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