He made it! First week in sunny California

So, it's my second real day in the field. I have already begun to notice some major differences between this mission and my old one, however for the most part it is the same. I have realized it does not matter where you are serving, it's all the same work. After flying into Orange county I was picked up by the zone leaders and taken to the mission home. It was nice walking outside into the 60 degree weather. While at the mission home, I met the mission president and his wife, as well as the trainees and trainers. I was instructed a little bit on the "culture" of this mission and then had my president's interview. Afterwards I finally met my companion, or should I say companions. For the next 6 weeks I have been assigned to serve with two elders, yeah that's right, I'm serving in a trio. I am actually very excited about this. I prefer 3 people over 2, makes everything a little more fun. One of my companions is Elder Ellis and he is from Oregon, then there is Elder Kim and he is from South Korea. Elder Ellis' Chinese is pretty good, Elder Kim's Chinese is amazing. Although he is Korean, he speaks English, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese fluently. Having Elder Kim around is extremely helpful because he can basically talk to anyone that is Asian. Elder Kim is great. He is 23 years old, served in the army, served a short time mission in Korea, and attended BYU

So far I have been very surprised with how well I am doing out here. I really feel like I did not lose my Chinese at all. In fact I feel like I am speaking so much better than ever before. I would say during lessons and other things I am speaking the most, then Elder Kim, and then Elder Ellis. My area is the entire mission. There are only 4 mandarin speakers in the mission. It's me, Elder Kim, Elder Ellis, and one other missionary who is off teaching in English. We cover one branch, which is the Yale branch and it's in Irvine. I live in Irvine but we literally go all over the mission. We are the only elders that have no boundaries, no restrictions on gas, and a GPS in the car. We can only teach in mandarin. If we find someone who speaks English and is interested, we have to refer them to the English speaking missionaries. We receive every Chinese referral. Everyone was right about the weather here. I can't even put into words how nice it is. I walk outside and do not even want to go into my car because the weather is just too nice. The nights aren't even that cold and the sunsets here are abnormally beautiful. It's been a constant 50-60 degrees since I have been here. I love it. It's way different teaching rich Chinese people and having amazing weather. My apartment is very nice too. I love having carpet, never had that in Taiwan. The community we live in is great. I would love to live here someday after the mission. Southern California is just as Krista put it, "dreamy." You can ask Brian all about this place because I guess he comes to Irvine a lot. He even guessed this is where I would live before I came here. He's quite the analyst, totally nailed it.

I have already met a few members and begun to see how awesome they are to us missionaries. I have already had 3 dinner appointments since coming here. I really enjoyed eating at the Chen family's and Kam family's home. These families are just so cool. Brothers Chen and Kam are so chill. I could talk to those guys forever, such fun conversations. Tonight we taught brother Kam's mom, she's not a member but goes to church almost every Sunday and English class every Tuesday. She is such a sweet old woman. She really cares about the missionaries a lot. She basically knows everything and has a testimony but wont get baptized for some reason. She said she will get baptized in 2011 but not this year, we'll see.

I really really like our branch president. He's this way awesome guy who served his mission in Taiwan about 15 years ago. He is absolutely hilarious and actually reminds me a lot of a louder more boisterous Brian Blair. The branch is stronger than I expected. There are a good amount of Chinese people and then probably 10 white people (Taiwan return missionaries) who come. Kyle Evans is our very cool branch mission leader. He also served his mission in Taichung. He returned from Taiwan about a year ago and is now working here in orange county with his wife. He is a ton of help and it was great reminiscing about Taiwan with him. He has all his scrolls (including the one with the path to the temple and heaven) hanging in his living room. The first thing he asked me when I met him was, "so are you a 'you ban fa' missionary?" It's so awesome having him here to relate to as we both served in Taichung. Bro. Evans really thinks I was called here to help strengthen the Chinese program we have here. He kept telling me I am here to bring "you ban fa" to orange county. He always tells me to teach all the missionaries in this mission how to be a challenging and testifying missionary as we were trained in Taiwan. Taichung defintely is a lot stronger than this mission, however I still enjoy being here. I believe I will soon find my reason for being here.

Tonight we had an awesome dinner over at the Bian's (pronounced bee-an). Brother Bian made an awesome traditional Chinese meal with amazing vegetables on top of rice which was on top of this flat egg type thing. Loved having another dinner appointment! It’s so great actually having people invite us over for dinner. The Bians are a fairly young couple with a small child. They live next to UCI. They fed us very well and we had some good conversations. While talking with them tonight I could really tell I can understand and speak so much more. My Chinese is improving so much. I was seriously worried before coming here that I would not get to speak that much and my Chinese would regress, however I have found I am constantly speaking Chinese everyday. My Chinese is getting closer and closer to as good as elder Kim's. He totally beats me when it comes to reading the language but when it comes to conversations we're pretty equal. Elder Ellis can understand a lot of Chinese however he is really working on speaking more. I’m trying to help him by always "SYL"ing (speak your language), which means I only speak Chinese unless there's a person that doesn’t speak it. We actually set a companionship goal together which is to SYL while outside the home. So while we are inside we can speak English to each other but as soon as we step foot outside we can only speak Chinese with each other. It's great and I have already begun to see the progression.

Our temple is the Newport Beach Temple. We live about 10 minutes away from Newport beach. The temple was super nice and it was a design a I have never seen before. We didn’t go in, we just did a "temple grounds" tour with our mission president and his wife. We just walked around with them as he explained the history of the temple. The temple ground was like $700,000 per acre (total was about $14 million for just the ground). The temple was very beautiful, very southwestern-like, and up on a hill with a good view of Newport beach.

Irvine seriously is a different place. It's very wealthy and very Asian. Honestly the Asians overpopulate this area. White people literally are the minority. It's something crazy like 80% of the population is Asian here. I see tons of Chinese people everywhere. It's great because the Chinese work here is very strong, I have already begun to notice progression in my speaking skills. I still don’t think I am used to this mission yet though. It will come with time I hope. I have come to realize how special my old mission truly was. I miss it a lot. I know I was called to this mission by the Lord through one of his apostles and that is what keeps me going strong.

Here are a couple of family photos we took before Jeremy left: