Hi

My humble brother, Joseph, got the last one wrong, so it was my civic duty to correct him this time around.

Now…

My first few days in the field have been pretty eventful. First, I'll tell you about my companion. Aaaand my other companion. Yes, you read that correctly. I, Ben Rivera, am still in a tripanionship. My two companions go by the names of elder Carns and elder Lee. We cover the smallest of the mandarin areas, but it still spans over two regular areas. The three mandarin areas in the mission are as follows: San Francisco, Oakland, and the one that I'm in, which I can't actually remember the name of. Suffice to say, it mainly covers these two cities south (I think) of Oakland, Hayward and Union City. We're in a small branch of about 20 members, who speak mostly mandarin, but some of them speak Cantonese. I am the branch pianist now, so that will be interesting. I introduced myself in sacrament meeting, and luckily they could at least understand me when I spoke. I had some trouble understanding them, as I am still used to hearing white-person Chinese, so.... Hopefully I'll catch on sometime soon.

Unfortunately, we are only teaching one person right now. I haven't actually taught her yet, as she canceled the appointment (or something like that). This means that we've been doing a lot of finding. We've contacted people on the street, and we've knocked doors. The unfortunate aspect of doing these activities is that a lot of it is in English. On the other hand, that is also sort of a good thing because I can understand what they say. We've also done a lot of trying to visit a lot of less active people, or people who the missionaries used to teach. Nothing has really come of those visits though. We have done some member visits though. I like those. We've visited two members in our little branch, and shared little messages with them. Unfortunately, no new people to teach have been referenced to us, though. 

We have helped missionaries in other missions (like Hong Kong, even) find people, just from names that members have given us, but nobody within our area. Our other visit was actually not with someone in our ward, but in the stake that meets in the building. It was yesterday, we ate dinner at their house. It was quite the experience. They were a big Samoan family, and they made an immense pile of food. They had ribs, which were pretty good, as well as assorted fruits and salad products. Suffice to say, it was far better than anything I ate at the MTC.

The thing that we do that I probably enjoy the most, though, is teach English class. It's at the church, and it's pretty much just old Chinese ladies that come. It's on Thursdays and Saturdays, so I've already helped teach twice. On Saturdays, it's also partially citizenship class. We just help them learn words and grammar and things like that. It's pretty fun, partially because the students always seem to get hung up on one or two words that don't have a perfect translations, or have multiple meanings, and we'll end up spending half the time on them.

Ummmm... what else…

Ah. I imagine that MVP has been announced. Maybe? Who is it? Probably Patrick Mahomes, from the few hints that I've been sent as to who was winning the race.

After being cooped up in the tiny MTC campus for so long, it sometimes feels weird to be out and about. It's a welcome change, though. Our apartment isn't super nice, but it's not terrible. It actually reminds me of this one motel that we once stayed at. I can't remember exactly where we were at the time, but it had this courtyard that us kids ran around in playing with water guns, if that helps.

Hows the NBA doing?

Well, not much more to say, I guess. You'll have to tell me who wins the Super Bowl. I say Patriots. I don't know whose favored though, so... Maybe I'll be wrong.

Bye bye.

-Bye bye Ben

P.S. I was told to do more "P.S."s, so here you go.

P.P.S. I feel like I'm robbing you, because I didn't include more references this week. I will repent though:

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend! I shrieked, upstarting."

"Fool of a Took. Throw yourself in next time and rid us of your stupidity."

"Come in mother bird, come in mother bird! Mom has pulled a surprise present from the closet!"

P.P.P.S. I will be disappointed if you don't immediately get all three of these.