“Oh my goodness, they sing bass and they're Mormons!!”

Quote of the week explanation

Last Monday, after p-day was over, we went over to Mae's house to contact her and see if we could sneak in a “quick” lesson. We went with our district leader and his companion so that we would have a third male (and, theoretically, we would go visit some people with them afterwards). We drove to her house, and upon our arrival she told us that she was just on her way out the door, headed for choir practice. And then, in an unforeseen turn of events, she invited us to come with her. We all looked to the district leader for his guidance, and he got a gleam in his eye as he told Mae that we would absolutely be there. She gave us the address and we drove there... Only to find that it was at the Oakland Temple. The temple of practical Christianity, that is! But, we were (literally) men on a mission, and we weren't about to let that stop us (especially seeing how we received a very kind and genuine invitation to come). We walked up to the building, and cautiously peeked in. We saw Mae sitting with a handful of other people, so we opened the door wider and full sent it into the church. Mae, being Mae, immediately starts telling everybody that “they’re here, they're here!” and introducing us as the “Mormon Elders”. All the people were very kind, and the choir director... Oh, man. I feel like he was a little too excited to see us. The choir, as it was composed before we came in, was him plus four women. He told us that it had been so long since they had anyone in the choir that could sing bass, and the fact that we were “Mormons” was just a cherry on top. He told us that he had grow up listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and at the end of the practice he had us all sing “Come, Come Ye Saints”, a hymn which is only contained in the Latter-Day Saint hymnal. It was quite the experience, for sure.

Howdy Ho

After that introduction, I suppose I can say some other stuff.

Jing is doing great still. His baptism will be next Sunday, and the only big hurdle that we have to get over at this point is the law of tithing. I have absolute faith and confidence that he will accept this commandment; he has had no problems with any of the other ones. We are scrambling around at this point making preparations for the baptismal service; assigning talks, prayers, etcetera. We will meet with him three times this week, with the third being the baptismal interview. The time is drawing nigh at hand.

You got a bit of a sneak peak at how Mae is doing up at the top there. The choir director was so thankful to her for inviting us that he was literally in tears. It has been kind of difficult to meet with her lately because of a lot of legal things that she's going through with her house and stuff, but she is still very very very open to us. 

Other people are still insanely busy to the point that it's hard to maintain contact with them (*cough* Joan *cough*), so that's a thing.

Overall, the conclusion that can be drawn is that…

I don't know, actually.

If you really want there to be a moral, you can make one up.

-Beenerfgh

P.S. I was so close to getting to go on a split with an A.P. this week, but it didn't end up happening after all. We ended up just driving around the block and then picking up our companions.

P.P.S. OK, just for a bit more background on what I just wrote; we were already on exchanges with the zone leaders, who are Spanish Elders. One of the A.P.s speaks Spanish, and they found a Spanish-speaking guy who they were going to pass off to the zone leaders, so the two missionaries who speak Spanish went to teach the lesson while the two of us who didn't went out to tract, but then the lesson fell through.

P.P.P.S. One of our members gave me a Chinese name for Christmas, so now I actually have one. 賴以成