Well it's here now, the time where I am away from the Chinese program, I am now serving in the Redwood City 2nd Ward (Spanish). It is a Spanish ward of course, I am serving with Elder Phllips, a pretty quirky kid from Virginia. He's like 5"2' and 110 lbs. He is a small kid. This ward is known for baptizing like crazy in this mission. It had nearly 50 baptisms in 2012 and it's just really active in the realm of baptisms for sure.
This area has been pretty interesting this past week for sure, and so I'm learning spanish here I suppose. I know enough spanish to ask simple questions, and to greet, and things like this, and maybe respond clearly. But that's about it, but we'll see how this goes. President Watkins told me only 2 transfers here and I'll get transferred back into Chinese. I am hoping back to Fremont, but we shall see about that. If I get transferred to Fremont then I'll be able to train there. That will be pretty interesting.
Day 1 here in the field, we went around on our bikes (yes we are pretty much full bikes) meeting different members and seeing the area more. The Redwood City 2nd ward has 6 missionaries involved, 2 sets of Elders, 1 set of Sisters, all with their own areas, we cover the central zone or middle zone, which includes the south of Redwood City, all of Menlo Park, and the north part of East Palo Alto. In South Redwood City, that whole section of town is called Little Michoacan, because it has the most people settled from Michoacan there... outside of Michoacan. East Palo Alto is considered the most dangerous part of the South/West Bay Area , but not to worry, missionaries haven't gotten hurt there. It's a pretty interesting town though.
So yeah, this week was good, we only had 10 lessons, which is pretty low for the spanish program, but we tried out best to work hard, it's a different animal on bikes for sure. We are trying not to waste time, the first couple days I got here I noticed a lot of wasting time was happening, and so I think that is part of the reason I'm here is because I'm not one for wasting time. So we cut back on that and got into a groove by Saturday. Hopefully it keeps up, because there are baptisms here to have, people to find, and people to teach, and every minute could be put towards those people.
Trying as best as I can this transfers to change more, and to do better as a missionary, and I think I've been successful at that so far. I am trying my best to keep my Chinese (there are Chinese people up here, just not as many as Cupertino or Sunnyvale though) and balance it out with learning Spanish. President Watkins said he wants me to balance them, and try my best to learn both while i'm here more. He said meet with members up here that speak Chinese every 3 weeks to do a refresher, so I get to see Christina again! Woohoo. She only lives a mile from our apartment (We live in Menlo Park, she lives in Palo Alto) so every 3 weeks I get to go over there. I'm pretty happy about that.
We are biking probably on average 10-15 miles a day, which is pretty nice, even though we don't have a scale currently in our apartment, I can feel like I am losing weight... hmm. It's a too bad we haven't eaten much Mexican food since I've been here. Mostly other countries food so far. My first dinner was like a 5 star restaurant with Brother Ruiz and his family, he is a professional Chef, he studied in Japan for 5 years in cooking school, and so our dinner with a 4 course meal (literally), so that was pretty awesome. We have papusas on Friday night, theres a member that owns a restaurant thats based out of their home, and so we can go get some papusas from them when we don't have a dinner. I'm not the biggest fan of papusas, I don't know if it was because I just wasn't that hungry when I ate them or what, but they aren't super good or anything. The best thing I ate this week was home made Caldo de Res by a member named Sister Teresa Sanchez, she's from Michoacan I think. It was really really good, I couldn't finish more than one bowl though sadly.
Okay, now onto investigators: We have quite a few, a lot of them are consistently meeting with missionaries too. I think the whole ward has about 20 progressing investigators among the 3 sets of missionaries right now. I haven't met many of them yet, but I have met 3 sets (it seems to be a common theme that either both husband and wife or girlfriend boyfriend for that matter investigate or they don't at all) so we have Juan y Jenny, who want to be baptized, but they aren't currently legally married since a divorce is still in the works in Mexico (pretty common thing here...) and we have Cesar who is a husband of a very active member in the ward, he told us this past week he isn't ready to be baptized yet but he wants to. We met another couple last night that were investigators, but I forgot their names... one from was Michoacan and the other from Durango I think. Really nice couple, we shared with them about the true spirit of Christmas.
I am pretty grateful to be here, and I know that being here is for a specific reason of course. I am also glad I can keep up my Chinese. I have realized that I really enjoy speaking Chinese a lot better than Spanish, but that's probably because my Chinese is like 100 times better than my Spanish, Chinese is a simple and beautiful language, i'm really excited to study it more in depth when I get home, perhaps move onto other Asian languages... Japanese... right mom?
So that was the week! I hope next week brings more surprises. Off to week 2 of the transfer already.
Elder Sanchez
For those who want to know, my address is
858 Coleman Ave Apt G
Menlo Park CA 94025
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