Sweet Cupcakes

Date: Thursday, April 22, 2010 4:43:59 AM
Subject: I love sweet cupcakes. It is not possible without the cake.

Of course, that was a t shirt in a store I saw on the way here. The graphic above it was two hello kitty heads peeking out of a teacup. I'm weirded out.

This morning the bishop of the Cantonese ward chang-ed us out to (or bought food for us) yum cha (or drink tea, in other words eat yummy dumplings and buns and, unfortunately, chicken feet). It was almost all very delicious. He is a great guy. I felt bad I could not talk to him because he does not speak Mandarin.

We went to an island today. We climbed through a cave without any light whatsoever and rode bikes in the rain and looked around a cool "Bai Shen" temple. Bai Shen means worship God or gods, and it is what most older people are. It is the worship-your-ancestors religion, but they also have gods and scary demons. It was very tranquil to stand in a temple antechamber, looking at the colorful dragon on the wall, with the rain pouring down making pleasant tinkling noises in the turtle pond. If you can hit the turtle on the head with a coin it's good luck. When people look into the pond the turtles hide.

I ate a weird pizza. It was in a kind of ice cream cone made of dough. It was quite good, but had no tomato sauce, only a small bit of ketchup on the very top. A little weird.

I made some individual chocolate molten lava cakes for apartment dinner. They were great. I miss affordable ice cream.

Did I tell you I have a new Companion? Elder Ngai. He will go home in August. He is cool and we get along well. He is a lot better at getting people to meet with us than Elder Gunderson or myself. That is nice. Our investigator Jenny is progressing well. She has a baptismal date! Her biggest problem is work on Sunday. We are working on that problem right now. Overcoming concerns is hard. She also doesn't always take the commandments as seriously as she should... "It's ok, I only drink a tiny bit of alcohol every once in a while, and I never get drunk. It's no problem." Actually, it is. Sorry Jenny. But she wants to follow them, so I think she will be able to. It just is a lot to learn all at once. When I asked her who she thinks will go to the Celestial Kingdom, she said "Perfect People." "Have you ever met a perfect person?" I asked. "Yes," she said, "God." "Ok, what about a perfect earth-person?" She thought a moment. "Yes, you two." That was very nice. But she was very wrong, I'm afraid.

Well I am happy and try to always be cheerful. There is a rather expensive thin crusted pizza place in the mall by the temple I've been eyeing, and I'm still trying to find a really good Thai place. I love you all and am so excited to speak to you next month!

Love,
-Noah