May 11, 2010

herrrro ewuhwee body,
so good to talk to you all on monday. I didn't know it was possible to have a phone conversation with 9+ people but you made it happen. Impressive. I hope you could here me better than I could here you. My connection was so so so bad. I think it is my phone though because often even when we are making calls here we have a bunch of static. Our phone got stolen a couple weeks ago so we are using this fisher price looking cell phone until we get it replaced. It's awesome. It's kind of sad how the phone was stolen. At the grocery store we go to they make you check your bag at a guard desk before you can go in to shop. I should have taken the phone with me but I figured, it's a bag check with a guard watching it, it should be ok. big mistake. When they returned the bag to me my phone was gone. I didn't realize it was gone until we got home. We used another older phone to call our number and some guy answered. We tried asking who it was and we told him that he had our phone (also a big mistake), he kept saying wrong number wrong number. What a tool. I yelled at him "this is not the wrong number this is my number!" Yet another mistake because then he switched off the phone and we couldn't call anymore. So now, no nice phone.
Sister lim is very shy to talk to English people sometimes. Whenever we go to the ex-pats homes in our branch I can be pretty sure that I will be doing all the talking. She says she isn't confident enough in her English, which is ridiculous because she is stellar. But I guess she has a hard time following the conversation sometimes when a bunch of natives get talking to each other. We tend to really slur our words :-) and use idioms, slang, etc. So, she was actually pretty nervous when I handed her the phone to talk to you hahaha. I walked in holding the phone out to her and she was shaking her head saying "no no no". She's a good sport. Love her. She talked to her family on Sunday and it was awesome to listen to her rattle off in Chinese. I'm starting to pick up a few phrases in Chinese and it is really fun. I like this language, it sounds cool and is fun to mimic. She gets excited when I repeat things she says because she says my pronunciation is very good, only problem is two seconds later I forget it.

I can't believe I forgot to bring this up while talking to you but guess what, I had to go to the hospital on saturday. It was a joy. I had a lovely UTI, and I knew it was a UTI but there was no kerr family to call to get a perscription :-) so Sister Clark (presidents wife) made me go to the hospital. They sent me to the Urology and Men's Health Dept. That was a lot of fun. I walked in and there were a bunch of men in the waiting room reading pamphlets entitled things like, "Prostate Cancer" and "Are You Man Enough?". Sister Lim and I felt slightly out of place. After seeing the doc, I was right, and he gave me a prescription and told me to drink more water.
I know I need to drink more water, I purposely don't drink a lot of water and this is why: drinking lots of water means going to the bathroom lots of times. As missionaries we are outside all day long. The public restrooms are frightening. Public restrooms in the US aren't too clean either but compared to the ones here they seem like surgical rooms. There is never any toilet paper, some don't have toilets they have a whole in the floor (called a squater) AND THEY MAKE YOU PAY. When I first came to a restroom that made me pay I thought "wow, this better be a palace inside" -negative, no palace. So my solution? don't drink water. Hindsight, I know it was not too bright of an idea and I am paying for it now, but it seemed logical at the time. Last week was miserable, but I am feeling much better, and I carry toilet paper in my bag....

I'll close with this, nothing makes my day more than going to an appointment to teach one of our investigators and having them show up with a friend asking, "I asked my friend to come along is that ok? I hope it's ok..." Honey, there is nothing more ok in the world. It's the best. It happened twice this week. We met a guy named justin from Punjab who showed up with his friend. His friend had never been inside a church before and was pretty pumped. He was snapping pictures everywhere. We asked his friend to come on Sunday and justin said, "oh don't worry, I will bring him". And Paul showed up with a friend yesterday. His friend only spoke Chinese so Paul translated for me while we taught. It was hysterical. Paul's translation strategy is to just say the major word of the sentence. haha. What I heard was "God, love, Adam, the Fall, came to earth, atonement, etc.." good thing I know what is being taught already. And he would get so confused. He would start leaning over to his friend Jo Wei and begin translating for him into English. Jo Wei doesn't speak English. I would yell, "paul! your supposed to be translating for me!" It was hysterical. Good thing I have sister Lim.

I love you guys so so so so so much.
sister viehweg