Elder Mark Ensign: Week 11: September 19, 2019

Hey all!

My first P-day of the field is today instead of on monday like it should be, cause this week is Fresher's week! I'll explain later what that is. But here's some things you all should know real fast. So my mission has a rule that we can't read any emails until pday, which is different from the MTC. So if you send me emails throughout the week, just know I can't read them until mondays. Also, there's no wifi at my apartment, we have to go to the chapel, which is a 25-30 minute walk both ways. So I might not have time to communicate with everyone on P-day... sorry! Also this email's gonna be super long cause it's almost been 2 weeks. And next email will probably be pretty short, cause monday is in like 4 days haha.

So here's what's happened since I left the MTC! So after a 4 hour long plane ride to Georgia, I had another 7 hours on a plane to Manchester! I flew with a bunch of missionaries going to Frankfurt Germany on the flight to Atlanta which made me feel less lonely haha. I actually knew one of them-he went to Mountain Crest-Elder King (Schylar). But then I was alone from Atlanta to Manchester. Super boring flight, I couldn't sleep at all which did not help my jetlag haha. Also I guess I look old enough for alcohol cause they offered me wine with my dinner haha. I got to the airport, the AP's picked me up and took me to the mission home! They told me a couple quick things I needed to know, I had an interview with the mission president, and then they sent me out with my trainer. All the other missionaries arrived last week, so I guess I missed all the welcome festivities haha

My trainer is Elder Chen! He's from Taiwan, and also on a mandarin speaking assignment. His native language is Mandarin but he's also learning english cause... England. So yeah I'm super glad I'll be able to speak chinese a ton and hopefully I learn fast! He's been super helpful in learning Chinese. So after a quick trip to the store he took me out finding. And I guess finding in my area means going to this really busy street called Oxford road where there's like 3 universities right next to each other. Also our church building is on that road. And then we just stop people and talk to them. So that's super different from anything I've ever experienced. I've never randomly stopped people on the street to talk to them, so I've had to get used to that haha.

So there's actually sooooo many Chinese people here! If you go out on Oxford road, you're pretty much guaranteed to always see a couple pretty much all times of day. Manchester is super diverse, theres pretty much more people of other races than there are English people! I'm so glad, I'll get to practice speaking a lot. Because my Chinese is actually terrible, and that became apparent pretty fast. We've had so many lessons where I have no idea what's going on, I can understand about half the words they say. But it gets a little better every day which gives me hope! Pretty much all of the Chinese go to college here, but there's a couple that live here permanently. So now I'll explain what "fresher's week" is. So basically all 3 universities on Oxford road open at the same time, so all the students arrive at the same time. And Oxford Road is full of people. Like seriously sooo many people. And there's tons of Chinese too. It's like someone opened a football stadium to let all the fans out, except they kept coming out. All day. It's insane. So they staggered everybody's pdays so there would always be missionaries out on the street. And that's why my pday is today! They also pulled like 20 missionaries from different areas to come help us find people cause of how busy the street is. I'm gonna save most of the details about fresher's week for monday, cause we still have 2 days left, and that way my email will be a little longer on Monday.

We already have so many friends (investigators) progressing for baptism! We have Michael who's the most prepared person pretty much ever. The missionaries taught him one lesson before I got here, and then me and Elder Chen taught him 2 more lessons and set a baptismal date on my 2nd lesson with him! He just pretty much accepts everything we teach him. Way cool! We have another one named Daisy, who pretty much said she'd get baptized as soon as she has a testimony of the Book of Mormon. I'm so excited for all the people I'm teaching! And they're pretty much all chinese! I've actually only taught one lesson in English. The rest have been Chinese which also means I dont really say much because I dont really know what's going on haha.

You all know that article I sent a couple weeks about the chinese YSA branch in Manchester?? Well that's where I'm serving! It's actually a super tiny group right now, there was like 10 people there on sunday, including the 4 missionaries in that ward. So there was 4 missionaries, 3 members, and 3 friends! There's at least 5 other members in the ward, but they're all on vacation right now together. It's been a super crazy transition, from my huge ward, to my zone at the MTC, to my tiny branch in Manchester. But it makes me want to work harder to have more people at church! We don't actually meet in the chapel at the church, that's for the english YSA wards. We meet in a classroom on a different floor. It's super cool, everything's in Chinese!

Sorry this email is SOOOO long! So much to talk about! 我爱你们!

-Elder Ensign