The Wu Family

I dont' know if this was the family that he took around today or another day?  IF it is, they may know Cody?  If not, then it is just some people that knew Ryan when he went to school and church in Del Mar?  

Letter #17

!!HELLO!! sorry that this took so long to do but today has been insane!! first of all today is not my P-Day, but president told us that we can still write our emails!! our P-Day got changed to saturday just for this week because of new years! i guess we have to be in by six here because it will get so crazy!! today was crazy though! first of all, we woke up and gave a tour of china town to a senior couple in our mission and their family that was so fun! it was so nice to be able to just talk with people in english!! hahaha! after, they treated us to lunch and it was really cool! it was hilarious watching them all trying to eat chinese food... really great stuff! after that, we had an English lesson with two of our investigators and taught them after! (they are the two sisters that i was telling you about!) today we taught them about the plan of salvation, and invited them to be baptized!! they said that they would if they know it is true by the date that we gave them!! which, as we all know, they will! it was so amazing teaching them! i could not stop feeling how much heavenly father really loves them! it was like he was right there with me helping me out! it was so amazing!

as i am sure that some of you know there was a crazy blizzard here... it was AWESOME! we got about a foot and a half of snow! i never realized really how much that i like the snow! me and my district broke into many snow ball fights and it was really fun!! i drilled elder Faulkner with a large snow ball in the back of the head! he picked up a huge ball of snow and started chasing me, my companion and elder fan all over china town!! we were jumping over snow banks and stuff it was awesome! i felt like i was in an action movie and everything was moving in slow motion! a ton of chinese people started to cheer us on and laugh at us! even some of them threw a snow ball or two... it was great! it felt like some started this crazy food fight in the cafeteria!!

the snow gave us a lot of opportunities to serve, which i loved! because the snow was so high, the roads became really bad, so a lot of people were stuck here in china town (it was horrible)!! i went to the store and bought a snow shovel and started digging people out of the snow and helping them get out! it lead to a lot of people getting interested in who we were. it was awesome! our best two contacts were with two white people though! one of them we basically dug his car out of a whole snow bank! it was bad! i guess there was some one stuck in front of him so he tried to go up on a snow bank and go around him! we came up and started to help him. he got very confused! he had no idea why we would want to help him! when we told him that we were just out helping people... he said, "wow there is still some good in the world"! after, we had dug out all of the snow, these two homeless men came up and started to pretend to help. not really homeless, just not very good guys!! after they walked up to the man's car and started to ask for money, he ignored them and asked if he could pay us. we said no, we told him if he ever saw the english missionaries though that he needs to talk to them! it was great! the two men felt so stupid!!

I would say that we helped probably over 20 people that day!! Some of them were grateful and some of them were not! But it was still so awesome!! Christmas was so cool! I got to talk with my family which was awesome...I am not going to lie!! It got me so pumped up and ready to go!! We also did a lot of caroling while visiting all of our members which was very humbling! Some of these apartments will have 5 chinese families packed into one! They are such hard working people and they get so little back in return! It is very sad to say! It makes me never want to complain about a situation I have ever again!!

I am really having a great time out here!! It is so amazing how fast it is going by!! OH I also gave a talk this weekend in sacrament which was nuts!! I don't know if any one understood what I would say but it was still a great experience! I wish I could tell you I knocked it out of the park but that would be a lie!! I am so excited to just know chinese!! It is pretty rough!! Well, I love you all so much! Thank you so much for all of the letters that I got and christmas cards!! I love them! They were the best gifts that a missionary could get!!! Have a happy new years!!

LETTER #16!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!~

Well, I had an awesome week! We had a lot of things going on, very busy so it was great! 

