Week 24 - Christmas! December 26, 2019

Merry Christmas everyone! 

This past week and a half was so fun! We did a bunch of caroling as a district, and a whole lot of street contacting cause like all our friends are on vacation or with family. But that's ok! We ended up finding a really good person a week ago named Kate, who we gave a chapel tour to and is just super good. Also, we got a referral from the Leeds mission of an older Chinese man, Frankie. Shoutout to Elder Carmen from the MTC! He's soooo good, he basically talked about how he really wants to learn more about Jesus, and that he's excited to meet with us more. So I'm excited to see how that goes!

We ate a lot of food this past week and a half! We started off trying to do a meat fast, but that failed pretty fast haha. Godfrey (one of our few chinese members) just found us on the street again and took us out to eat at pizza co, which is basically the most unhealthy places ever haha. Then we got fed later by a member of our bishopric, who took us to this fried chicken place, Nando's. Also, we treated Michael to a real english christmas dinner at his flat. The list goes on, there was sooo much food! We had a member give all the missionaries a huge bag of chocolate too, so all in all, this week I've probably gained like 10 pounds

I guess I'd better share a short spiritual thought since I'm a missionary and its christmas time! This past district council, Sister Ward bore her testimony, since she's going home next monday. She's one of the few Chinese speaking missionaries here, so itll be sad to see her go! But she bore testimony about always testifying of Jesus Christ, and that just stuck with me. This past sunday, we were street contacting home, when this random man walked straight up to us and asked if we were the missionaries. He then proceeded to spend the next 45 minutes bashing on our beliefs, asking us really hard questions, really in an effort to shake our faith. At the end of the conversation, I just had a prompting to bear my testimony. And at that instant, I could feel the Spirit so strongly, testifying to me that the things I was testifying of were true. He didnt end up changing his mind on anything. But that's ok! He has his choice. 2 Nephi 25: 26 “And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.” The church is true! I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that as we turn to Him, he will help us overcome anything! Hope you all had a merry christmas!

-Elder Ensign

Some pics of the Christmas lights around picadilly

Manchester University :)

Some pics of the Christmas lights around picadilly

My district all caroling together

Some pics of the Christmas lights around picadilly

St Peter's square clock tower/town centre

Week 23: December 16, 2019

Hey all!

Really quick, the next 3 weeks are gonna be a little different in terms of pday with the holidays and also transfers. So heres a list of my pdays for the rest of the transfer really quick

Today (16th Dec)

26th Dec

1st Jan

7th Jan

So this week was quite the week! The adventure really started Tuesday night when as we were cooking our tea, there was this loud pop and then everything went dark. The power went out haha. Elder Chen and I must have stared at each other in the dark in complete silence for a solid 30 seconds haha. But after we got ourselves collected, we went to the breaker box and turned them all off and on like 3 times but nothing happened. So we went and talked to like all our neighbors and called pretty much every phone number we could find in our flat in addition to a bunch of senior couples. And nothing ended up working. So we ended up staying in our zone leaders flat that night so we didnt freeze haha. The senior couple in charge of housing had no chill haha, here's a couple quick examples of what he said:

1. In response to us saying the heaters wouldnt work cause there was no power “Well I used to be a scoutmaster in Idaho...” (you can probably tell where that went)

2. When we said our water heater was probably about to run out of warm water “yeah lots of people go several days without taking showers”

3. And my personal favorite: “try to figure things out and let me know how it goes in the morning”

So after a peaceful, warm night in the zone leaders flat, and after a nice warm shower too, we headed to the Christmas Conference! Which was like zone conference except christmas, and we also had it at the temple! It was nice! The Preston temple is super nice, we were able to go through a session. Then we had a christmas lunch featuring a whole cooked pig and like a million desserts, and then a variety show with a bunch of acts by missionaries. My district sang “I will go and do” (the new youth song), in both english and Chinese. It was amazing, you could feel the Spirit so strongly!

And on Thursday, Jeremy got baptized! Wow I'm so excited for him. He bore his testimony afterwards and it was so powerful. He mentioned how he knows Heavenly Father loves him and also that even though he hasn't learned about Jesus Christ for very long, he really has such a desire to keep following him! I'm so excited to see how he continues in the church!

