12/16/10 Parable of the Ax

Dear family,

I am totally bah humbug this year, it seems like its been a while since I had Christmas - a for reals Christmas. I remember Tatiana gave me a really cool knife once, or was that for my birthday? I have a desire for eggnog. Its actually kinda cold over here, it went down to six centigrade. I don't think it will snow though. I caroled with Elder Kershisnik, went we went on Mandarin exchanges, it wasn't a very successful finding technique. It seems like there is a whole lot of Ebeneezer Scrooges, or Ebeneezer Chan, Ebeneezer Wong, Ebeneezer Choi and the like, all over Hong Kong. Hong Kong needs to get haunted really bad, so grumpy. I say Merry Christmas in my most peppy, charismatic way that I can possibly muster and literally half of the people I talk to act like they didn't hear me. I know they heard me I was practically shouting it.

Anyways I am pretty trunky these days. I have a goal not to lose focus or quit my mission at least until I finish baptizing the rest of brother Xia's family. I think they are all good and will probably do it in the next month or so. It is the impossible. I am sure you have heard me rant about how we only teach ladies who are single in mandarin work and how we only can get investigators from referrals or turnovers form the Cantonese missionaries. I totally found a man by myself, helped him quit smoking after forty years and now his whole family will be baptised pretty soon. I am so happy that I got to experience that. I feel pretty powerful. The first family I have seen baptised into mandarin work since I started my mission. The second man baptised since I have been a missionary, the first one being Chester who was baptized by the Malaysian Tiger and me.

I don't boast in myself, I boast in my Lord. He is so good. I am an instrument in his hands. I feel like sometimes I am an ax, and that I am really dull. I just keep getting thwacked against a tree over and over, and while I am making a little head way, it would probably be more productive to stop and sharpen myself before I go any further. I can probably not finish the work I am required to finish even if I was sharp, eventually someone with a chain saw will handle the rest of the tree after I made my small dent of a contribution.

I am not so sure what that analogy all means, but I feel the redundancy of being endlessly smacked against a log is a lot like my mission. Am I doing something right?

I about died when I heard that story about Gideon blessing Silas. That is seriously funny. Some of those kids are too smart and witty, I remember Tasha telling me about Asher asking if she was a "windian" because she liked the car window down. I wish one day I could be hilariously clever like that.

I love all of you,

Hua zhanglao

ps Mother, hang in there, james will turn out eventually. I get a headache all the way over here in hong kong when I hear about his grades, I am so glad its not my problem.

Expect a call at about six on christmas night.