To start thing off! We had a dinner appointment! Can you believe it a dinner appointment in chinatown?! One of our members, brother zeng invited us over for a hot pot dinner! My first one! It was such a great experience to have! He bought so much food!!! We had duck tongues, small octopus, crab, snails, hermit crabs, and many other various things that I did not even know what they are!! I learned something about the Chinese culture.. They will keep on feeding you and feeding you until there is no more possible room in your stomach!! They also hate it when you try to help! I was trying to help by washing my plate off and he really got mad!! Like he was actually upset! I felt bad! And for dessert we had this sugar soup stuff with mo chi balls in it! My companion and another elder did not like it, so they continued to give them all to me when brother zeng was not looking!! I was SO full! But it was awesome! I have not felt that feeling in a while! After we ate, watched a great Christmas movie! In his room where we watched the Christmas movie, he had a bunch of pictures of him and the same missionary ( the missionary that baptized him.) They were all over the walls. This man really loved the missionary's, you can tell the church has really brought him so much happiness in his life!  After the movie he began giving us a ton of stuff! And when I say at on of stuff I mean almost everything that he had, which was not very much. He lived in a small apartment with one room and a kitchen. He gave us pens, rings, leftovers from his fridge, fruit, protein shakes, everything that he had!

I also got to go to the temple for the first time! The Manhattan temple is SO cool! It is amazing how it can be so loud out side with so many crazy things going on, and the inside is still quiet, and full of the spirit. I went with my ward so I did baptisms and confirmations in Chinese! Yes, I did it! It was so scary, I messed up so many times!! But it was such a neat experience to have I really enjoyed it!! 

Oh and the one really nice lady I was telling you all about, that invented that cool Iphone case, MET WITH US!!! It was so cool! We briefly talked about our church, but spent a lot of time just getting to know her! She was so interesting and has so many amazing stories!! One of them that was really cool was one about 911! I guess she was supposed to get on they exact plane that hit the twin towers but she ended up taking a later flight! It was so amazing the spirit was so strong as she just spoke with us! She has been through so many hardships in her life! I really hope that she allows us to keep teaching her... she is amazing!! 

We also had another really cool thing happen! me and my companion got this random call from a man named Danny! He told us he has known some of the past missionaries before us and he wanted to go buy us some food! He met us at a local meat market, and bought us almost 80 dollars worth of meat! After, he said that he had to go because he was looking for a job! NO one had ever seen this man before! AND he would not give us any time to get to know him! It was SO weird!!! We asked all the other missionaries and they said they have never seen him before! I really hope that I get the opportunity to see him again! And really find out who he is! I am so grateful for his service! It was amazing!!

Oh and another great story, I asked the other elders in my district if I could sit in on a lesson with an investigator named Cathy! She is a Taiwanese woman probably in her sixties and she is a little different! She always thinks that the cops are after her, the cops are taping her phone line, and the Chinese communists in china town are trying to take over the whole world! It is very interesting! But any ways, she asked everyone in the room to go around and pray before our lesson started and throughout our prayers she would always yell "amen, amen!!!" hahahahahah It was very funny! Then she said about a thirty minute prayer asking cops to stop following her, and to change the bad Communist people! hahaha! I love my mission!!

Well, Thank you all so much for the love and support that you have been giving me. I have been loving getting Christmas cards, and hearing from you all!! I love you SO much, I hope you have a great Christmas!! I am loving my mission it is the best Christmas gift I could ask for!!!

Love,

Bao zhang lao!!

Letter #15

Hello everyone!!!

 

Wow... this mission field is amazing! I remember being in the MTC thinking that time went by really fast! I feel like every other day is a P day in the mission field! WOW it is going by way too fast!! But i am loving every second of it!!

This week was really good for my companion! We received a ton of new phone numbers from street contacting! AND we had a ton of lessons scheduled however, we got stood up on every single one of them!! In chinese they say that "we got our pigeons released"! YES it was very surprising but we still have more numbers, so i think that at least one of them should end up meeting with us!! However, we did have one really cool lesson this week Chen Rei Lin brought down two of her daughters from China!! Chen rei lin is a recent convert. We had the opportunity of teaching both of them!! It was soo cool!! They didn't even know who God was! Their knowlege of christianity was very small because they were from China! The government allows very little religious beliefs. The lesson went great though and they were so exited to learn about all of these new things! We had to use so many visuals and analogies to help them understand each subject! But when it would finally click, they would light up and get so excited!!!

