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!!