I guess I like pickles now.

All my life I have hated them. They look disgusting. They smell disgusting. They float around in jars, like eyeballs. I ate one last week and had like the craziest 180 of my life!

Anyway, no one cares about that.

So other than my taste buds changing, Mount Diablo is on fire. It is ablaze as we speak. Sister Kwan has a blog too, she's titling her entry "The Hills Are Alive With the Smell of Fire."

She is hilarious. She says the most hilarious things in a monotone voice. At Target today, there was a shelf all of Nicolas Sparks books and was like, "Hey. It's like the continuing series of white people almost kissing each other.." in a super monotone voice. Anyway, maybe you had to be there.. but it made me LAUGH. SHOOT. I had to take a picture.

Last week the clouds looked super cool, I took a pic of those too.

So transfer calls just happened and it looks like we're staying in Danville! This will be my third transfer here. There is so much work to do here, so I'm glad we're staying! Also, I wonder when I'm going to go back to the Visitors' Center..

My companion who is still in Berkleley, Sister Sia, told me about a girl we were teaching who just recently got baptized! So happy for her. Her name is Elisa and she is awesome.

Hope everyone is doing well! Pray for missionary experiences!

Love,

Sista Chen

Sorry so long time

Hi!

Sorry!

So my new companion is AWESOME, her name is Sister Ierubwara and she is from an island in the south pacific called Kiribati. She is learning English and we are having so much fun!!

Serving here is HUGE, so many differences, so many culture shock moments everyday. I blows my mind the things that amaze/shock her, I love it. I took a pic of her praying, she is so cold here. The first time she saw a squirrel, she flipped! So feeding a pony was the highlight of her life. So was bowling. We went bowling with the Alamo sisters our first P-day, she killed it and it was her first time!

We had Zone conference this week, Sister Harris and I reunited, while Sister Mitchell crept.

Sister Harris's mom sent me a package with a whole bunch of Hawaiian stuff! Siick. I wanted to show off my spoils except I just now realize that's not the best picture of me.

I love everybody!!!

Oh! Also, the last pic is from Gordon's house, one of our investigators. He is now 55, been a fireman for 25 years! I thought that was cool.

Training again. What? yeah, I have no idea...

So many changes are happening!

Transfers are this week. We found out on Wednesday that I will no longer be covering both Danville 1st and 2nd Ward, but just Danville 1st, and there will be another set of missionaries for Danville 2nd. Elders! Danville 1st has a LOT of work to do, we'll be finding like nobody's biz!

We also found out that Sister Harris and I will no longer be companions, but I will be training someone new, and So will Sister Harris! She's going to Northgate! She'll be a mom! and I'll be a grandma! She's only been out for 6 weeks, she isn't done with her own training! Crazy right?? This is from the email president sent out last week: "I have started working on transfers, and this is going to be a major effort from just about everyone. We have three missionaries who were new just two weeks ago, and at transfer we will get 31 permanent missionaries and 7 visa waiters. Then a couple of weeks later we will get three more. That is 44 missionaries. As if that weren't enough, by time those 44 are all here, we will have one half of our mission who have been out four transfers or less. Yes half the mission will be new missionaries."

Crazy right???? Hastening the work FOR REAL.

Two weeks ago we went to Brentwood to go peach picking with an investigator and her family. Cuties.

So our District Leader was on bike, and he ended up breaking his collar bone! In our last district meeting the zone leader patted his shoulder right when the picture was taking. Diabolical, but SO funny! Shoot.

Today we went up Mt. Diablo. You could see the smog from the top, pretty gross actually. But it was fun! 

I love you all! Keep sharing the gospel!

Happy Canada Day!

We just celebrated Canada Day with In-N-Out! Haha.

 

Danville and Berkeley are like two seperate planets! It's actually pretty funny to think about.

Ok, it has been HOT lately! Usually I try not to make weather-oriented comments, but shoot! Is this the hottest area in the mission?? Maybe! It wouldn't surprise me! But it's all good! I'm still loving it

 

My trainee's name is Sister Harris, from Hawaii! She's super cool, I'm learning a lot from her! I love her! We are still getting used to the area but have a super good feeling about being here. I don't know how to describe her, but we're almost like the same person basically!

 

We get fed dinner everyday! I'm literally the heaviest I've ever been! NICE.

Pic of little Freddie. sho cute

 

So that lovely bear was shot by Brother Peavy, which he named Boo Boo. He was telling us about how he cleaned its skull, and said that the best way to do it is to stick it in a box with beetles and they'll clean it out. Lovely. Haha usually taxidermy freaks me out, but I thought this was hilarious for some reason.

 

We tried to take a "before" picture of our planners, before we went finding, so that our "after" picture would have filled appointments in it. haha. Yeaah.............

What???

Guess what! I passed my road test!! but no one cares.

Crazy stuff is happening. President called us into his office last week. I walked in, he asked how everything was, I said it was good. I totally did not expect this, but he told me that he wants me to train!!! In Danville (where is that??)! I've only been out for 3 months! Not only that, but I will be shotgunning. We will be the first sisters in that area. Not only that, but it will be full pros.! I won't be in the VC! This changes everything! the VC is all I know! Not only that, but I will be driving. Not only that, but I will be covering TWO WARDS!!!

So many changes! Everything about this next transfer is new to me. 

So, yes, transfers are happening and people are leaving and hecka sisters are coming in. 

Pics of Sister Anderson (leaving), view of the bay from Berkeley, Sister Cash with us on exchange (one of my MTC comps!), here, there..

Cal Bear Adventures

Our friend Holly just got endowed and is getting ready to go to Japan in 3 weeks! So that's exciting. She's been coming out with us to lessons, she's super awesome!

So there's a fireside every second sunday of the month called Why I Believe, where recent converts give talks about their conversion and how they came to know the church was true. We signed Joseph up for it and he spoke on Sunday! It was awesome! Some members of the ward came to support him and we also brought two of our investigators, it was such a good day!

The last pic is me with the Cal Bear. We drive by it multiple times a day and always talk about taking pictures with it but then never do. But then we did, yesterday, so that's cool.

This past week was pretty crazy. I was senior comp! Near the end of the training I'm supposed to take the lead in everything, which I did, and that was pretty stressful because I didn't want it to suck. Which it didn't! So I'm pretty happy about that.

Joseph's Baptism!!!

We have been teaching Joseph for a month and a half, and he was just baptized on Sunday! By Kangkai!!! Which is like a double miracle (double rainbow what does it mean???). Kangkai goes back to China tomorrow, he will be such a good leader there.

Joseph is the first baptism I can say that I've actually been a part of. It is the most remarkable thing to be able to see someone's spirit change. This is why I came on a mission. This has been the best week ever.

We just got back from the temple, I did my first session here! It was great. Then our district went to Round Table for pizzazz. 

Also, zone conference happened last week. We had a training on what we should be eating, and we found out that we have now become a running mission. We run 3+ times a week, baby! We run this.

(yeah, I'm not really making sense today..)

Pics: Taco truck, Fentons (from UP!), Joseph's baptism!, Round Table

OOhhh! I went to the DMV for my written test last week. PASSED that mess.