Week 7: August 26, 2019

Christmas is on friday!!! At the MTC, Christmas is when you get flight plans! I've definitely been enjoying the MTC, and I know my Chinese is very limited (I can pretty much only say Gospel terms), but I still can't wait to go to England! I'm so close! In the other Chinese zone, I met a sister also going to Manchester England, speaking Mandarin. So I'm way excited about that- I'm not alone!

This past week, we've started having TRC's with nonmembers 4 days a week, plus a member TRC every monday. And that's what we'll be doing for the next 2 weeks in addition to last week. It's actually been super fun (and humbling, I can barely understand what they're saying haha), despite having to prepare 5 lessons a week. It's super good practice, and I've learned so much. 

In class this week, the head Chinese teacher, Ye Laoshi, came to my class to talk to us. And she essentially gave us a lecture about how our chinese is way behind where it should be. And it definitely made me aware of how much I need to improve and learn, especially since I'll be going to England in 2 weeks. So my district made a goal to speak more Chinese, we're pretty much fasting from English until we leave, with a few exceptions. So I'm excited for that. I know it's definitely gonna be hard to learn Mandarin in England, especially considering how few Chinese people live there. But we've had a new teacher help us out a couple days this past week, who just got back from his mission in Birmingham, England. He gave me a bunch of tips on how to learn Mandarin over there, so I'm confident I'll be able to learn!

This past week, Elder Bednar came to the MTC! It was amazing, I walked in the gym and could already tell that it was going to be someone special, even before finding out that it was him. And it was so cool when he walked in. Everyone at the MTC stood up in unison, and fell silent. I've never heard 2,000+ people be so quiet. The respect and the the Spirit I felt during that devotional showed me that he is truly called of God. He talked about the Holy Ghost, and a lot about how we're often being guided by the Spirit even when we don't realize. There was a couple things he said that I really liked. He gave two stories at the beginning about people who were being guided by the Spirit without realizing it. And he talked about those experiences saying that sometimes we wonder too much about if what we're doing is a prompting by the Holy Ghost. He said "As we keep moving we can't mess it up. We can't go amiss", and "We're doing it right if we're moving. Stop wondering if you are". That honestly stuck out to me so much, and made me wonder how many times in my life I've been guided by the Spirit without realizing it. And also made me realize that the Spirit will guide us as we keep His commandments and do what is right, so we should just take his advice and, "be good boys and girls, then go." I loved his advice, and I'll definitely take it to heart as I prepare to serve the Lord.

That's it for this week! Except it is fast sunday this next sunday. So If you wanna support me in my endeavors to store up on food Saturday night so I dont die on sunday, heres my address yet again:

Elder Mark Anthony Ensign

SEP10  ENG-MAN

2005 N 900 E Unit 254

Provo UT 84602-1793

And also enjoy these 2 very photogenic pictures I and a sister in my zone took

Me and my companion acting like children

 

Idk what happened that allowed me to take this very interesting picture of my district

And also enjoy these 2 very photogenic pictures I and a sister in my zone took

Week 6: August 19, 2019

你们好!

Pretty great week! This past week we had to switch rooms so that our whole branch could be put right next to each other. We got moved to the building right next to ours, but even though it was so close, everything is VERY different. We moved from the top floor of a building to a basement. The penthouse to the slums. In the words of Elder Chansing (I'll talk about him later), “from economy plus to economy”. In our old room we had a perfect view of the temple with the mountains in the background, but now we can see people's feet if they walk by. Half of the lights are never on in the hallways so it's kinda depressing and makes you feel like you're in a dungeon. We also have an exposed wire in our room so that's pretty exciting. We call it shock wire, cause if you touch it, you die! Just kidding haha but not really. It's actually not too bad, we have a slightly bigger room, we're with most of our zone, and we also have the vending machines on our floor, which is nice. Oh and we don't have to walk up 4 flights of stairs every day now. So not too shabby!

