"OK"

Quote of the week explanation

On Thursday evening my new companion, Elder Carter, and I were in Oakland Chinatown contacting people. Our time was just about up, so we were starting to head back to our car. As we were walking, a guy yelled at us from across the street: "Hey, are you Mormons?" We look over and see a short, balding man, who is speaking English through a slight European accent. We affirm to him that we are, in fact, missionaries, and he crosses the street and makes a beeline straight for us. As he's walking up he looks up at us and firmly says "give me a card!" So, I take out a small pass-along card and give it to him. He then said (unnecessarily loudly) that he needed something to write with, so a quickly pulled out a pen and handed it to him. He started to write his name and address on the back of the card, and as he was doing so he said that he wanted us to find out who the missionaries are who cover some little town in Portugal. I responded with the commonly used term "OK". At this, he looked up at me with an almost disappointed glare. "You no use this term 'OK'. I not like this term." He explains to us that, according to his understanding, the term "OK" has no meaning except for being "KO" backwards, or, to use his words: "Knock... Out! Like you in a fight!" He had an interesting opinion on that word. It wouldn't have been quite so weird, but during our conversation after that he said OK at least five times. So.... Yes. 

This week, as I made mention of in my last letter, was transfers, and I packed up my things and came to Oakland. Things are pretty crazy up here. It is a bit of a step up from Hayward in the insanity department. One reason for this, among many, is the fact that we cover two wards. We are over both the Mandarin branch and one of the English wards (Which is interesting considering that another of the wards has two sets of Elders in it). It was pretty interesting attending both meetings on Sunday (although we left quite a bit early from the branch to make it to our correlation meeting for the ward). It should be pretty fun, going forward. It was interesting, sitting in an English sacrament meeting. I did not fully realize that I had not seen anybody but missionaries and old men officiate the sacrament for eight months.

As I made a mention of at the beginning of the email, we went to Chinatown to contact people this last Thursday. It appears to be something that we will do around once a week. Anyhoo, while we were there, we struck up a conversation with a nice Chinese lady sitting on a bench. This conversation ended with her giving us her number and us getting a return appointment. Or, as I should have said, my companion did those things. I was not part of this conversation, because the entire time it was happening I was taking to a guy who was pretty much yelling at me to never get married. I don't know how that point got brought up in our conversation, but once he reached it, he would not let go. No matter what I said to try and steer the conversation, he would take the wheel straight back and somehow flip the conversation back to what I have dubbed "The anti-marriage theses". He was a passionate guy. He didn't care about what I had to say, either.

Something else that is happening in this neck of the woods... An individual is getting baptized. She had her interview last Saturday, and she will be baptized this coming Saturday. I just popped in here, so I didn't really do anything, but it is still exciting. Other exciting news as well, one of the families that I taught back in Hayward was also given and accepted a baptismal date this week, so everything is going crazy around here.

I'm still getting my bearings here in Oakland, so this week flew by. 

On Sunday I met a lot of the people in the ward/branch. Everyone seems super nice, and I'm excited to have an actual ward mission leader to work with. That was a commodity that was sorely missed in Hayward, even though our branch down there was sill great. It is going to be a good time these upcoming transfers, I think. Once I get myself more settled in, things will hopefully start to get rolling more and more.

Well, this has been possibly the most disjointed letter to date. I think that I'm going to do us all a favor and close it off here. 

It's been a pleasure, as usual.

-赖长老

P.S. I nearly forgot to introduce my new companion. His name, as I believe I mentioned at the beginning, is Elder Carter. This is his second transfer in the field, but he is already a great missionary. It's weird not being the young one of the companionship; because now when I meet the members they say "Oh, you've been out for a while now!" when in reality it feels like a handful of weeks. 

P.P.S. And it came to pass...

P.P.P.S. I almost spelled pass with only one 's'.