Week 29: I hate "It's a Wonderful Life"

 大家好！


Alright before I get ripped apart for the title of my email, hear me out: at our mission Christmas party we got to watch a movie and we watched It's a Wonderful Life... Except that because of timing we had to cut it short so all I got to watch was up until the point where he almost decides to kill himself. So basically I watched an hour and a half of this man's life falling apart and slowly making him go crazy... And then got no closure. 0/10 and I will definitely finish the whole movie next time

Highlights:
- On Tuesday we got to help one of the Sister's friends move their fridge and washing machine between apartments and avoid stepping on the pet turtles that were wandering around the apartment
- For Christmas Eve we tried to heart attack three ward member's apartments to give them a lil extra Christmas cheer. The first building's security didn't let us up though cause we're missionaries, so we headed to the next one. Which required us to hike up SO MANY stairs. Picture the scene in Kung Fu Panda when Po has to climb up to the Jade Palace. And then the security there didn't let us up either. I was in charge of navigating so I tried to get us to the last building... But I accidently went the long way and we had to climb up even more stairs. The Sisters informed me that I'll be getting name dropped in their weekly letters to President Hill 🫥 But the last building let us up and we were able to do the heart attack! It was awesome
- Christmas was so fire!! We had a Zone Christmas party in the morning, then I got to call my family, and then we had a mission-wide party with a super good lunch, some random games, watching a movie, and then a fire musical program that I got to participate in! Then me and some other Elder's went to Five Guys for Christmas dinner
- On Saturday we had to go to the mission home so my trainee could get a loan from the mission financial secretary cause he ran out of mission funds a couple days ago and I've been covering his expenses. On our way back the office Elder's asked us to take four boxes of BoM back to our chapel. So we had to lug them all the way back... Except we got on train going the wrong way on accident, oopsies
- Yesterday I woke up super sick and I really didn't feel up to doing anything. But I decided to at least drag myself to Sacrament meeting. So we pulled up and when the final speaker got up I thought he looked a little familiar, so I opened Gospel Library and checked April 2025... And yep, it's Benjamin M. Z. Tai, the Asia area president. Huh. So that was pretty awesome. Go to church everyone, cool things happen

Spiritual Thought:
Elder Yip and I have talked a lot about how to help our friends gain testimonies this week, so we've been having a lot of conversations about faith. Through these conversations I brought up a point that I feel was revelation from the Holy Ghost. The though that popped into my head is that faith is a choice. There will always be things we don't fully understand, becuase that's just the way this life works. But just because we don't understand everything doesn't mean we can't believe. Having faith is a choice that we make every time that a doubt enters our minds, and it's a choice that will bless us every time. 

Love you all!
Elder Blankenbiller

Google Photos:
Pictures:
1. Bro needs more confidence ngl
2. Cool buildings
3. Heart attacking
4. Japanese BBQ (wagyu, octopus, scallops, chicken) bought by a member
5. Victoria Harbor night view






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