Week 5

I'm finally in Oakland Clifornia!!! The very first things we got to do when we first landed in Oakland, all 10 of us greenies, was to go street contacting on International Street, somewhere downtown Oakland. We hadn't even met our new trainers yet! It was pretty awesome. Sister Urhle and I were companions from the last day at the MTC till that Wednesday afternoon that we arrived in Oakland. She is a brave Samoan sister (whom I knew from BYU-Hawaii and PCC!) and we set up 2 appointments within 15 minutes! Of course we wont get to teach these 2 contacts, but it will go to some fortunate elders in the mission!

The next exciting thing that happened after that was our visit to the Oakland Temple! This place is GORGEOUS!!!!!!!!!!! Suddenly, the pictures I have been looking at for the past 3 months came to life! It is more beautiful standing here at this Holy ground than just looking at picture! =) I love it here and my trainer is Sister Scholl from Orem, Utah. She is assigned Mandarin speaking with me. We attend the Oakland 7th Branch. Yesterday at church there were Mandarin and Cantonese speaking members. It's a small branch of maybe 50 give or take active members. Relief Society lesson yesterday was taught in Cantonese and I understood about 70% of it. It was a great lesson on Modesty =) I found out the the sister that taught the RS lesson was my friend, Carol Cheung's mom! Carol and I were in the Thetre program together in BYU-Hawaii! Her brother Luke in serving his mission in Hong Kong and I bumped into him and his companion at the HK temple when mom and I were there early this year! Small world!

I serve half day in Visitor's Center and half day proselyting. Some days I'm at the VC in the mornings, somedays at night. The work is hard for Sister Scholl and I because we are starting from scratch. They just re-did the boundaries and areas in the Mission District that I serve with and Sister Scholl and I have no investigators to teach! We went door knocking 2 days in a row and hadn't had much success finding Chinese people to teach. We found English referals but no Chinese yet. It's harder to find Chinese people top teach.

Yesterday we met with a Chinese sister and got 11 referals to go contact and teach! I am excited to start today and have more to do this week! Time is short..I think I should stop right here. I love Oakland and my traininer is doing a good job. I love you all and thank you for your prayers!