Friday we spent pretty much all day finding. And it was absolutely pouring rain outside. It was kinda horrible haha. But one of the chinese members, Godfrey, took us out to eat at a buffet haha. So pretty good day. And on saturday, we had the chinese Christmas party! Which was pretty fun, we had a bunch of people come, pretty much all of which were just friends.

Guess what happened last night again? We were making tea and the power went out againnnnn. So yeah basically our flat is broken and we've had to sleep at the zone leaders flat pretty often recently haha

-Elder Ensign 

Godfrey treating us to Tops Buffer

Jeremy's baptism! He's the one next to me

The power outage

Christmas conference @ the temple

Christmas conference @ the temple

Week 22: December 9, 2019

Hey all,

First, I need your help! For christmas/new years this year, we can watch two “secular” movies! It's a wonderful life and miracle on 34th street. So if yall wanna be the best send me the google drive or something please haha

But it's been a pretty average week, nothing eventful really happened

We had the ward christmas party last saturday which was pretty fun! And free food as a missionary in a YSA ward is pretty nice. Also yesterday we watched a choir performance the YSA ward put on for the stake which was pretty good

We went on exchanges this past week with the zone leaders. Elder stayner and I taught this older man, Walter, from China. He thought I learned Chinese in china so that was pretty flattering haha

Muslim update: we stopped some muslims on the street last saturday cause why not and probably had one of the most interesting conversations ever. Well not really a conversation but more like him giving a 10 minute memorized speech on why Islam is the true religion. It was kinda crazy, it went from him talking about how the Quran predicted the layers of the belly, to talking about how his friend memorized the Quran, to how he used to be a catholic and has a giant cross tattooed on his chest. Quite the conversation haha

That's really it for this week, I'm excited for this next week though! We have zone conference on wednesday, which is gonna be at the temple. Jeremy's getting baptized on thursday! And we also have a Chinese party on saturday that should be huge! 

-Elder Ensign 

More pictures from the Christmas market

My beautifully decorated gingerbread man

More pictures from the Christmas market

Plus town hall 

Week 21: December 2, 2019

Hey all!

This past week wasn't really any different than last week (besides the story below haha, keep reading), we've just spent so much time finding. Our teaching pool has shrunk a lot recently so just all of our time is spent finding basically. Which is really hard sometimes, this week was especially hard though. We were out on the streets for at least 4 hours pretty much every day. And we didn't have any success, we weren't able to make any friends. We got a bunch of phone numbers of people that are interested, it's now just a matter of setting up return appointments. And this week, it just feels like a lot of our progressing friends just have lost interest. We have 4 friends who I thought were doing really well, but all of them had pretty big concerns that popped up this week. So it's been a little hard.

A little ray of sunshine is Jeremy! He's still on date for December 12th. I'm so excited! Also, Christmas is coming up, which means we're gonna have a lot of activities. And I'm really hoping these activities will help us find more Chinese people! We have an activity specifically for Chinese people that I'm hoping will bring a lot of interested people.

We had quite the experience last wednesday (28 Nov) haha. So we were street contacting pretty close to the chapel when some sister missionaries in our district called us with an “emergency situation”. There was basically this creepy dude hanging out in the chapel demanding to see some missionaries. So for safety reasons, Elder Chen and I (being the only elders in our district-besides the AP's, but they're always gone), went to go talk to him. Lucky us haha. We were originally planning on just kicking him out of the chapel, but for whatever reason we decided to meet with him for a little bit. So he had seen missionaries around before (he saw them before “outside the bar” he was in). And for whatever reason, last week he just had the random desire to come meet with some, with the intention of being baptized. Yeah crazy I know right. So we met with him, and he smelled horrible, like soooo bad. We found out later that he had been drinking beer before we got to the chapel and that he also rolled some joints in the bathroom (there was weed all over the bathroom). We were also concerned and a little scared because when we asked what he did everyday, he said, “I just try not to get locked up.” Anywayyyys, during the lesson, he kept talking about how he wanted to get baptized so he could be saved and go to heaven. He actually wanted to get baptized the next day haha. So being the GREAT missionaries we are, we got all the pamphlets (including the commandments) and went to go teach him. So we ended up teaching like everything (not really, but still a lot) in an hour, from Joseph Smith to the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the commandments. It went surprisingly well haha. Then afterwards, he really badly wanted to see how we “preached the Gospel”, so he went out with us street contacting. So to avoid the horrible consequences that that could've brought, we said something came up and we had to go home. So basically long story short he's actually probably not interested in being baptized (surprise, surprise). He had planned on meeting with the AP's later that night and he didn't show up. We also gave him our contact info and he hasn't been in touch with us either. But technically we did put him on date for December 26 (because of his relentless pleading), so I'll let you all know after Christmas whether or not he actually gets baptized haha

