Dear Mum and Dad (and anybody else who reads this),
Tuesday morning, I realised something I'd not noticed so far.
I can speak Chinese.
Sure, it's not perfect, there are a lot of words I don't know, but I speak Chinese now. I'm not longer a green Missionary who knows a few words but doesn't understand what people are saying to him and can't figure out what to say back. I actually speak Chinese.
Last Monday-Tuesday, I went on a 24 hour exchange with an Elder called Elder Warner. He is simply wonderful - he's been in the zone since I got here and I've been on an exchange with him at some point every moves so far. The thing that I enjoy most about spending time finding with him is that he really trusts me - right from the start, my first moves when Elder Alspaugh never really expected me to be able to say much, I went finding with him and he told me that he was going to let me do a lot of the teaching, because I need the practice. We then went out, found someone, and taught with complete unity.
On Tuesday, I did a lesson 4 Pass-Off with him, as I have been doing with everyone I've been on exchanges with recently, to see everybody's different preferences and how I can improve. He told me that my lesson was pretty much perfect, gave me some helpful suggestions on how I can improve, and told me I'd passed in his eyes. I'm going to have one last Pass-Off with Elder Walgren tomorrow to prove I know what I'm doing and then I'm going to complete my goal by passing off the final fifth lesson before the end of the moves, which is about half way through March.
Elder Warner and I had a really good companionship study when we were together too - he went over the basic principles of missionary work as outlines in Chapter 1 of Preach My Gospel and just talked about them. Elder Warner is exactly one year older that I am in the mission, and he goes home in 2 moves - which he reminded me meant that I'm coming up on my year mark soon. Wow.
So this week has been very much a 'growing up' week for me, in a mission sense. I'm no longer a newby who can't speak Chinese; I'm an experienced Elder who can teach and testify with enough fluency to share all I need to be able to share. It's a pretty powerful feeling to finally have achieved a goal I've been working towards for so long. Of course, I'm not finished yet, though - I've got to keep growing and learning right up until I'm in Elder Walgren's or Elder Ng's shoes and staring missionary death in the face.
The English fast lasted for a fair while - not all week. Mostly just to Saturday. Wednesday was good, Thursday was fine, Friday I was speaking more English and Saturday I'd just about given up. It was really hard, because everyone was always speaking English back to me. I had a similar problem in the MTC when I tried to SYL (Speak Your Language) and everyone would just speak English back. Long ago, though, I decided that the moment I'd finished the Pass-Offs, I'd have a celebratory week-long English fast. I'll try again then - it's not too far off now!
Ultimately, as far as the Elder with the DS goes, I've decided not to mention anything to anyone for the moment. I'll just see how things go. With something like that I need to be sensitive anyway, and phoning up President Van Dam and yelling everything at him is probably not the most tactful solution. The Elder is currently serving in International work; the busiest of all areas, and so will have no time for such toys anyway. It seemed to have only been a problem when he had a certain companion who has since gone home. So I'll leave the issue for now.
On a related note, I've put my Rubik's cube in my luggage. It was a real time waster and I have a lot more time at night for writing in my journal when I'm not playing with it. That said, I picked up one of the other Elder's cubes this morning and solved it in under 2 minutes.
So clearly I've been wasting too much time on it.
I learned an interesting piece of information the other day - I talked to someone who is working on a scientific study into snoring. He said that apparently, when you snore, you don't get enough oxygen to your brain, so you slowly lose brain cells.
That must mean that one Elder in our apartment right now is losing a lot of brain cells. He snores the house down every night. A few nights ago, he was snoring away so loudly that he woke me up. After about half an hour of trying to ignore him, it got too much. He was sleeping right next to me, in beds that are so close I can reach out an touch him at night without really moving - no space, you see - so I picked up a pair of his shorts lying next to him and dangled them down in front of him a little bit, just enough to disturb him and make him roll over. It didn't work at first, so I dropped them a bit lower. He grunted and rolled over, and I immediately dropped the shorts and hit my head to the pillow, pretending to be asleep, afraid he'd wake up and see me poking a pair of shorts in his face. I don't know if I woke him up or not, but I don't think so, and as the snoring stopped, I figured I was safe. I myself was then asleep again in a few minutes.
Well, my time's almost up. Love you lots and lots,
Elder Matthew Loffhagen
羅 長 老
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