English class this week was hilarious! I read them a children's book called, "small brown dogs bad remembering day"! They were so confused why a dog would be talking! They thought that it was the funniest thing ever! at least i think they did! After i would read each line, they would all get very confused faces.... but then as i translated the words, they thought that it was hilarious! I felt like i was reading a book to my little sisters, it was so awesome! I really love the chinese people they are so funny!! I have been loving contacting!!! It is so funny when you speak chinese to them...they get so excited!!

Well most of the time they get excited! One time this week, i accidently contacted a Filipino lady in chinese!! YAH that was not a fun experience! She got very mad and started to yell at me! Luckily a big bus went by so i did not hear to many of the words that she had to give me!! But that was horrible, i really need to get better at telling the races apart! I had a lot of stories like that, that same day! I felt like i was having the worst day contacting ever! It seemed like chinatown was just in a horrible mood or something!! BUT then at the very end of the day, i ran into one of the nicest, most friendly people that i have ever met! She was an older lady that had just invented a new product for the i phone! It was a case that was also a battery... it was really cool! She was so nice! She gave us her card and offered to buy me and my companion dinner!! It is so crazy how blessings come like that! Heavenly father really makes you work for them! At least in every miracle i have seen or heard of, it always takes a lot of work.... they do not come for free! We are tested until the point where we feel like we are going to give up! BUT then right at the last second, you have an experience, that is so personal you know that it was a gift from heavenly father!!

Oh and this is a great story!! SO Elder Faulkner AKA Chad! (for some of you that might know him!) Chad was walking up to our church when he saw a large jewish man! He said "hi" they talked for a while then he left. About twenty minutes later, the jewish man comes up into our church and starts talking to Elder Faulkner! I walked out of teaching English class and saw him (thinking that he looked very familiar)! It turns out that he told Elder Faulkner he left his wallet in a taxi and had no way of catching a train to go back to New Jersey (where he lived) AND asked to borrow 100 dollars. Elder Faulkner (being the great man that he is) allowed him to borrow the money! The man said that he would be back tomorow to pay him back! I am sure that you can see where this story is going! The man didn't come back the next day to give him the money! AND I remembered why he looked familiar! HE TRIED TO DO THE SAME THING TO ME WHEN I WAS CONTACTING ONE DAY!!!!! He said he was stuck in chinatown and needed 20 dollars for a hotel and dinner! AND that he lost his wallet! He also told both of us the same jewish saying! (which means one good deed!) Luckily at that time, i did not have 20 dollars to give him! AND i saw he had a hole in his yamaka, so i thought he was homeless! haha oh you have to love chinatown! NO worries though Elder Faulkner had a lot of extra money saved up so he was ok!

OH and one of my friends from the English program ran into the Berthas!! Thanks for the notes that was so awesome!! I was so excited!!! I came to watch the stake opera show! There are four famous opera singers that came and oh my gosh opera is interesting!! It is amazing how loud these people can get their voices to go!!! OHHH there is so much talent in New York! AND at another thing i went to, we had one of the main characters from "wicked" sing a song! Her name was "gladia" in the play i think! BUT i guess she is mormon so she gave us a show! IT was awesome! Gladys Knight is also in our stake as well! IT is so crazy what talent is here! I hope that now you understand why i am so scared to do my little musical number in CHINESE this weekend! haha!
Well i love you all so much! Thanks for all of the letters, it is so nice to feel your support!!

Love BAO ZHANG LAO!!

