Elder Mark Ensign: Week 13: October 7, 2019

大家好！

Really fast I need to let everyone know that next week is my first transfer, so my next pday will be a week from tomorrow, on October 15 rather than on monday

I wanna share a quick kinda funny story! So I went to a fireside a week ago yesterday (sunday) called “why I believe” where basically a bunch of recent converts shared their testimonies. And one of them was baptized because of the Book of Mormon musical, which is crazy! So what the missionaries did for a couple weeks was every night at 10 they would wait outside the theater and then when everyone walked out of the Book of Mormon musical show, they handed out cards that said “you've seen the show, now read the book”. Apparently lots of people thought they were the actors haha. And this convert-Lawrence- was one of the people that got a card. So long story short he started meeting with the missionaries and because of it, him, his wife, and his daughter all got baptized. And I think 3 other people got baptized too because of the musical. Crazy, right?!

We have another on date for baptism! Daisy, another one of our Chinese friends! She's on date for November 7. It's been so amazing to see how much she's been progressing towards baptism! She has such a desire to learn more, shes been pretty much reading all the scriptures she can. She also wants to start going through the seminary guides haha. Other than her and Michael, we have 2 friends that are progressing really well. We have a lot more friends, we just haven't been able to meet with all of them a lot. We have Xuétíng (Sophia) and Bótǐng. They both seem like they really want to learn. Boting is still trying to figure out if God exists but I really think she wants to believe He does. Sophia pretty much comes to all the church meetings and activities. She also signed up for the chinese institute class even though she's not even a member. She's a legend haha. She also spent like 30 minutes “fixing” my Chinese cause I guess I was overemphasising my tones way too much haha. I'm hoping we'll be able to get them to progress enough to be baptized in November!

This past week I went on my first exchange with one of my zone leaders, Elder Stayner. He's one of the 4 chinese speaking elders in my mission right now-theres me, my companion, Elder Stayner, and another elder from China. I felt like I learned so much, we had some pretty amazing experiences. I asked him a little about learning Chinese, and he said that he's only had 3 chinese speaking companions throughout his whole 18 months in England. But he's had most of them for more than one transfer, so he's had a Chinese companion for about 6 transfers. So he said that learning Chinese has been really hard, especially with all the english speaking companions he's had, but also gave me a bunch of tips. All the other Chinese missionaries say that his chinese is the best they've ever heard from any other chinese speaking missionary in my mission that isn't a native speaker. But he mentioned he's still not close to being fluent. So that really just made me realize how hard it's gonna be to become fluent in Chinese in a country where really not that many people speak Chinese, where you're not constantly immersed in the language. But I know I want to become as fluent as possible, so I'm definitely gonna work as hard as I can to make that possible

Also on the exchange, I finally got to experience England outside of the city! It's really as nice as they all say! It's super green, the air is soooo fresh, I love it! But it was also FREEZING. We went on a morning run the second day of the exchange and I forgot to bring a jacket. So i went running in short sleeves in 3° C weather (37° F). Crazy cold, but also I really enjoyed the country air. I'm probably gonna be in cities my whole mission because that's where Chinese people are. And likely in only 3 places, most chinese missionaries only end up serving in 3 cities-Manchester (where I am right now), Liverpool, and Lancaster. But there's also a chance I'll go to Wales, which would be amazing!

I think that's it for this week!

-Elder Ensign