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!!