Happy New Years!

January 2, 2007

Dear Family,

Happy New Years!

Next week, P-day is Wednesday. That's because on Tuesday, we're having a conference with a general authority, Elder Jensen. Not to be confused with my former companion, Elder Jensen.

Elder Elkington came to visit this week. Er, Brother Elkington. He was my first companion in the field. He brought his wife; they came for their honeymoon. That was really weird. He's keeping up on his Chinese and seems to be doing well.

We went to the tail end of the fireside broadcast on new years eve. We had to be in our apartment all night after that. Our church didn't end until 5:30, actually. Elder Moreno gave a talk on the Second Coming in Chinese. Sister pong also spoke, also in mandarin. Brother Elkington bore his testimony. I translated into English (I don't know if I've told you, but for translation, we have headsets and the translator sits in the back of the room and reads into a microphone).

Mr. Fan is keeping the word of wisdom. We saw Evelyn a couple times. Her husband got back a couple days ago, and we have a dinner appointment at their house on Friday. She said the Book of Mormon's small print is hard to read, but she really likes the pamphlet I gave her on the family and is studying it diligently.

Jimmy's roommate Patrick has a son named George who is 7, almost 8, and we are teaching him a couple times before he goes back to LA with his mom. We are working on hooking him up with a ward there to go to church. Patrick isn't religious, but he's seen the good it did in Jimmy's life and wants that for his son, so he asked us to help his son go to church. I have permission from President Garner to call the Arcadia mission where he'll be and arrange it with Elder Lee - who was in my MTC district. He's the one who said the opening prayer the first day at the MTC, remember?

On Tuesday night we went street contacting and weren't having much success, then we realized we had forgotten to pray. So we prayed and then the first person we talked to was interested - she's now being taught by English missionaries. That was a cool experience.

Our English classes were sparsely attended this week. I hope it was just because people were on vacation.

On Sunday, I went to the MCRD on exchanges with our district leader, Elder Bates and the assistants, Elder Vance and Elder Pebley. They had a baptism, so Elder Vance and I went to fill the font. We put the hose in and let it start filling, and then Elder Vance wanted to check on something, so we left. About 5-10 minutes later, we came back, and the hose was still in the font, but pointing OUT into the room, spraying water onto the carpet floor like a fountain. It was very very very wet. We had to mop it up, use towels and use a huge fan to dry it up. The baptism still happened.

That's about all the interesting stuff this week. I hope you guys are all doing well. I love you all.
--Elder Myers