-Elder Ensign

We visited a huge old church last pday

We visited a huge old church last pday

Manchester at night

Thanksgiving dinner

Week 20: November 26, 2019

随便吃！

This past week has pretty much been the longest week ever. It was transfers again too! I'm staying in the Manchester YSA ward again with Elder Chen again. It's gonna be the 3rd transfer here but I'm really glad cause the YSA ward is pretty much the best area in the mission (its nickname is the Promised Land), and I actually get to use my Chinese here too! I'm gonna be here a long time too based off of what I've heard haha. Also! We got our friend Jeremy on date for baptism! I'll talk about him in a second!

So what the week it's been! We went finding a lot because we had a bunch of lessons cancel, and we weren't able to set up as much appointments as we wanted. On Tuesday I accidentally left my coat at the flat, so I was literally freezing! It got to -10°C that night (14°F)! By the time we finished finding I literally couldnt feel anything. At the end I was showing a random man some things from the BoM and my voice was literally shaking. It was a great time haha. On Wednesday we went street contacting for 6 hours! Sooooo long, it was a throwback to my second week in England, freshers week. My feet weren't happy from walking around all day haha. And the worst part is that we didn't really have any success with all of our finding efforts. We had lots of good conversations but nobody really interested. 

On tuesday one of our friends invited us to this Taiwanese/Chinese socializing activity at night. It was basically just a bunch of people talking in Chinese. But it was way fun, there was a bunch of people trying to learn chinese there too. I had some good conversations and got someone's WhatsApp! It was a good finding opportunity, we're probably gonna go next month too!

Thursday is where things picked up! We had a lesson with Jeremy early in the afternoon. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It went really well and we invited him to be baptized! He's on date for December 12th! We have a bunch of things to teach him, but we've found time this week to meet him a bunch. And finding from that point went a little better! We ended up getting 2 new friends which isn't a ton, but it's kinda been the average for the past couple weeks. One of them was a referral from a nonmember! Nobody even asked, she just invited her friends to come to church with her haha. She's amazing!

We got fed 3 times this week! Technically twice but we also had family home evening at the YSA ward so 3 times. Just in time for Thanksgiving! We got fed on Saturday by one of our nonmember friends - HouLin. She made us dumplings which were soooo good. She's an older Chinese lady. There's actually a bunch of older Chinese people that live in England. And all of them speak little to no english. It's not what I expected at all, but we're gonna try to find some for the chinese group! And then hopefully we'll be able to change the chinese group into a chinese branch!! We also got fed on sunday by a member, Jonah. He's super nice, he went on a mission to the Phillipines so he made us some filipino food. Then on Monday the FHE activity was a thanksgiving feast. Which was actually so good. The Manchester YSA ward is actually sooo good with activities. Its every monday, they always have a bunch of food, and it's super fun. We can only go if we have friends going, but we pretty much always do so we always go. Its super nice.

On a separate note, the new missionary standards let us read emails all week long now! So send all the emails you want haha

-Elder Ensign

Our Christmas tree featuring our trifle haha

Nice park! One of the only places with fresh air in Manchester haha

The Manchester bee, Christmas style!

Christmas market (peep all that fudge 🤤)

Christmas Market

Week 19: November 18, 2019

Hey all!

