Learning Mandarin?!

The stinkin library was closed for Memorial Day >.< >:(

I got the boxes! Thanks oodles of noodles (that's a lot) :) I love the screature! I named it Elder Dino and drew him a nametag on his back with a Sharpie. :) I so appreciate your letters. It's really nice to see how much the Lord is blessing each of you.

Guess what?!? The whole mission is driving to Nashville (not Knoxville) this Saturday (by bus) to hear Elder Ballard in a bi-mission conference. Elder Morente's brother, Elder Morente, is serving in the Nashville Mission so they'll get to see each other and I'll get to meet him! We're pretty excited.

Hey, in one of the Elder Watson's letters, he mentioned that he went on exchange with an Elder Charles (whichever one's in Argentina). He kind of gave a time-frame for how long Elder Charles has been out on his mission too and I think he might have been my first zone leader in the MTC. Could you ask him if Elder Charles was companions with Elder Healey in the MTC for me?

Anyway, here's kind of a funny story. Elder Morente and I were tracting the other day (duh...) and we tracted into a TON of Chinese people. There's a Chinese circus in Pigeon Forge called Cirque de Chine. We found where ALL of the performers live. It's a row of around 20 townhomes and they are all full of Chinese people. All the vehicles out front had the logo of the circus on them. Most of them don't speak a lick of English. We ran into one that spoke a little bit, so we had him translate for us and then another guy (he was a little bit older, we think he was the trainer) actually called one of his friends who speaks English and she translated over the phone for us. We used the Restoration DVD cover to figure out if they speak Mandarin or Cantonese. The cover has all the languages on it and we had then point to the one they spoke. One guy pointed at the Mandarin, started nodding his head vigorously and started screaming Chinese! Chinese! Chinese!... that was interesting, but we found out they all spoke Mandarin. I learned that my default when talking to someone who doesn't understand English is just start speaking in Spanish...unfortunately that was even worse while trying to talk to someone who only spoke Chinese. I kept trying to explain things in Spanish and English and it just wasn't working. Anyway, I brought it up in Missionary Correlation yesterday morning and asked (without any hope at all) if there happened to be anyone in our ward (50 people in backwoods Tennessee) who spoke Mandarin. A guy in the back said "My wife." One of the counselors in the bishopric started explaining that she probably wouldn't be any help anyway because she wouldn't know any of the Gospel vocabulary in Mandarin since she was converted here in America. Bro. Kurtz then said, "Well she served a mission in Taiwan, so she probably knows the vocab pretty well..." Anyway, long story short, we're going to started teaching a couple dozen Buddhist circus performers most of whom have never even heard the name Jesus Christ. Guess it's time to brush up on my Mandarin... :)

Habave fubun abat thebe beabeach!
Soubounds goobood!

Lobove,

Ebeldeber Rabaymobond