Week 12: September 23, 2019

你们好!

Let me explain fresher's week! What a crazy week it's been! We've been out on the streets from 10 AM to 5 PM monday through saturday! Except for Thursday, which was my Pday as you all know. But it was exciting and also super hard. Basically what we do all day is try to get people to stop and talk to us. We start off with normal conversation topics like asking if they're a student, what they're studying, etc. Then we bridge over to the gospel and hopefully interest them into either giving us their phone number or getting them to go to an activity or to church. So that was super exhausting to just talk to people all day. The goal was to get 200 people's contact info, but we way surpassed that goal, we got like 500! Which is super exciting! There was an insane amount of people, and so many chinese too! The Chinese people are more likely to stop and talk to you-I guess they're more curious about religion- so I got to speak plenty of Chinese this past week! I also got to talk to a bunch of bible bashers, one of which claimed that Mitt Romney was in the Illuminati. When I asked how he found that out he said “From the Google!” So pretty interesting week to say the least haha

Every night this past week we had activities for fresher's week. We had hotpots, movie nights, etc. at the church all week. So we had a lot of people go to those activities. And then we had church yesterday! And there was soooooo many people that went! The Chinese group basically tripled in size, there was at least 15-20 interested people there! And that's not even a portion of the Chinese people we found. We found about 150 chinese people on the street that showed some interest, and we haven't even contacted all of them yet. I'm so excited for the next couple weeks (or months if I stay in this area next transfer). 

But now that freshers week is over, they divvied up all the names to the missionaries in my area. And we got so many Chinese phone numbers this past week that me and Elder Chen are pretty much exclusively teaching Chinese people now. Which I'm excited for but also a little terrified at the same time. Also this is kinda random, but when all the Chinese people speak English they have super British accents. It's super funny because it's not at all what you would expect, but I guess it makes sense because that's where they learn English.

Honestly Chinese has been super hard for me. It's really hard to be in a lesson and feel like you're not really helping them since you can't understand most of the things they're saying. It feels like I'm basically a spectator in every lesson... I kinda just sit in the background while Elder Chen does most of the teaching, and occasionally I'll give a brief portion. But from what I've heard from the other Chinese missionaries in my mission is that that's usually what happens for the first couple transfers. And their chinese is all really good, so that gives me some hope that I'll be able to learn Chinese. It's been especially hard this week with Freshers week, we haven't had time for language study at all. So I'm really grateful next week will be back to normal.

Also I finally got a bus pass! Before it used to be like a 30+ minute walk to and from the church but now it's a less then 10 minute bus ride. Super nice. Oh and all the buses are double decker so pretty high class. I have yet to sit on the bottom level haha I'm basically a child

That's it for this week! 爱你们!

-Elder Ensign

Another view of University of Manchester from the double decker bus haha. Also with the classic England weather

My district! Bottom row from the left: Sister Fernandez, Sister Gremillion, Sister Bullock, Elder Chen, and Elder Brochu (he's one of the AP'S). Top row from the left: Sister Hawkins, Sister Ward, Sister McDonald, me, and Elder Stephens (the other AP)

Also me and Elder Chen in Picadilly Gardens

Me and some people in my district in line for Domino's about to take advantage of their freshers week deal: 1 pound pizza!

A bee-bees are really symbolic to Manchester because of industry and stuff. They have statues and pictures all over the place. Like on trash cans, or I saw that statue in the hospital. So that kinda just reminded me of Utah haha

And one of our hotpots!

A picture from Picadilly gardens (in Manchester)