This week has been an interesting week in the realm of missionary life for sure, and it's been kind of a big change as far as being in the Chinese program for so long,. I was and still am so used to that plane of missionary work. It's been a good week for sure, and we are working hard, but there is something mission from the work, something is mission and I haven't been able to put my finger on it yet.
This week on monday we had a great day for sure, our zone is the biggest zone in the mission with 35+ missionaries here. It's pretty big, well most of the zone met at the stake center in Menlo Park and we played a game called slaughterball which is basically just dodgeball... free for all dodgeball. It's pretty fun. That night we had dinner with Hermana Matute, we had spaghetti, which was really good, lots of vegetables. Got to meet her three kids, she has identical twin daughters named Mariela and Elizabeth, and then a son named Armando. The twin daughters are really lovely girls, they just turned 11 and they are just smart little girls. Armando, he is a funny kid, he is like 8 or 9 and just is a crack up. It was a good dinner, Hermana Matute is known for her missionary mindedness in this ward so we'll keep our focus on missionary work with her when we are over at her house.
Tuesday. So I have been having really bad pain in my stomach lately, on my right side specifically, and so I have been in contact with Sister Abrahms our mission doctor for the past few days just keeping up with her through the weekend, and Monday she called and said that she thinks it may be appendicitis, so if I had any really bad pain in the right side again that I need to call her, so anyway Tuesday morning comes around, and I wake up, pray, and stand up, and I just felt really sharp bad pain in my side, and so I called her, and she said just go to the hospital and get it checked out, so I listen to her, and the zone leaders take me to El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, and I get checked in within like 15 minutes and they have me set up for all sorts of tests, and so they do blood tests, urine tests, and even a cat scan on me, and everything turned out to be null nothing nil, just nothing. Nothing was wrong with me, so they said it's probably just over stress, and muscle tension in the abdomen, so that was that.
We headed off from the hospital after that, and got In-N-Out burger with the zone leaders (a proper way to celebrate a "nothings wrong" diagnosis from the doctors, right?) so that was delicious of course. After we got home I rested for a little bit since taking tons of blood out and having a lot of iodine shoved into you can take a lot out of you... hmm. We got to work again after that, and did all sorts visits and got one lesson that day, but that night was a pretty cool experience. Brother Ruiz is a guy in our ward, and he's a professional cook. He studied culinary arts in Japan for a long time, and so everytime we go to his house he makes us a 4-5 course meal (he's in catering business anyway) so every single Tuesday he invites all 6 of the spanish missionaries in the ward. He didn't have time to make food for us this week so he brought us to one of his favorite restaurants in the area called, called "Paradise" in Redwood City. It's Persian (Iranian) food. We got there and there was like no one there at all, and so I was thinking hmm I guess this place is not that popular but we sat down, and saw the menu, and it was really simple. you could pick kebabs or a lamb shank, or a lamb stew. Super simple. Brother Ruiz ordered for me pretty much, he got me a ground beef kebab and a chicken kebab with a side of basmati rice and a charred fire roasted jalapeno (or 3...) It was so good. Mom you would have loved this place, Anissa you would have liked it too. I was just so super good. They treated us like kings because they knew Brother Ruiz has a lot of power in the food world.
Wednesday! Wednesday is a day filled with a lot of service for us. In the morning we had a service opportunity with an organization called EHP which basically feeds the poor and provides toys for less privileged children. We got there and we were doing food stuff with helping people load food into their cars, and I had a chance to meet a Chinese gal going to school in the area at Palo Alto College named Tingting 婷婷 or Christina was her English name, and she was awesome, she grew up in Boston, and she is super American, she doesn't speak Chinese like at all (Kinda like Julianna) but she can understand. We talked to her the whole time as service just asking us questions about the church, and about everything in our lives. It was really cool. The service provides lunch so we kept talking, and she said "Can I just shadow you guys for a day? I just was to see how you guys do it.." We were able to get her number, and this week we texted her a couple times, she flew back to Boston for the holidays but when she gets back the Stanford Singles ward sisters will be teaching her.
We hurried home, and on the way home I noticed my back wheel was wobbling a whole lot, so we just went to Palo Alto Bikes to get my back wheel trued out. They trued it after about 2 hours, and in that 2 hours we got a ride with other Elders to do weeding at Stanfords huge nature preserve area thing. We did that for about an hour and picked up my bike, and everything seemed to be fine. After that we didn't have much time for visits before our 7 oclock correlation with our ward mission leader at the church, so we did what we could, and headed up to Redwood City to the chapel for the correlation. He was 20 minutes late, and so we starrted at 7:30. It took too long and our ride took too long get back to pick us up so we weren't dropped off until almsot 9.... pretty annoying that we didn't get to do any work at all, but tried making it up.
Thursday and Friday were both harder days, but we really did work hard and we were able to have 3 lessons. My bike broke down twice, the wheel ended up needing replacing. (Sorry about all the charges on my credit card lately)
Saturday and Sunday were both really productive days, I got a flat on Saturday night though, I fixed it with some patches really quickly though. We were about to get 4 lessons on Saturday and Sunday and now this next week were are going to be working on a lot of finding people prepared to receive the gospel.
To tell you more about my area, East Palo Alto is pretty dangerous and has a lot of crime, but it's fun. Menlo Park is nice, and is a very rich town. Redwood City is half nice half not. Half of the not so nice part is little Michoacan, and there are tons of Mexicanos there. The other half is just really nice and it's on the top of mountains overlooking the bay. Really quite nice.
My spanish is improving for sure, and i'm working on conjugation and other things. I'm doing okay, and still need a lot of practice but I am doing well with it so far. People still can't believe that I can speak chinese here, my companion always introduces me as that missionary that speaks chinese here. so it's pretty interesting to see the reactions.
We went to Ikea this week with the other elders to use the bathroom and there was a ton of Chinese people there and they were pretty amazed I don't really understand fully the breadth of the task of learning this language but I am beginning to understand now. I have less than 8 months left here on my mission, and time is going by too quick. I will be home sooner than later.
Thanks everyone,
If anyone wants to get me a late Christmas present, a bike computer that tracks the mileage and speed and all that would be awesome. Trying to keep track of that.
Love,
Elder Sanchez
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