Also this week Sister Sheffield was walking backwards during exercise time, and I guess she tripped over her foot, stepped on it, and now it's fractured. Kinda a crazy story haha. She has a boot and has to use crutches, but other than that she's fine. Also, last week, Elder Beam was playing volleyball, and tripped on the flat ground when he was about to serve and landed on his knee pretty hard. We had to go outside of the MTC to get X-rayed, and apparently he bruised his bone pretty bad. But it's not broken so all's good!

Pretty much every exercise time I play 4 square (or occasionally volleyball). It's actually super fun despite it being a game you usually play in elementary school haha. Me and two other missionaries: Sister Wimmer (going to Melbourne Australia speaking Mandarin), and Elder Chansing (going to Hong Kong China speaking Cantonese) formed the “dream team” where basically we get in the top 3 squares and keep destroying the person in the 1st square. It's super fun, we say “计划!” when we play against people that dont speak Mandarin, it means “plan” haha. We also mess around with people a lot, we always ask people if they wanna be a part of the dream team as a joke, and when they say yes (they always do), we always say “well you can't”. Kinda mean but also super funny haha. We also have a volleyball dream team but that's not as important (; But Sister Wimmer and Elder Chansing just left the MTC today for their missions ): so if you know anyone coming to the MTC speaking Mandarin or Cantonese in the next 3 weeks let me know so I can form another dream team!

This is kinda super crazy, but I guess there's been riots in Hong Kong for a couple weeks (I haven't heard anything about it cause the MTC's super sheltered) to the point where the airport got shut down. And so all the Cantonese and mandarin speakers that were about to leave to Hong Kong today got reassigned to either Ogden Utah, Denver Colorado, or Idaho falls Idaho for 6 weeks. I feel super bad because they probably won't have as many opportunities for them to use their language, but at least they'll be safe!

TRC's were awesome this week! I got to see my older brother, he volunteered! I didn't get to teach him but the other elder Ensign got to. But my TRC's went really good. We taught about the Atonement and used Ether 12:27 to help teach and hopefully help them improve their life. I was actually able to understand pretty much everything that was going on! It was probably the best TRC I've ever had.

This past Tuesday, we had a general authority seventy (Elder Nielson) give a devotional based on a bunch of questions missionaries asked him. It was a super good talk, probably my favorite devotional so far. But one of the questions he answered was “How can we best help wards with small numbers?” Which I thought was a super interesting question to answer, especially at the MTC. But as he talked, it reminded me of an article that my older brother sent me a couple weeks ago, about an area in my mission. Here it is, read it! https://www.lds.org.uk/first-chinese-sacrament-in-manchester?fbclid=IwAR1t90O3LUkPsLQ6hFkKz3qusnHe8aLvdk3md_UL-7VcNaaCVIroi1hcUaQ  But basically this went along really well with the devotional. I wrote down these 2 notes: “We go to church to give, not to get”, and “Church is a place to serve and help others, and as people realize that, they'll want to come to church”. So I just the article and that part of the devotion went really well with each other, and wanted to share cause that's where I'm going, speaking Mandarin! In the article it talks about how the people in that ward will be pioneers in bringing the gospel to China, which honestly just makes me more excited to go to England and teach the Chinese! And also that's super good advice. We shouldn't go to church to get things out of it, we should go to give!

Sorry my email is so long and jumps so much from topic to topic this week, but there was soooo much I wanted to write about, and none of it really went with each other. So there you go! 3 weeks today until I leave to England! Can't believe I'm 2/3 done with the MTC! 我爱你们!

-Elder Ensign

Me the other Elder Ensign and “Brother Ensign”

THE 4 square dream team (me, Sister Wimmer, Elder Chansing)

The volleyball dream team (Elder Chansing, Sister Hatch, Sister Wimmer, Sister Sheffield, me)

My whole district at the temple!

My district celebrating our halfway point at the MTC

Week 5: August 12, 2019

你们好!