Letter #14

Okay... Elder Barton's corrected address is: 117 Mott Street Apt 3B, New York, NY 10013
>
> Hello everyone!!
>
> OK well to start off, i just want to say thank you so much for all of the letters that i recieved this week! I got a huge stack of mail in my apartment mailbox on probably last thursday!! It was a very exciting time! I forgot to tell you all my apartment number is 3B, ha ha sorry about that! i am so happy the mailman was still nice enough to deliver them to the right spot!! But it was so nice to hear from you all!
> This week went very well! I mentioned last time that i was going to give a talk at a baptism! I did and it actually did not go that bad! I actually managed to even crack a joke! I had to ask my district for help but hey, it worked out so i was really excited! It is amazing to see a baptism like that.. it was different seeing someone recieve baptism that was not a eight year old kid and he was so excited to recieve it! He had just moved here from china and had never had really any contact with the church before! The spirit was so strong! I really did not know him that well because i have only been here a few weeks, but it was awesome!!! The missionaries sang, "i am a child of god" right after he was baptized, and he started to sing along from the audience! I am sure that it sounds wierd, but it was soo cool! AH it was awesome and i really hope that i can be involved in another expeirence like that!!
> Chinese is impossible!!!!! BUT seems like it is starting to get a little better! I am so lucky to have a few natives in my district. They help me out so much!! We are getting an elder from taiwan soon. I really hope i am his companion! For my language study lately, I have just been talking with them for the whole hour and writing down words that i do not know! How much better could it get!! I learn so much doing that! AND they all correct my tones and pronunciation!! Don't get me wrong, the language is still impossible! I almost feel like i am starting over again because i picked up alot of bad habits at the MTC!!
> English class this last week actually became one of my favorite things ever! Because i get to watch others struggle with a language! I know this sounds horrible but it is great! Last time that i taught, i asked them to say nauseated! We were learning about illness and doctor expieiences!! It was awesome!!
> I have actually been meeting some really cool people while teaching in our english class! One of my favorites is named Peter! He moved to america 10 years ago and has lived in China working in a restaurant the whole time!! He has a wife, son, and daughter. I asked him if he would be willing to teach me how to cook and he said that he would teach me how to make sushi next time that he makes it for his faimily!! I was really exited!! I realy hope that i can get him interested in the church! He is only interested in english right now but he said after he learns english, he wants to hear about the church!
> Me and my companion are working very well with each other! This week we made big signs to put on our backpacks so that we could advertise our church! It actully seems to be working pretty well! I made a little pass along card holder on mine that is pretty awesome! We also have been trying to contact in a bunch of different spots! (the subways!) and even the chinese people in little italy sometimes!! When we went into little italy, i met the mob boss! His name is tommy.. tommy the nose! He had a huge mink fur coat on and was extremely large! Whenever he would say his name, he would turn to his side and point at his nose! He was funny! He really likes mormons! AND usually gives them money! My comp said he gave him a twenty one time!!
> Well, thank you all so much for you love and support! I am loving new york! This is really the best place for me to be! I have the strongest testimony that god loves and knows each of us because of my mission call! This is the perfect place for me to learn the things that i need to learn in this life. Every companion i have had so far has taught me a ton! (things that i needed to learn!) IT IS AMAZING!!

Letter #13

Hey oh and what do you know!

 

Wow it is really crazy how much faster time flies by when you are in the mission field! I really feel like i just barely wrote an email home! But WOW what a crazy week! It is really insane how busy you are out here! There is no free time to do anything! I forget that i am supposed to eat sometimes but hey, i am still continuing to get fat... it is a mystery!

  OK so first of all, it was thanksgiving this week! Which let's just say was not a normal thanksgiving at all!! At first, i went to the MACY'S DAY PARADE! (that was so cool... there were so many famous people that went by on floats and i got pictures it was so sweet!) A lot of Nickelodeon stars so i was really happy about that! It was so cool though as it was awesome to see it in real life! I was so excited! There were so many people there though it was insane! My Mission President is SO cool! He lets us go to things like that all of the time! We are aloud to go to Yankees games that are on Pdays! AND we get to go to one Broadway show before we leave! AND we can go to all of the museums on our Pday as well! My mission president made or Pdays on Wednesdays because it is free to go to the museums on Wednesday! Today is Wednesday right!? ha I have no idea anymore!! But anyways, thanksgiving was really cool! We went to a members house to eat and it was really cool but very different! They live in QUEENS so we had to get special premission to leave our mission boundaries! He allowed us because that is the only family that was able to have us over for dinner! For our meal we had chicken feet, sea food and a bunch of things that i had no idea what they were! AND yes, i said chicken feet! Which actually surprisingly is really good! It kind of tastes like candy in a really weird (not candy way) at all! BUT it was still very good! OH wow i love Chinese food! It is Delicious! After we ate, we all talked! WELL, my district and the family talked and i got lost pretty easily! Chinese people speak sooooooooo fast!