Really quick, transfers are next week! Wow this transfer went by fast. But that means my pday next week will be on the 26th instead of the 25th.

So it's been quite the average week. We haven't really been doing super great with finding and we dont have anyone progressing super well right now. We spent like a super long time this week finding which tbh gets super monotonous. I dont mind street contacting too much, but 4 or 5 hours a day of street contacting really just gets to me. So we've been trying to set up more appointments with our friends so we can help them progress. And then with our extra free time we go finding. We have quite a few friends who are pretty good, but I feel like the top 2 are really Jeremy and Jason. Every lesson I can just feel the Spirit so strongly. Theyve been so good at meeting with us and they attend church pretty much every week. Jason's mom was visiting him from China this week and he brought her to church! They both just seem so happy since we've met them! We're planning on inviting them to be baptized pretty soon. I'm excited for them!

In terms of random events:

1. I got “kabobtized” on Saturday for district tea! So every Saturday night my district all eats tea together. And this past time we got “kabobtized” which basically means eating “donner” meat at Pizza Co (a restaurant nearby). Idk why it exists but I guess I'm a part of Manchester YSA culture now haha.

2. Bible bashed a couple people this week! Not really bible bashed, just hastily cross referenced the Book of Mormon and the Bible for like half an hour on the street, while defending the church haha

3. I gave a talk yesterday in sacrament meeting! It was about becoming spiritually reliant. It's hard giving talks in the chinese group cause everyone there has been a member for only a couple months, or they're just investigators. Usually like half the people at church are investigators we have. So we have to talk pretty simply so we dont confuse them haha. But I think people were actually able to kinda understand me haha so good to see some progression!

4. New missionary handbook came out! Not super exciting but pretty much everything is exciting out here when you dont have Netflix haha (kidding)

5. Ate an actually huge dinner last night haha. Sophia (baptized in October) and her friend Jane spent like 3 hours cooking for us. Super nice, we never get fed in YSA so it was amazing! Also I'm betting Jane's gonna get baptized pretty soon so I'm pretty excited for that! That also leads to the next point which is that:

6. I got a Chinese name! Jane and Sophia made it for me, they're really proud of it haha. It's 高晟泽 (Gāo Shèngzé). They put like a week of thought into it haha

-Elder Ensign

We went to the Christmas market in Manchester today, I'll send pics next week!

Another old building

The feast

The feast

My new name

My new name

Week 18: November 11, 2019

Heya everyone!

Yesterday was remembrance day, which is kinda like Memorials day or Veterans day but in England. So for church we went to a remembrance day event in St. Peter's square (middle of manchester). There was bagpipes, a marching band, and a ton of people from the military marching around. It was way interesting, I'm glad I got to experience some culture here!

We have some new friends who I feel like are gonna start progressing pretty soon! One is YuBin, we met him street contacting the other day. I actually think he was drunk when we talked to him haha. It was at night and he was kinda staggering across the sidewalk haha. But nonetheless he seems pretty interested in meeting with us! We also have Crystal, who we met during freshers week I guess but lost her until about 2 weeks ago. But she's so excited to keep meeting with us and learning more! Also, some sisters in my district are super good at street contacting, and keep making Chinese friends. So they keep transferring them over to us so our teaching pool is actually huge right now haha. Which is a little hard cause my Chinese is not good at all right now but at least I'm getting plenty of listening and speaking opportunities!

Also, my district started doing street displays this week! It's pretty much a YSA tradition since all the missionaries in YSA see each other all the time, but we haven't done it for a while. Basically we set up a table with a bunch of Book of Mormons and a banner and then a missionary shouts out a message through a megaphone. Kidding, it's basically street contacting but with a bunch of missionaries in front of a banner/table with Book of Mormons. And it's super effective, we make a bunch of new friends everytime we do it. We made like 3 friends in 2 hours which is sooo good. It's the same thing we did in freshers week almost 2 months ago (wow time flies). So yeah, finding is going really well right now, we're just working on getting them all to progress!

