Week 24: Got ghosted in person

 大家好！


Hope everyone is doing awesome! This week we had so much happen, it was actually such a fun week! Felt super long though not gonna lie. To explain the title of this week's email, I gotta go back a sec. So we had this friend Hugo who was on bap date for this next weekend, but he wouldn't come to church cause he had martial arts classes at the same time. Eventually we had to take him off bap date cause he hadn't been to church, and then he was like okay I'll start coming to church. Then he didn't show up to church, blocked our WhatsApp, and blocked our number. Then we ran into him in person yesterday when walking home from church, I said "Yo what's up Hugo! How's it going?" And went to shake his hand. And he just walked straight past me and acted like I wasn't there. Lowkey kinda brutal, but also people have their agency. 

Highlights:
- On Tuesday we had to go down to the Wan Chai chapel so Elder Adcox could visit the mission medical coordinator. He's fine, turns out, but the Wan Chai chapel was so sick, it's such a cool building. Look it up if you want to see a picture cause I forgot to take any haha
- We had exchanges on Wednesday, so I had Elder McClellan who's in training come to my area. It was super fun and I had a lot of awesome conversations with him! 
- Thursday we had a service project at this place called Food Angels where we sorted food that was leftover from stores and restaraunts. It was super fun and awesome to get the opportunity to serve cause it doesn't come around that often in this mission unfortunately. I was at a table with Elder Cole and Sister Baxter and we had some fire conversations about alien invasion movies and the Red Rising books
- On Friday we had temple! And I ran into Elder Chuy there!!! It was so fire to see him again and catch up for a bit, I loved seeing him there. The temple was also amazing as always, such a good spirits boost
- We had another service project on Saturday where we helped this lady clear out a bunch of trash and old stuff from her second house and HOLY CRAP it was so much junk. Check the Google Photos for a video tour of the monstrosity of an apartment. But we also got to keep some cool stuff, including a traditional Chinese Tai Chi sword. And an old man who lived next door taught me some moves, also recorded in the Google Photos
- Sunday we had stake conference and then got to finish teaching Charles the last of the lessons. This week he'll have his baptismal interview and then he'll be ready to go!! He's so prepared and so ready, his faith is so strong it's awesome! He's actually been such an example to me of faith and testimony. 

Spiritual thought:
This week I read Elder Eyering's talk from this last conference, and he talks about the Lord proving us. He mentioned how when you prove steel, the process makes it stronger and more reliable. When the Lord gives us proving experiences, He is strengthening us and helping us to grow and change into the kind of person He can rely upon. I love that thought!

Sorry this week's email ran on a lil long haha, a lotta stuff happened this week!
Love you all!
Elder Blankenbiller

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