Well today has been a sorta sad day, the older generation left and so it's just the 'new' generation for the next week until next Wednesday. We have 19 new Mandarin speaking Elders and Sisters coming so that'll be cool. I went to the temple for the 6:20 session this morning and once again it's always nice to start of P-day with that. To explain the title of my email, there has been a joke in our district that the weeks fly by so quick so that we can say on Friday... "Hey everyone can you believe tomorrow is p-day?!" and it really does feel like it is just a day away even though it is several days. The "Shenme dongxi" part is like a chinese saying for like "What the heck?" it literally translates to "What stuff?" or "What the things?" and it's pronounced "Shenmah dong-shee" so that has been an often used phrase by everyone from Elders to Sisters to our teachers in the past week so that's been memorable. I got all your guys' package, and I really appreciate them especially the pictures and cereal... Cereal is a life saver on Sundays when the line is out the door before sunday meetings. To answer some of your questions my bishop here isn't a bishop it's a branch president and he is President Baker... he speaks Chinese and all of his counselors except one speaks chinese as well. They are just the ecclesiatical leaders and do not (and aren't supposed to) teach us any Chinese, we have Sacrement meeting in mostly Chinese but the talks are sometimes in English... everything else is in Mandarin. So that's been good. I'm more than halfway done with my time here at the MTC and I'm really looking forward to getting out to the field. My Chinese is levelling off, but still improving daily! My lessons are more fluent and I don't need note helps anymore, we have TRC where we teach volunteers on Saturday mornings but our teachers just started a new "Beta Test" where we teach members over Skype in Taiwan so we did that yesterday night and it was quite comical actually. But it went very well. I enjoyed it thoroughly. So anyway this week has been a good week, and by the way if anyone wants to reply through email I have found that using 20 minutes of my time now and 10 minutes later that I can respond to people that way instead of having to wait for the Dear Elders to come in and just responding next week.
Mom I appreciate the pictures you sent, they have brightened up my bad days and kept me going... I've been really under the weather lately since there is a lot of the cold going around so it's been a longer week than usual but I'm trudging along as best I can so that I don't have to miss any classes. We had a speaker for the Sunday fireside that was the director of Proselyting for the entire church and he showed a clip from the Tony awards of the "Book of Mormon Musicals" opening number and related it to how the church has kinda accepted the press whether good or bad from the show by plastering "I'm a Mormon" ad's all over NYC for the whole 3 months after it debuted in NYC and about how the lead Media directors of the church couldn't sleep for the whole week before that show debuted, and 4 days before it opened, they both called eachother in the middle of the night and rolled out this media blitz within the weeks end before it debuted. Now the show is opening in Vegas, LA, London and guess what? The church has 3 ads within the first 5 pages of the PLAYBILL of the show... amazing stuff really. I love how it ended up. His talk was really wonderful and he talked a lot about how the Book of Mormon helped him through the toughest parts of his life including when his toddler son was killed in a car accident. What a shining testimony of someone that has faced trials in his life and relied on the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine of Christ that lies within it's covers.
Anyway I would like to know what's been up this week, and I would love to hear from everyone sometime this week, especially Jessica and Dad... heck I even got a letter from Blake this week, and not even Jessica responded to my email. So I would like to hear back from that.
Oh yeah and during Sacrement I found out a cool little thing we can do on the way to our respective missions... we are allowed (yes allowed!!!) to call home at the airport... this is a church wide policy for missionaries that when you are travelling to and from your mission you are allowed to call home so I'll be getting ready for that in a few more weeks.
Anyway I'm gonna wrap up this email, and if you have any questions!! anybody at all I can respond to them tonight at 9ish when I have more free time... I still have 15 minutes on the clock, so this will work out nicely. Mom how did the job training go?? Jessica how is school? Dad how is work???
Love you all,
and I changed my chinese name to the one I had in HS... it's now Sen Zhong Lao... not Shan Zhong Lao
Sen means forest... Shan means One or single... I think I like forest better.
Till tonight,
森长老
Sen Zhong Lao
Elder Sanchez
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