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...