     This past week was probably the hardest for me so far, for a lot of different reasons. First off, I was sick a good amount of the week. So that really made it hard for me to focus, and just made me frustrated. And then I had a really hard time keeping the goals I was setting for myself, especially language wise. I only actually reached my language goals maybe 3 days this week. So that really just made me feel like I was letting myself down, and not reaching my full potential. I remember a moment I had on the day when I was the most sick. It was during language study, and I just wasn't understanding what I was trying to learn. We were outside, and I remember looking up and right there was the UK flag. And that really reminded me of my purpose. I'm here to learn, so I'm able to bring the gospel to the people in the Manchester England mission. To bring them the happiness and joy that comes from the gospel. So with that thought, I had a newfound determination to learn, to work hard so that I will be able to teach others and invite them to come unto Christ. So after that moment, I was able to accomplish my goals for the rest of that week!

     TRC's went really good this week! We ended up teaching about families. The first lesson we taught ended up being to 3 people! There was 2 sisters from Taiwan, and a former missionary that went to Taiwan. We ended up spending pretty much the whole time just talking to them, and getting to know them. We only had a couple minutes near the end to fit our message in. And even though we didn't end up teaching as much as I was expecting, what we ended up doing was the most useful to me at least. I feel pretty comfortable teaching some gospel principles in Chinese, but what I struggle with most is having normal conversations with people-getting to know people more (they don't really teach us much conversational chinese here, just gospel terms, grammar principles, and the occasional every day life terms). So that was really helpful to me. The second lesson we ended up actually being able to teach our lesson, and it went really well. We had taught the second person before, and in his feedback he said we improved a lot better from last time! That was one of our last member TRC's! We have one next week and then the monday after that, then it's native speakers/non member TRC's over Skype. And we'll be doing that 4 times a week. So I'm way nervous for that, but also a little excited!

     Yesterday when I was waiting in the line to get lunch, a random Japanese elder started talking to me. I guess him and his companion had challenged each other to bear their testimonies to a couple people every day, so he ended up bearing his to me. He was super nice! But while we were talking I mentioned that I'm from Logan, and he said that his parents used to live in Millville, and that his grandparents live there now! So I looked at his name tag, he was Elder Stringham. And I remembered that the patriarch for our stake is Brother Stringham, so I asked if his grandpa was a patriarch, and he said he was! I just thought that was a super crazy coincidence, that I got to meet the grandson of the person who gave me my patriarchal blessing!

     Time for the spiritual note! This past week, we did an activity where we discussed repentance with someone else, and asked/answered questions. We had to tie Ether 12:27 into our discussion, it says "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."So the most obvious thing I got out of that was that if we humble ourselves, God will make our weaknesses strengths. The second thing I got was "If men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness". That stuck out to me, because I didn't really realize that we often don't know what our weaknesses are, but God does. And he'll tell us so that we can improve ourselves! I love that thought, because I want to become the best missionary and the best person that I can possibly be. And that's not possible without God's help. He loves us and want us to succeed!

That's it for this week! I'm over halfway done with the MTC! 4 weeks to go! 我爱你们!

-Elder Ensign

Also for anyone wondering, I don't actually know how to write/read most characters, we don't get taught that at the MTC, but we will get materials to help us learn characters after we've been out for a year. I have a keyboard on this phone where I type in the pinyin (the pronunciations of words in english), and it turns it into characters. So the title of this email, translated by me to the best of my ability, means "Let's get this bread"

Also sorry I don't really have any pictures from this week, but here's a picture of me and Elder Hsu, the missionary I hosted last week!

And another one with me, Elder Beam and the MTC cat! I promise there's no filter, our eyes are actually that twinkly haha. No I actually have no idea why we look like that. But anyways, all the languages have different names for her. The mandarin speakers call her 毛姐妹 I think the english speakers call her Sister Mittens, and the Cantonese speakers call her chong maosy or something like that. The legend is that some elders baptized her in the fountain and gave her the priesthood and they got sent home because of it. Super random but I wanted to share cause I thought it was funny

me and Elder Hsu (the missionary I hosted last week)

me, Elder Beam, and the MTC cat (Sister Mittens or Chong Maosy)

Week 4: August 5, 2019

什么上?

