This week was actually really good! Thanks for the Christmas packages!

Hello!

This week was actually really good! I've assured my dominance as the Fearless Leader Elder Burge. Everybody fears me. Yeah, I had my 1st District Training Meeting (DTM) and everybody said it was alright. I thought it was alright too. Just a regular DTM. I'm glad you got my letter informing you that I'm now the District Leader. Yeah, it's not that bad. DTM's aren't very fun...

This week we met A LOT of cool people. We met Douglas who has really good English and a good interest in the gospel. But, he doesn't live in our area so we had to give him away.... Then we met Johnny at a park. He's 18 and doesn't really have a life or direction. He's super awkward and talks really quiet and really fast. So I'll ask him, "Are you going to college?" He'll say "-No." Really fast. It's really hard to understand him but he seems accepting of most of what we teach him. He believes that God doesn't exist because science can't really prove it. So... He came to church for all 3 hours though and we're meeting with him in a couple of days.

We had a lot of stuff happen this week. We're preparing for the Zone Conference. So we have to do a musical number as a Zone. So we were all singing this hymn trying to get it figured out. Then all of the sudden my old companion ( now zone leader) says, "Hey Elder Burge plays guitar." Then all of the sisters were like, "WOW, YEAH, GET ELDER BURGE TO PLAY GUITAR YEAH!" I was like oh freak, I don't know how to play this freaking hymn. So they ran and got a guitar and brought it to me... Surprisingly I couldn't figure it out. So they told me to take it home and practice the hymn. I didn't have a case so I had to bike 20 minutes. Fortunately, I had brother Elder Randolph the secretary of our mission and former Army guy, help me create a bagging system for the guitar. Needless to say, a few bags and pins and tape and I got the guitar home in one piece. It was super ghetto. Then an Elder called and said he could swap me out and play violin instead. So I said OK. So now I have a guitar and I don't have to make a dang fool of myself in front of all of the Taizhong Zones. Score.

I also received both packages from Grandpa and Grandma Burge and yours as well. Thank you!! The candy is much needed. I love American candy hahah! Thank you for the pajamas it was SUPER cold this week. So all items of clothing were used. We also got these really cool flying monkey slingshot things from the Grandparents. We love them. We think it's really funny. They also gave us ping-pong paddles and stuff. Which is SUPER useful because we have a ping-pong table in our basement of our apartment ready to use. We just didn't have any paddles. So this week is going to be fun!

My new companion is pretty cool. He was really into Theater and stuff before the mission. He was even in Civil Air Patrol so we did a little bit of some military talk. We get along just fine! His Chinese is already super good. Kind of makes me feel a little bad. When I was being broken I didn't know anything! Hahaha! He reminds me a lot of Elder Tatton. My Breaker.

Yeah, right now we're trying to build the area up. We've been seeing a lot of success and stuff! Hopefully things will continue to get better!.

I'm glad that there will be a massive sleepover for Christmas! We will try and Skype you at 5 pm on Christmas Eve.