Week 45: Into exile, I must go

 大家好！


Well they got me. We found out transfer news on Saturday night and I'm being transferred away... Into English work! So I won't be teaching Cantonese or working with a Cantonese ward now, I'll be serving in the international English speaking branch in Hong Kong. I have mixed feelings about it because obviously teaching in English will be lots easier, but I'm also worried my language ability will go down. Also I've developed a fear of white people since coming to Hong Kong. I've also been chosen to be a Zone Leader in the Second Language zone of my mission, which is nuts haha, we'll see how it goes!

Highlights:
- Got to go on exchanges twice this week, once with Elder Leung and once with Elder Halgren. Both exchanges were so much fun, Elder Leung is so funny and I absolutely love Elder Halrgen, so it was awesome. Met lots of cool people too
- Because of the way exchanges worked out it was just Elder Halgren and I in the apartment for a night and we had the best time talking about deep doctrine and how outrageous old General Conference used to be. So fire
- We had an awesome ward coordination meeting where one of the Stake High Councilors who lives in our ward got on and chastised everyone for being unhelpful and told them to do more stuff. Shout out 朱兄弟 my GOAT
- Met a dude before church yesterday who was 100% on cocaine or something, he was from New Mexico and asked us where we were from like 5 times in the space of 10 minutes. Elder West and I were having a hard time keeping it together not gonna lie
- We got roped into three free dinners this week at different ward activities because all times we showed up to help clean up and the activity ran late and so they made us eat. It was awesome. Unfortunately one of them had some fine print I forgot to read so I now owe that companionship a new friend😐 

Spiritual thought
My goal this week was to start studying along with Come Follow Me in the evenings, and so this week I was studying about Moses leading the Israelite out of Egypt and across the Red Sea. A thought that I shared in my last District Council was about faith, and what faith looks like in action. After the Israelites are led through the Red Sea by this great miracle, they spend a bunch of time praising the Lord, talking about how great He is, how powerful, how He can deliver them from anything. And then in the same chapter they come to a place with no drinkable water... And immediately start murmuring. They had all this faith and praise, but when it came down to it and they faced difficult times, they didn't trust in the Lord and His salvation. I contrasted this to the powerful faith of Shadrach Mesach and Abed-nego in the book of Daniel, and their firm faith in the face of death by fire. Real faith stays strong in the face of difficulties, and provides a foundation for us that can steady us. But only if we develop faith to stand firm in the middle of trials.

Love you all!
Elder Blankenbiller


Google Photos

Pictures
1. Okay this time the heart attacking worked out
2. Exchange with Elder Leung
3. Last District Council with my District
4. Zone P-Day at Disneyland
5. Also last District Council





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