   This past week, we got to host new missionaries! Not the normal ones that come in through the parking garage, we hosted the ones that flew in. The missionary I hosted was from Taiwan, Elder Hsu! He lived in Puli. I told him my older brother went on his mission to Taiwan in that area. I remember he looked at my name tag and went "... Elder Ensign?", so I told him the Chinese name Gao Zhang Lao, and he looked super surprised! Apparently he knew Michael when he served his mission there! He said he was baptized around that time. Him and his mom are the only ones in his family that are members. Super cool! He's really nice. He's going to the Taipei Taiwan mission. He's not in my zone, but he's in the other Mandarin speaking zone. I'm so glad I got to host him, that's probably one of the coolest things that's happened here!!

     We get new missionaries in our zone every 3 weeks, so we got a whole bunch of new ones last Wednesday. 25 new ones (3 districts worth), which is a lot! They're all super cool. There's one going to London, so now there's two people going to England in my zone speaking mandarin, me and him! Here's a kinda cool story about one of the elders in our zone. On last Wednesday, the day the new missionaries came in, they meet with the zone leaders, the sister training leaders, and the technology specialists (yeah, I'm big time). But one of the elders came into the MTC at like 7 PM rather than like noon when everyone else comes in. Apparently his older brother got back from his mission that day! So he didn't come to the MTC until later that night. Me and Elder Beam had to go pick him up from the front desk right before the meeting. Super lucky for him!

     I'm starting to get the language more and more each day! For our TRC's on Saturday, I could actually understand what was going on! I don't know how to say a lot though, so I wasn't really able to offer a lot to our lesson besides what we had planned, and my testimony. I've set a lot of goals for myself to learn the language, and I feel like it's been working. It's hard work, but hopefully it'll pay off. My district's Christlike attribute goal this week was on charity and love, so I've been thinking a lot about the people in England that I'm gonna teach. And it's been motivating me a lot to work harder to learn the language so I can help them!

     My district is super awesome, and I can't say that enough! Every night after class we all have a "blessing circle" together, where we basically share some of the blessings we saw that day. It's always super uplifting, especially because class can be really hard and defeating some days. We all pretty much agree that our district is our family away from home.

     This past week, I was flipping through my paper scriptures because I was bored. And I noticed that when I was a freshman in seminary, we made a lot of connections between the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon. One of them was in Mosiah 2, when King Benjamin was addressing his people. In verse 6 it says "And they pitched their tents round about the temple, every man having his tent with the door thereof towards the temple". And I had connected that to Genesis 13:12, where it says he "pitched his tent towards Sodom". And for those of you who don't know, Sodom was this really wicked place, full of wicked people. And later in Genesis, the Lord destroyed Sodom because of how wicked it was. So I was kinda pondering both stories, and it made me think: Are we pitching our tents towards wicked places that will destroy us, or towards holy places, like temples? Food for thought.

     Only 5 more weeks until I fly out for England! 我爱你们!

-Elder Ensign

A picture of a super cool view from one of the buildings at the MTC!

Me, Elder Mathews, and the other Elder Ensign

My whole district wearing glasses on "look smart Sunday" (except Sister Low, who has perfect vision. In her words "when they asked me what line I could read on the eye test, I said 'copyright 2017'")

My district again all eating mints (yeah we're pretty cool)

My district all eating mints (yeah we're pretty cool)

A picture of a super cool view from one of the buildings at the MTC!

Me, Elder Mathews, and the other Elder Ensign

My district wearing glasses on "Look Smart Sunday" (except Sister Low, who has perfect vision. In her words "when they asked me what line I could read on the eye test, I said 'copyright 2017'")