Language Study... 3/12/2018

  Well this week was transfers, and since I'm training, we had the lovely opportunity of hitting the road at 6 am, to make it to Utica for my 9:30 training meeting. I was hoping this meeting would consist of tons of instruction and advice. It was pretty much the AP's just reminding us we need to do 12 week, and then we looked at pictures. Soooooo that was super useful. Then we had a meeting with President Rogers and his wife, where he told us he loved us all, then told me that it was probably time for a haircut, then said "alright let's do this companion match up so we can start slammin this pizza." We went into the room full of trainees, fresh outta Utah, and President began announcing companions. He had me stand up and say my name and my area, and he says "Elder Lindberg you will be joined by Elder Chan, and he speaks great English!" At this point I started to stress a little. I knew we were going to be getting a missionary that had just learned English, but I was sure that he'd be trained by someone who'd been out for a while, and trained before. Buuuuuuut apparently I was mistaken. Elder Chan is from Hong Kong, and speaks Cantonese. He lived in Orem for 3 years, but only began to learn English his Senior year. So his 9 weeks in the MTC were the majority of his English Learning. So, our morning program consists of 1 hour of personal study, 1 hour of companionship, 30 min of 12 Week, and 30 min of language study. There are 2 companionships in the mission that do language study, and Elder Chan and I are one of them. We're basically celebrities. Training is a challenge, but it is fun. I didn't know this before this week, but I am less than great at understanding heavy Chinese accents. But I guess that's what we'll be working on here for the next 3 months. 
     Another awesome thing that's happened is our area is now a car share. That means we split the car access with the Binghamton Elders. The Binghamton Elders get the car from District Meeting until Church. That means they get it for 4 days of useful missionary work. We get the car for 1.5 days of useful missionary work. Pday we drive the Bingo Elders around, and Wednesday we drive straight to DM to give them the car. Sooooo Elder Chan and I walk everywhere, as we don't have bikes. Poor Elder Chan is brand new out here, and our Thursday was spent walking about 12 miles. Just for 3 appointments. Then we walked 2.5 miles to a referral, that turned out to be fake. It's been an adventure, and I've printed out a street map that I fold out, because apparently no store in the world has an actual map. We look Indiana Jones walkin around with a map and our bags full of magic tools. But it's fun. We've done a lot of tracting, and picked up 4 investigators. Which is better than we've done for a few weeks actually. And that's super good, because we had an incredibly disappointing "appointment." It was with our neighbors, who were super nice and interested in learning, they invited us to watch the superbowl, told us we could have their wifi password, and were awesome in general. We stopped by on Thursday to ask if we could stop by, and we planned on Saturday. When we showed up on Saturday, we were greeted by our Books of Mormons hanging in a bag on the door, and nobody answered when we knocked, even though they were obviously home. Elder Chan didn't understand what was happening, all he knew was I was super disappointed and so we had to tract for like 2 hours. So that was a hugeeeee disappointment. 
     We spent the rest of our time introducing Elder Chan to Taco Bell, tracking down bus passes, and walking places. Elder Chan isn't a huge fan of T-Bell, and our apartment has virtually no food in it, so he's gonna take a bit to adjust to the reality of mission life. But hey, he's super nice, and willing to work. He asks me every day "are all houses in New York very messy like these ones?" and says "Trump needs to help this city. All people drive nice cars but live in bad houses." He is not a fan of cigarette smoke, and is, well, less than impressed with Elder Schindler and my driving. We're just trynna have fun, he'll catch on. My 4 "aggressive driving" warnings in the Taco Bell parking lot this morning were fake. The darn TiWi was being dumb, so they shouldn't count. All I know is I'm just doin my best to help Elder Chan adjust, help him learn English, and figure out how to train, be DL, and figure this all out myself, at the same time... It's a party.

LOVE YOU ALL. KEEP BEING AWESOME. ALSO, IT'S DELAYED, BUT SHOUTOUT TO LIV FOR BEING CALLED TO RUSSIA NOVOSIBIRSK, AND ADAM OTTERSON FOR BEING CALLED TO ST PETERSBURG RUSSIA. 

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