busy. And we're taking 4 hours of our missied preparation time today.

And now, I am with none of my previous investigators, which is kind of weird and sad, but it happens to every missionary. We have Mira Mesa 2nd ward and the south side of the Chinese Branch. So, our proselyting area is... the San Diego mission. A pretty big area. We're going to try to get the word that we actually exist to more of the members in San Diego so that we can get more referrals.

Before I was transferred, a good step in the right direction happened with Emily. She told us that every time she comes to sister Ng's house for the lessons, her faith grows. But now, you won't be getting regular updates on the people I've been talking a bout before, sorry. Unless they get baptized, in which case I'll let you know.

Now, on to answering questions:

As missionaries, we are allowed to go to the temple once every quarter. It's a mission-wide temple p-day. I dont' know if I saw THE grand staircase, but I saw a few pretty grand ones.

Happy birthday, Lisa! 11 years old is OLD.

That's great that sister bessey emailed you. The Besseys are good members.

I don't really know what I'd like for christmas. Classical Music is always good, but all I can really ask for is to continue helping me financially to stay out here. If people want to give me cash that's fine, but I have enough money from my allotment for my needs, so you could give them the option of just using it to help me pay for the mission.

The idea of getting things for kids is a good idea, but I really don't know that many kids. There are maybe 8 kids in the chinese branch I could give things to, and we generally don't work with the children too much.

That's great that you got snow! We have still been having pretty summery days here. It hasn't even rained in months.

At church on sunday we had at least 6 chinese nonmembers at church. It was pretty awesome. We've been getting about 2 maximum the past few weeks.

Well, there hasn't really been a lot that has happened this week besides the major transfer. Thanks for the letters. I love you all.

Love,

Elder Myers