   I was blown away this week with my Chinese! My first church experience was insane!!! IT was so weird not being able to just walk up and talk to people! I definitely tried though! IT was a little discouraging though because of how blunt Chinese people are at times! I had one lady flat out tell me my Chinese was horrible, and she did not like my last name! what do you say to that?! I just laughed, then ran to the bathroom and cried! hahah NO i am kidding, but i did laugh i thought that it was hilarious! I am glad that she was honest about my Chinese! But i love my ward everyone is so nice! At least, if i understand what they are saying correctly!! They all are so humble and really willing to help! they are all also very hard workers. Most of them work all day and everyday!! China Town is always busy! It is hard to get members to come to lessons with us though because they are always working! It is very rare that they have any free time at all! That is why we had to go to Queens for Thanksgiving as that is they only family that was able to have us over for dinner!! it is pretty crazy!

  Because China Town is so busy, it is often very hard to contact people! They have no time at all to do anything! They are usually running, so you have to run after them as you are trying to tell them about our church! ha BUT sometimes they will still talk back and it is really funny! I have recently found something that works pretty well though! You offer to help them carry their stuff! They are always walking around with huge bags and boxes! I saw this guy carrying five bags of Chinese food in each hand!! I asked if i could help him, and asked my companion to come with me! We helped him with his food all the way to his house!! Most of the time, we walked with him we were just talking and getting to know him! AND he was asking questions about what we do as missionaries! When we got to his house, he tried to pay us!!! We refused the money and he was very confused!! We said that he could pay us by letting him teach him about the church!! He agreed and gave us his phone number! I really hope that we have the opportunity to help him learn. I think that would be so cool! That was probably one of my best contacts the whole week! We continue to pray for opportunities to serve people!

  We don't have very many investigators, but the ones that we do have are really cool! One of them is getting baptized this Saturday!! AND he is so ready! I don't know him very well at all but he is so smart. He has really read the book of Mormon and has a very strong testimony that it is true! He loves the scriptures! This is a person my companion and his old companion taught, before his old companion left! BUT i am giving a talk at his baptism and i am extremely nervous! It is going to be in front of real Chinese people! NOT just missionaries at the MTC! It is going to be crazy! Oh and me and my companion are doing a duet in the Christmas program in Chinese!!!! hahahahah! that will be interesting!! I really wish that you could all hear what it will sound like! Just imagine "angels we have heard on high" sung in Chinese by two missionaries that can't sing! IN a language that one of them does not know! Doesn't that just sound marvelous!!

  Ok now it is time for my two favorite stories of the week! First one: Our land lady asked us to take out the air conditioning vent from our window! It was one of those ones that hang out of the window and that is held down from the window being shut! I am sure you can see where this is going! We had Elder Fan (the native elder from Hong Kong) hold down the air conditioning unit as we tried to pull up the window! The window was really old and really hard to open!! My apartment is 100 years old! SO me and my companion and Elder Fan's companion were pulling up on the window to get it open! The window opened way faster then we thought that it would, and then we saw a flash of light (electricity) and heard an unearthly scream (Elder Fan) as the air conditioning crashed five floors down to the street below!!!!!!  We sat in silence for about a minute and a half... after that we all started to cry we were laughing so hard! AHHHH that was amazing! Luckily our land lady was really nice about it and did not get mad! We are also lucky nothing else broke and no one else was hurt!! I hope that you are getting the correct imagery from this story!

  Next story is not nearly as funny! I don't know if any of you have seen the rain in New York, but it rains to the side! Because the wind blows soo hard!! It is the strongest wind that i have ever felt in my whole life but it is really funny because in China Town a ton of little Chinese men almost get blown away! This morning i saw a little Chinese man, fighting to keep his umbrella in his hands! He kept pulling against the wind until finally the wind BROKE HIS UMBRELLA IN HALF!! It was so funny! ah gosh, i love it here!

  Well, i hope you are all doing great! i am loving my mission more and more each day! i am exited to know Chinese that will for sure make things a lot easier! The language is insane! But i am doing great! Thank you all for your love and support!

 bao zhang lao