Also england is sooooo cold, this week was literally the worst and it's only gonna get colder. Also there's like no sun here so I'm literally so pale right now. It's getting dark at like 5 right now, but in december it's supposed to get dark before 4. So I'm pale and only gonna get paler. But now people on the street dont think I'm asian and get more surprised when I speak chinese. So I guess theres some benefits to the lack of sunshine here!

-Elder Ensign 

Some pictures from remembrance day yesterday

Also some random person on the street we were talking to the other day wanted to take a picture with us for whatever reason haha

Week 17: November 4, 2019

Hey all!

This past week we started going tracting! I'm serving in the YSA ward, so literally nobody ever tracts here cause it's kinda useless. But there's also the chinese group here, and there's no age limit! This past week, Elder Chen had the idea to try and find a Chinese family, cause that would seriously change the chinese group for the better! So far we haven't really had any success, but we did talk to a Muslim man on his doorstep for about 40 minutes. He was pretty disappointed we didn't wanna argue with him. So he told us to read the Quran and then come back and argue with him haha. We've actually talked to an insane amount of Muslim people. Like every door we knock on is muslim. It's horrible, they won't listen to anything we say. So if yall have any ideas of how we can (peacefully & respectfully) argue with them next time, let me know!

In terms of other things happening this week, we got 2 new friends who are really starting to progress! We have YuChen (Jason) and Jeremy. They're both so good, we're hoping to get them on date pretty soon. Jason really loves meeting with us. He plays Euphonium at the music university across the street. Apparently he had a music competition which he took 1st in. And he claims it was because he prayed about it! So glad for him, he's progressing so well! We also have BoTing, who was already progressing. BoTing is a philosophy major so she likes getting pretty deep haha. When we first started meeting with BoTing, she mentioned how she really started meeting with us as kind of a hobby, she was just curious about our church. But we've seen so many good changes in her life as she's met with us. She mentions how special she feels when she reads the Book of Mormon and meets with us. We're hoping to invite her to be baptized next time we meet with her! So excited!

We also gave a bunch of chapel tours last Saturday to some Chinese people. The first one was Grace, who some other sisters in our district found. She seems really good! She loves how nice everyone is and she even invited one of her friends to come to church with her yesterday! We also gave a chapel tour to Ying, who I found a couple weeks ago. As soon as she walked into the chapel she mentioned how much peace she felt, that she felt really good to be there. She also mentioned some fears she had, that we were able to address really well using the Plan of Salvation! They seem so excited to learn, I'm hoping they'll be able to progress soon!

Also, Michael and Sophia are going to the temple on friday! I'm so excited, we get to go with them! And Michael got the Aaronic Priesthood yesterday! I'm so glad I've been able to see so many changes in their lives!

-Elder Ensign

Costco pizza

District Costco trip! Theres like no American stores in the UK so we all jumped on the opportunity to go to Costco haha

Some of our district in a train to Runcorn

Week 16: October 28, 2019

你们好！

Sophia got baptized on saturday! So excited for her and the decisions she's made, we've really seen such a change in her life for the better since we've started meeting with her. Also peep the pic I may or may not have snuck into the program (she did approve by the way, she really liked it. Also she did make us change the program to literal perfection (we had to change the fonts for the characters, the alignment of the names, etc.), which took literally forever. But she never wanted to get rid of or change the picture on the last page, sooooo...). But yeah she's so good! She's really changed her life so much more for the better as she's kept the commandments and followed Jesus Christ. I'm excited to see her grow more!

Sophia also asked me to confirm her yesterday which I was excited for, but also super nervous cause I knew the blessing would be in Chinese. But as I gave her a blessing, I could feel the Spirit so strongly, telling me what I needed to say. And I know that I myself definitely wouldn't have been able to say what I said if I didn't have the Spirit guiding me. Gift of tongues is real!

