Baptisms and a Birthday

This has been quite a week for the Battalion Sisters.  There were three baptisms yesterday!  A few weeks ago some of the Mandarin-speaking Sisters asked us to pick up an investigator and give him a ride to church.  Jiang Ping Yuan is on an extended visit from China.  We picked him up at the beautiful temple grounds and drove him to church.  He spoke no English and you may or may not know that we don’t speak any Mandarin.  We all tried to talk a little, but it was a pretty quiet ride as we couldn’t really communicate.  But we did smile a lot!  We took him back to the temple grounds after church. We saw him several times after that at church and the Battalion, as we give tours in Mandarin, and the Sisters would translate for us.  Sometimes he would have missionary lessons there. He really loves Craig.  He says Craig is the nicest man he has ever met.   He got baptized yesterday!  We were on shift, but our Director and his wife took our place while we attended, which was very nice.  Jiang Ping Yuan is a very nice man.  He often spends time at the temple grounds and if there are Asians with questions and the Mandarin-speaking Sisters are not there, he will talk to them and tell them all about the temple and the gospel.  This was before he was baptized!  One of the reasons he wanted to get baptized is because he feels welcome and not discriminated against.  Most of the baptism program was in Mandarin, and some parts were in English. I’ll have to ask Sister Huang and Wells what their talks were about.  It was a very nice baptism.

This week was Craig’s birthday.  We had the morning shift.  Two of the Sisters had prepared a little treasure hunt for him.  There were rhyming clues and the treasure at the end was a plate of brownies!  He had Happy Birthday sung to him in English, Mandarin, Kiribati and Spanish!  They also wrote notes and cards to him. 

That night we went to our favorite fancy restaurant for dinner.  MMmmm!  Then off to La Jolla for the sunset, as that is Craig’s favorite place.  Delightful!

For P day last week, we went to the Old Point Loma Lighthouse.  It was built in 1855, but was only operational for 36 years.  It was built at a point 422 feet above sea level.  Too bad low clouds/fog often obscured the light.  They built a new lighthouse closer to the water.  The old lighthouse has been restored and it is quite cool.  Not your usual lighthouse design.

Craig going up the spiral staircase.

Looking down the spiral staircase.

The lantern.

It is in the Cabrillo National Monument Park.  What a beautiful place!  We will go back in October when there is a negative tide to see the tide pools.

Coast guard housing.  Good gig, if you can get it!

Craig with the Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo statue.

The other night we were on Crystal Pier.  While we were looking at the sunset, see what was looking at us!  A drone with a camera. 

I think it is kind of creepy.  Our phones were in front of our faces taking pictures of it so I hope it didn’t get very good pictures of us or any of the other people on the pier.  It stayed for a while.  It did not prevent us from enjoying the gorgeous sunset.

Today we’d like you to meet delightful Sister Wong from Hong Kong.  She attends BYU Hawaii, studying Marketing.  She is the first missionary in her family.  She really would like to backpack around the world – South Africa, Pacific Islands, everywhere. She tells me one of her favorite things to do is to eat.  I just found out at the baptism yesterday that she plays piano.  She is a hard worker, very patient and always has something nice to say.