Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

Elder Wolf's brother, Brandon, is in his 3rd year of Chinese class in high school.  He informed us today that this Sunday is the big Mid-Autumn Festival for the Chinese.  We thought it would be fun to celebrate it and share the information about it.  

"Falling on the 15th day of the 8th month according to Chinese lunar calendar, the Mid-Autumn Festival is the second grandest festival after the Spring Festival in China. It takes its name from the fact that it is always celebrated in the middle of the autumn season. The day is also known as the Moon Festival, as at that time of the year the moon is at its roundest. On this day, family members gather to appreciate the bright full moon, eat moon cakes at night, express strong yearnings toward their homes and think of family members who live far away.  2012 Mid-Autumn Festival falls on September 30. People enjoy one day off on that day which is usually connected with the weekend. The 2012 Mid-Autumn Day is connected with the National Day holiday (October 1 - 7), so people enjoy an eight-day holiday from September 30 to October 7. The long holiday with pleasant autumn weather becomes a peak time for travel." (http://www.travelchinaguide.com/essential/holidays/mid-autumn.htm)
 
To help the missionaries celebrate, we sent Chris some Oreos (semi-close to moon cakes), Life Savers, Mentos, mints, and other various round candy.   If we would have had more time to plan, we would have been more creative with the ideas. 

Chris is doing really well in the MTC.  He said that "time is flying by super fast!"  He is working hard on the language.  His email said, "Chinese is coming to me. It's slow, but it's coming. I'm understanding a lot more everyday, just learning new words is the hard part. I'm memorizing about 15 new words each day. The Skype TRC is fun. We had to do a 40 minute lesson yesterday, but the connection was so terrible. It kept getting worse as time went on too, so we had to cut it short at 30 minutes. :( but from what we could actually hear, I understood about half of it. Some people talk really fast and its really hard to understand them, but I can pick out a word here and there. On saturday (when we used to do TRC) we taught a lesson to our regular investigator and then a brother came to our classroom and told us we were late for TRC. They forgot to take us off the schedule for saturday's, so we had absolutely no preparation and we taught 2, 20-minute lessons in chinese. Hard, but good."

Chris sent an SD card home with some pictures on it, but we have been unable to read it.  This is the 2nd card we've had troubles with.  We'll have to figure out another way of sending pictures before he goes to Taiwan.  Right now he said they are scheduled to leave around October 30th.

Here are a few more pictures that he sent us a couple of weeks ago.  He loves to take pictures of the mountains and flowers, etc.  Some of his shots of the temple have been amazing!  

I think they enjoy the sunshine and the Temple trips!

Chris with his friend from our Ward - same mission!

 Nothing says "hello" like Easy Cheese!

Laundry is fun!

 

Shen me Dong xi!

Chris wrote that "It's heckin' P-Day!"...which is what the group says when Tuesdays roll around.  This post is called "Shen me Dong xi!" which means "What the heck" in Chinese.

Chris is having a hard time coming up with new things to tell us each week in his e-mail.  He says that not a lot changes from week to week.  His e-mails are always quick because he only gets about 30 minutes a week on the computer...at the same time he is doing laundry.

However, Chris has been sending a weekly e-mail and a written letter too, so the written letter usually has more meat in it...mainly because he can take time to write them.

This week he told us that their district is beta testing using Skype to teach real people in Taiwan.  Only the 11 Elders in his district are doing it.  Basically they each do either two 20 minute lessons or one 40 minute lesson every Monday.

Also this week, the older half of the missionaries going to Taiwan left.  So they are now the senior group there.  One side effect of all the missionaries leaving is that 2 of Chris' roommates will be going to a new room.  So now there will only be 4 in his room.

Chris has seen a lot of the other Elders from our area while in the MTC.  We have a great group of men in the mission field right now.

The highlight of the week was that Chris acknowledged that his parents actually had an impact on him!  (go figure!)   It is nice to see him maturing and seeing beyond himself...he is changing and growing already!

He did issue us a challenge this week...we are to learn how to spin pens around our thumbs!  Should be interesting....

One month!

Yay!  We received our weekly email from Elder Wolf on Tuesday.  Then we received a letter AND pictures on Thursday.  It sure makes for a fun week to hear from him that often.  