So can I just talk for a second more about England the past week?!? So it's literally soooo cold here. Like I know Utah is colder temperature wise, but here it's like a wet cold cause of the humidity. Also this past week, it rained a months worth in 2 days! A months worth in England is a lot too! Pouring rain for 2 straight days, it was horrible. Even with 2 coats on I was still freezing. We went on exchanges again with the Zone Leaders and we went tracting again. I felt like a real missionary going around door to door at 8 o'clock at night in the pouring rain in a foreign country. It was amazing haha

Also, I have to talk more about Chinese people. So they put peanut butter on things that makes no sense, at least to me. So it started like my first week with Elder Chen, who put peanut butter on his hamburger, and a lot of other things (tuna fish sandwich, etc.). I kinda pushed that aside cause I just assumed it was a personal thing. But then last sunday, we made sandwiches together before stake conference with some of our friends. One of our friends made a ham and peanut butter sandwich. And Sophia made a peanut butter and KETCHUP sandwich! Seriously so gross. She also hardcore judged my PB&J sandwich for whatever reason too, we had a heated argument about that haha. Chinese people!?

This is a little disappointing, but we're gonna have to push back Daisy's baptismal date. She just all of a sudden had a bunch of concerns about what we believe in, and we're gonna take some extra time to resolve her concerns. But I'm hoping she'll still want to be baptized!

-Elder Ensign

England food (Yorkshire pudding & lots of gravy)

The baptismal program :)

The chinese missionaries in my district enjoying some soymilk when we should've been studying

Lots of people from our Chinese group!

Sophia's baptism!

Week 15: October 21, 2019

Hey all!

Michael got baptized on Thursday! So excited for him, he's sooo good! I also figured out how the missionaries found him. So a sister gave him a pass-along card. And normally people dont ever look at the cards after you give to them, they either lose it or throw it away. But Michael being AMAZING just randomly showed up at the church not too much long later, no questions asked. Probably surprised the heck out of the missionaries there haha. And about 2-3 months later, here he is, a baptized member of the church! He was honestly so prepared for this Gospel. He basically just accepted everything we taught him from the beginning, all the commandments too! I'm so excited for him and the decisions he's made! His testimony is so strong!

Our next baptism is coming up on Saturday! Sophia! She's sooo good as well, she loves meeting with us. And she's helped my Chinese a lot haha. She's ruthless when I make mistakes which I'm so glad about! But yeah she's so prepared for Saturday, I can't wait! After that, our next baptism should be on 7 November, Daisy! She's also so ready, she loves learning. She's started going through the Bible the past little bit which she LOVES. She literally reads it like a novel. And then when she meets with us she tells us all about what she reads, the stories, everything. I of course have no idea what's going on cause her vocab is actually so huge, in addition to all the Bible words she's using. And she also comes with like a million super hard questions. For example, one of her questions was about what the difference between Jehovah and Jesus Christ was, and she wanted a scripture that explained it too. So that was quite the question to answer. At least she loves reading scriptures haha

For the past couple days, Elder Helzer stayed with us. He was temporarily assigned to the Manchester mission because he was Visa waiting. He got his Visa though and left to his mission in America today. And guess where? Ogden Utah! So all of y'all back home in Logan, look out for an Elder Helzer from Germany!

In terms of other things that happened that happened this week, I'm actually super poor right now. Last week on P-day we went out to a super posh chinese buffet for dinner, and I blew 15.5 pounds. 15.5 POUNDS! Big hit to my bank account haha. And then we went out to eat with one of our new friends from China a couple days ago, and his family's like super rich or something cause he's travelled to pretty much every country in Europe. And been to like all the continents. So we ended up going to a super expensive Japanese restaurant for lunch. I got one of the cheapest things I could get, which still ended up being 10 pounds. So as of right now, I have about 2 pounds left in my account and 2 weeks until I get more money. Oh and everything in England is super expensive for whatever reason. Pray for me! 

-Elder Ensign

Starting to become Autumn here! Also featuring some of Manchester's MANY cranes. They're literally building so many skyscrapers right now, it's insane how fast Manchester is growing

Michael's Baptism!

University of Manchester's new engineering development, literally right next to the chapel. I took this picture from the top floor of the chapel. But when its finished, theres gonna be thousands of students walking right past the church everyday. Idk when its gonna be finished, I've heard people say it'll be next summer, some have said it won't be done until 2022 though. I have no idea but I feel like itll be done pretty quick cause they started building it a year ago and look how much they've done!

Entrance to the super posh Chinese buffet