"It's the... Sodom to our Gomorrah"

Quote of the week explanation

As I eluded to last week, we received news of transfers this week. I will be staying, and I'm rather pleased with that; but there are all sorts of changes happening around in the mission. One Elder will be packing his bags and moving to the big dance itself... San Francisco. On Sunday we happened to see each other and we're took a moment to discuss his impending move. Our conversation turned into a discourse extolling the virtues of the city across the bay, in which the above comment was made. In case you didn't catch on, San Francisco is famous among us missionaries (and presumably in the wider world, as well) for being... Sin, incarnate. Some of it, at least. 

Hello there!

It was a rather slow week, unfortunately. The main thing was our lesson with Joan, which went very well. She is busier than ever, but still in relatively high spirits and excited for baptism. 

Mae has been tricky to meet with, but through the communications that we've had over text and via other modes of communication she is still very enthusiastic about everything.

Our most interesting day of the week was probably Friday. Specifically our visit to Chinatown. We go to Chinatown usually at least once a week to talk to people as a mode of Chinese finding. On Friday we went, and we had a grand old time. I was sitting on one of the benches talking to some guy who wasn't really interested when I see another fellow walking out of the library. It was someone who Elder Carter and I had been teaching previously, before he moved to San Francisco and we had to fork him over to the Elders there. I ran over and talked to him for a minute. I was pleased that, even though it's been several months, he remembered my name without having to do so much as glance at my name tag. If that wasn't crazy enough, as I was wrapping up my conversation with him a super excited Chinese lady ran up behind him and started talking to us. It was one of the people we are teaching now, and we had come to chinatown directly after an appointment with her had fallen through because she wasn't home. She ran up and profusely apologized that she didn't call us and tell us that we wouldn't be home in time. We had a good little chin-wag with her, before letting her be on her merry way. It was pretty funny to see her running towards us, though, because most of the time people try to do the opposite. Other than that on that day we got low-key bashed by some guy on a bike, witnessed an epic game of Chinese chess (for a brief intermission, you can sometimes see large groups of people clustered around two old Chinese men playing Chinese chess. It's pretty funny, actually) and saw this one police officer that Elder Carter and I tried to convert one time. It was pretty fun.

The Chinese branch had a pair of baptisms this weekend; one for a kid and one for a middle aged woman who the sisters are teaching. It was pretty good. One of our members who I have worked very closely with over the course of my mission, both in Oakland and Hayward, baptized the lady, so it was a grand old time.

And thats about it. No angelic visits or fiery plagues to speak of this week.

So bye.

-BEN

P.S. We went to taco bell and saw a random member family that one of my companions sort of knew, so that was interesting.

P.P.S We have a broken stop sign in our apartment for some reason.

P.P.P.S. Oh, yeah, Elder Watts is going to Hong Kong, by the way.