Date: Thursday, January 14, 2010 3:16:21 AM
Dear Family,
Yesterday I ate some little meatballs from a street vendor. At the time I thought, "these might make you sick." I wish I had listened to that thought. I didn't quite make it to the bathroom at one in the morning. In fact I barely made it out of bed, so there was all the food I had eaten all day. After throwing up there is a little grace period of feel good time. As a child that is the time for finally falling asleep while your mom cleans everything up. As an older person it is the time to clean it up, because your mom is far away. I have never felt so much like an adult than I did while cleaning up at 1:00 am. It made me miss home, although mom wouldn't have cleaned it up anyway. Being in Hong Kong doesn't make me an adult, being 19 1/2 makes me an adult. I tried to fix it by throwing the 1/2 in, but I'm still so old. Even keeping track of fractions of my age doesn't change it.
I didn't really make any notes, so I'm having a hard time coming up with things to say. I love you. I miss you.
Pizza here is weird, I think I've mentioned that before. The other day a member bought what looked like very normal Hawaiian pizza. From Pizza Hut even. Ok, it had chicken on it, but I didn't think that would mess it up too badly. Well, what I couldn't see was the thousand island dressing they used instead of tomato sauce. So weird.
We went to one of the buy-cheap-stuff streets today. I got a deck of cards to add to my collection. It is decorated with Cultural Revolution engravings. A selection of 54 engravings of Chairman Mao. It's pretty darn cool. But I wish I had Eden here to help me bargain. I'm just too nice. I'll take whatever price they offer first. My companion got four dollars off, but I'm sure I could have gotten more. Oh well.
The other day we walked through what many missionaries refer to as "the dirty mall" in Kwai Fang. It's like someone took a bucket of Canal Street and dumped it into a mall. I think Eden would like it as well.
My companion and Elder Ng are both very happy with the cooking situation. Elder Ng calls me Chef. Mostly so far I have just been cooking from the Chinese Cookbook the Corrys sent, but this week I'm going to try to cook some western food for them. Actually, I did make pizza, and we got some good mozzerella, fresh basil, thin sliced pepperoni and ricotta. The first time I make pizza it was just for me and it ended up baking the dough into a cracker. The second time was much better.
I did get the bread article.
We have a new investigator who seems really good. We told him "We have a mandarin ward that meets every Sunday at 9:00 am in Wan Chai" and he said, "Ok, see you Sunday then." We invited him to a sport night, and he said, "Is it ok if I bring a friend?" Wow. He's a student, working on his PHD in like, engineering. His wife goes to school in BeiZhing. I have great hopes for him.
We have other investigators, some who aren't progressing at all. One is willing to come to church, willing to pray, willing to read scriptures, but thinks there is no possibility that there is a God. That is a problem.
A few are right at the brink of baptism, held back only by coffee, smoking, their family, or work. It's hard, but we press forward with faith.
I love you all. The church is true.
-Noah
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