Chris' companion was called as the new district leader. Chris said, "Basically he just runs our group meetings and organizes groups of elders when companionships don't want to do the same things. We also get to get the mail for our district twice each day, so now I know immediately when I get mail! When he has other meetings to go to, I'm second in-command as district leader, so that'll be fun!"

The missionaries received letters from the Mission President last week.  Chris told Hunter, in a letter, that he had a character that he wanted Brandon to draw for him.  Then, when we asked him to clarify what he wanted, this is all the information he gave us, "The letter from my mission president was just a letter that we had to write our chinese name on and then send back. Maybe that was the character I wanted Brandon to do. I am changing my chinese name from wu zhang lao (elder wizard) to Lang Zhang Lao (Elder Wolf) when I get to Taiwan. makes more sense to me! :) that was it for the letter though."  We kinda liked the Elder Wizard name!

Chris had to leave the MTC on Wednesday for an eye doctor appointment.  Luckily, Mom was working and so she couldn't drive by the office slowly to watch for a glimpse of him. :)   He had to fill out a request for a shuttle ride to the appointment and then call to be picked up when he was done. 

We asked Chris what his days are like, so he actually took a picture of his schedule and sent it home. 

He also mentioned in his email, "We had some fun today. :D You'll see."  When his SD card arrived two days later, this is what we found. 

Yup, they seem to be finding the time to have some fun!

Waiting, waiting....

Last Tuesday, we waited ALL day for the email, and it never came.  Chris' first few emails were sent  around 8am, so we wondered what the delay was.  Finally, at around 7pm we looked up the login information for his email account and logged in.  There the letter was, in his sent folder.  Sent at 10:07am.  We could never get it to send to our email account, but at least we got the letter!  Waiting is very hard these days...

Chris is doing well.  Last week, he mentioned that a General Authority was coming to talk with only the Chinese-speaking missionaries.  That created a bit of a buzz, and some rumor and conjecture on the part of the missionaries.  They all wrote home talking about the possibility of them being told that China was being opened to missionary work.  They were very excited.  The meeting was scheduled for Tuesday night, P-day, so then we had to wait for the whole week to hear what had happened.  Here is what Chris wrote:

"Okay, so the General Authority thing. Big disappointment. That picture of the 11 of us was my district. That was the night we went to the meeting. The picture was taken right before we left to go to the meeting. We all wore red ties to promote the opening of China. However, it was a man who served a Chinese-speaking mission and has lived in the orient for 18 years of his life doing church stuff. He gets along very well with the Chinese government and they invite him to a lot of very special events. The meeting we had was basically him talking to us about the Chinese people and how to connect with them more easily (they're into family and education, so we were told to relate that to the gospel so they can see its benefits and good points and such). He also said that China is already open indirectly. The main-landers travel all over the place, Taiwan being a major destination for business trips and things, so we actually do teach the mainland Chinese people and then they go back to China and share the gospel with their families, and that is how the gospel is being taught to China. The only way religion can be spread in China right now is between family members. The man (Elder Perkins) also said that we are making huge strides in getting the doors in China open to missionaries. Sorry to excite you!!!"

Also, 3 of the missionaries in their room are named Christopher.  It sounds like they are still having fun together.  He wrote, "Elder __'s parents sent him some food from Taiwan (like fried squid, dried durian, dried mushrooms, garlic pepper coconut rolls and such) and I was the only one to try everything. I had to encourage others to try things. Even Elder ___ who's from Korea and Elder ___ (different room) from Hong Kong didn't want to try the stuff. I actually even liked all of it. If you guys wanna send weird food like that, or fruit mentos (don't know why I want those) that'd be cool."

(We couldn't think of much "weird" food to send him, but did get the fruit Mentos, some Easy Cheese and crackers, and a chocolate bar with chili. )

We get small tidbits of information from him randomly in his letters.  He ended this week by saying, "I have 3 minutes left. I found out I'm really good at beach volleyball. Every Saturday we have some thing called TRC where volunteers, (sometimes non-members) come to the MTC for us to teach them in our respective languages. That's pretty cool. I also need another copy of a family picture for my BoM,"

Chris didn't send any pictures this last week.  Maybe tomorrow...